Fans go Gaga for video as Lady unveils new shows
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Glam pop singer Lady Gaga on Monday announced 31 U.S. concert dates as her fans went wild for a controversial new music video that features R&B star Beyonce and lesbian prison sex.
The double Grammy-award winner, considered the most exciting new pop artist of the last 12 months, said she would take her "Monster's Ball" tour on a second U.S. leg in July, August and September.
The singer of hits like "Bad Romance" and "Poker Face" has said the theatrical show will be "more of a musical and less of a concert".
"It has a New York theme. It's a story and the story is that me and my friends are in New York and we're going to the Monster Ball, and we get lost," she said in an interview last month.
Meanwhile, Lady Gaga's latest music video -- a 10 minute mini-film to accompany her single "Telephone" -- had racked up more than 15.5 million views on YouTube by Monday after its release late on Thursday night.
The video, which starts in a leather-clad fantasy women's prison and later has Lady Gaga and Beyonce poisoning customers in a diner, was also among the top hottest topics on Twitter.
The 23 year-old singer has boosted her career, as well as record sales that now total around 10 million albums worldwide, with daring stunts including setting her piano alight at the American Music Awards and having fake blood drip from her rib cage in a 2009 live performance.
Most fans lapped up the "Telephone" video. "Most creative thing i've seen out of lady gaga and beyonce...i enjoyed it," wrote AdrieneAsh2 in a YouTube comment.
But some appeared to be getting bored with the shock tactics.
"There's something so gimmicky about Lady Gaga that any talent she purports to have is undermined by her seemingly utter desperation to shock or be scandalous in every.single.video. It just bores you after a while and I just hope male artists don't start with this oversexualized trash pop too," said ticamorena in a posting on website popsugar.com
Writing on the huffingtonpost.com, journalists Jim Schumacher and Debbie Bookchin asked whether Lady Gaga's exploits were art or media manipulation.
"What if glitzy Lady Gaga is exactly what she appears to be: The latest manifestation of a culture industry that pushes the boundaries of civility and sexuality to the extreme in order to make a buck? And worse, pushes it on our kids long before they want or need to be presented with some middle-aged ad executive's personal sadomasochistic sexual fantasies?," the pair wrote in a blog entry.
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