In a series called Mondo Bullshittio, let’s talk about some of the most glaring hypocrisies and faux pas in pop culture…and all that it affects.
For a long while there, Lady Gaga was quite determined to ensure that everyone knew she was a New York girl. Not just born and raised, but also someone who fundamentally represented the city and all that it “means” (such cliches among that potential definition being a sense of liberation, lack of inhibitions and overall “edginess”—never mind that it’s the world-capital of the ultimate basic bitch entity: finance). This includes its reputation for “nurturing” “creative spirits” (so long as the artistic output of such a person is eventually monetized—otherwise, you’re out on your ass, whether that means back in your hometown or as one of the new members of the Mole People). Which is what Lady Gaga feels happened to her while there…not that it had anything to do with her upper-middle-class background, complete with growing up on the Upper West Side, being furnished with music lessons early on and attending the same tony Catholic private school that Paris and Nicky Hilton did.
All of which fortified her ability to simply drop out of the uber-expensive Tisch School of the Arts and do the whole Madonna thing (i.e., come up in the club circuit of Lower Manhattan) with an actual safety net if she fell off the tightrope (Madonna, in contrast, was not supported by her family emotionally or financially in the endeavor of “becoming a star”). After starting to gain some traction, Gaga’s “path to success” took her to the true capital of the music industry, Los Angeles, where, apparently, she was led to the revelation that would birth 2011’s “Marry the Night,” of which she said, “This song is about me going back to New York. I wrote this about the courage it took for me to say, ‘I hate Hollywood, I just wanna live in Brooklyn and make music.’”
And yet, now, for whatever reason (*cough cough* because she’s rich[er]), Gaga has suddenly migrated back over to “Team Los Angeles.” Complete with the property she owns there and saying things like, “I just got rid of my place in New York—it was too hectic every day outside on the street” (a quote from a 2018 Vogue interview). Unfortunately, her New York superiority complex didn’t seem to prepare her for the fact that it’s plenty hectic outside in L.A. too (as David Lynch well knew). In 2025, the reasons for that were due, needless to say, to the unprecedented wildfires whose flames extended toward Lady Gaga’s own Malibu doorstep, with Pacific Palisades being awfully close to said fire-prone area (and back in 2018, she evacuated during the then unprecedented Woolsey Fire).
Despite being one of the celebrities who wasn’t quite as “in the hot zone”—e.g., Billy Crystal, Paris Hilton, Anthony Hopkins, John Goodman, Beyoncé’s mom, Tina Knowles, Anna Faris, John C. Reilly and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, to name a few—Lady Gaga has still been an avid participant in fundraising efforts like FireAid (which was something of a precursor to the Grammys just a few nights later). And yes, Lady Gaga is still more of a non sequitur New Yorker in L.A. than the abovementioned Seinfeld queen (who was also born in Manhattan). For Gaga spent years forging her identity as being “of NYC,” which, in her mind, implied “of the streets” a.k.a. common people.
But Gaga’s upbringing, therefore personhood, was never common, and it would be pointless for her to relate to others on that level. Instead, for a while there, she opted to relate to them by demeaning L.A., as is the typical practice (for Gaga is not as “weird” as she thinks she is). Hence, a quote of hers featuring a first component that rarely gets dredged up: “I don’t like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.”
There it is. That usual bullshit about how people from/born in New York have an inherent superiority over everyone else who couldn’t possibly have the same kind of survival skills. In California, however, survival at the most basic (thus, most important) level is often a frequent topic of discussion/form of “training.” Teaching people how to exist in wilderness settings with nothing more than tent and fire setup know-how. New Yorkers can’t survive anywhere but New York—anywhere else can’t accommodate their so-called needs (particularly attention-affirming opportunities). Which is part of why Gaga will always keep going back to it despite her current love affair with L.A., which has probably only been further cemented by her fiancé, Michael Polansky, being a California boy himself (born in San Francisco).
But regardless of her present “allegiance” to the town by way of real estate ownership, Gaga was the last person who had any business singing “California Dreamin’” during the 67th Annual Grammys, which took an especially L.A.-centric approach to its content this year as a means to both honor victims of the wildfire (as mentioned, many a celebrity included) and raise money for the monumental task of rebuilding key parts of the city (likely just in time for the 2028 Olympics). Joined by Bruno Mars in the supposed “John Phillips” role, Gaga appeared in her safe version of a “hippie-dippy mama” getup (courtesy of Elie Saab). Worse than her sartorial “riff” on 60s L.A. was watching her belt out such lyrics as, “I’d be safe and warm (I’d be safe and warm)/If I was in L.A.” Lyrics that, coming out of her mouth, not only ring totally false, but also prove that she’s the “full of shit” person she always claimed not to be (namely, in a 2011 NME interview titled, “Freak or Fraud?”). Someone who can be seduced by L.A. under the right conditions, when New York is no longer as viable of a claim to “street cred” past a certain age.
Though, to Gaga’s supposed nemesis/prototype, Madonna, staying in New York has proven to be the only thing she’s never really reinvented (her stints of living in L.A. being all too brief by comparison). This much was made clear by her far-less-vocal-than-others support for Angelenos in the aftermath of the fires, with nothing more than an IG post (in an ephemeral IG story, not even for the grid) alluding to the period when she used to live there. But, of course, always found herself back in the city that “raised” her. As it’s possible that Gaga eventually will after her own “L.A. period” (though it won’t be one that’s nearly as iconic, starting with the Sean and Madonna “chopperazzi wedding” in Malibu). Yet another reason this entire “I Love L.A.” shtick of hers is an insult rather than an “honor.”
