Posted by Maura Johnston on 02/23/2011 at 9:00 AM News

The Popdust Files: born this way, lady gaga

Last night, after wrapping up the second of back-to-back shows at Madison Square Garden, Lady Gaga (via her media pals) let it be known that the video for her No. 1 single “Born This Way” would be released to a right-now-unknown online location this Monday (February 28) at 11 a.m. ET.

What to expect from the clip? Well, advance word from people working on it is that it’s awesome! (Who knows what they said after the checks cleared, though.) There are three people credited as its directors—Gaga, choreographer Laurieann Gibson (who guided the dance moves for other Gaga clips like “Paparazzi” and “Bad Romance”), and photographer Nick Knight, who shot the “Born This Way” cover art. (Isn’t it nice that the iTunes/media saturation era has brought things like “cover art for singles” back into the pop-fan lexicon? Talk about your unexpected salutary effects!) So expect dancing! And maybe lots of hair?

Actually, if this performance of the song at Madison Square Garden last night is anything to go by, expect this video to front-load the song’s “gospel” quotient. (It’s like “Like A Prayer”!)

This performance was preceded—not directly, mind you, but the seed had been planted—by Gaga strenuously telling the audience that she had never lipsynced in her life, because she wanted to maximize the value of the tickets for her fans. (They were kinda pricey, to be fair!) This monologue was very much in keeping with the therapeutic feel of the show; there were many hometown-triumph tangents that were similar to the show she played in July. And during “Speechless,” while sitting in front of a piano that she would later climb onto and use as a sort of fulcrum for assisting her performance as a shoe-cum-capo on her guitarist’s axe, she mentioned that Liza Minnelli and Marisa Tomei were in the house, then went on an extended monologue about how former teachers used to tell her she’d never be a star because she was “too ethnic.”

This was balanced out, however, by her telling the males in the audience that they all had large penises because of where they were from. Talk about hometown pride!