Paparazzi

Lady Gaga was intrigued by fame long before she was famous. On this song she plays the part of a stan who follows a singer around like a member of the paparazzi, that gaggle of photographers always on the hunt for celebrities. She started performing the song in 2007 when she was a little-known singer on the New York City club scene. Regarding the song's meaning, told About.com she intended it to have a few different interpretations. She explained: "The song is about a few different things – it's about my struggles, do I want fame or do I want love? It's also about wooing the paparazzi to fall in love with me. It's about the media whoring, if you will, watching ersatzes make fools of themselves to their station. It's a love song for the cameras, but it's also a love song about fame or love – can you have both, or can you only have one?"

The song was released on Lady Gaga's debut album, The Fame, on August 19, 2008. As her first single, "Just Dance," took off a few months later she did a lot of press and often cited "Paparazzi" as her favorite song from the album. She told Arjanwrites.com that it "really defines me as an artist in a lot of ways," adding, "It's a real pop record but still kind of twisted too. And it has a really intelligent pop art message behind it. That's one of my favorite songs on the record. I'm really proud of that song."

The epic eight-minute video for this song was helmed by Swedish director Jonas Akerlund, the man behind The Prodigy's controversial "Smack My Bitch Up" clip. It stars Lady Gaga and Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård, who played Meekus in the 2001 Ben Stiller movie Zoolander and the vampire Eric Northman on HBO's True Blood. Lady Gaga explained to The Canadian Press: "It has a real, genuine, powerful message about fame-whoring and death and the demise of the celebrity, and what that does to young people. The video explores ideas about sort of hyperbolic situations that people will go to in order to be famous. Most specifically, pornography and murder. These are some of the major themes in the video."