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By the time she crawled out of your mom’s Volvo roof box to deliver her first rah-rah-rahs, Lady Gaga had already hosted a poolside orgy, transformed the subway into her debaucherous lair, and sought poisonous revenge on Alexander Skarsgård for throwing her off the edge of a castle. Her ideas were big; her budgets were catching up. But the video for “Bad Romance,” the lead single from 2009’s The Fame Monster, went beyond the kind of spectacle that rising superstars like her had the resources to pull off. It offered a glimpse into an entire cinematic world that thrilled and disturbed in equal measure, expanding the possibilities of what a music video could achieve -- and challenging other stars to step their game up at the same time.

“Bad Romance” features some of her most gorgeous music-video looks -- as silly as it seems now in the post-Joanne era, the video was praised by some critics for the “stripped-down” and “normal” makeup on display -- as well as her most unsettling. The white crowned bodysuits look like Max from Where the Wild Things Are hit up a fetish club. The bathtub-bound Gaga with CGI-enlarged eyes beckoned to the uncanny valley. And despite all the glossy, sterile exteriors abound, an element of body horror lurks underneath the surface, from shots that linger over dancers’ exaggerated bony spines to the emaciated Gaga-monster hiding in a cage during the second verse. Pause the video at any moment and you’ll probably find yourself starting at something worth dissecting; even the briefest scenes and cutaways -- Gaga suspended in a cloud of diamonds, Gaga covering her face with razor-blade sunglasses, Gaga stomping around in alienesque Alexander McQueen heels -- could have sustained their own storylines as standalone videos.

Those mini-moments were mostly in service of a bigger story, one in which Gaga gets kidnapped and drugged by models, sold into some kind of sexual slavery via an ominous pack of Russian men, and eventually enacts a fiery revenge plot. Considering how “Bad Romance” cemented the branding and iconography of her “Little Monster” fanbase -- witness the birth of the monster claw! -- it’s a little ironic that Gaga has described the video’s plot as an allegory about the entertainment industry, one that asks viewers to examine their relationship to their idols, what they ask of them, and at what cost they get it.

Of course, Lady Gaga would go on to make more elaborate music videos than “Bad Romance” -- the mini-movie that was “Telephone,” the space opera that was “Born This Way,” each weaving in social commentary in both obvious and subtle ways. But more than providing any one look, dance move, or message, "Bad Romance" was a supernova reminder that there was still so much room to push the art form -- and that no one was more game to lead the charge than the free bitch herself, baby. It’s fitting that the video ends with the singer torching the place and everything in her path, lying among the embers and shooting sparks out of her pyro-bra. With “Bad Romance,” she took the old standard for great music videos and set it aflame, then got to work building a new one. -- N.F.

They count down from #100-#01 here: https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/lis...source=facebook

A timeless masterpiece.