Reconsidering Beyoncé/Lady Gaga's "Video Phone," 14 Years Later
Reconsidering Beyoncé/Lady Gaga's "Video Phone," 14 Years Later
A pretty mid video’s appeal lies in the surprisingly sweet behind-the-scenes.
There’s a viral tweet going around right now that asks a question for the ages: “What is a mother off?” Many (namely gay) people are quote tweeting the question with images of two divas battling it out — Alexis/Dominique, Buffy/Faith, Adele/Marion. Well, I’d like to conduct a deep dive on a significant entry into the “mother off” canon, one that truly epitomized the maximization of the power of the joint slay: the link-up of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga for “Video Phone.”
“Man, let's give the world what they want!” Lady Gaga told MTV News in 2012 when reflecting on the song/video in a sentiment akin to Debby Ryan’s iconic “I sat down with the president of Disney Channel and I said, ‘I want to make history.’” Gaga continued, “Let's do a real girl-power collaboration where we support one another.”
This week marks the fourteenth anniversary of the release of “Video Phone,” the eighth single off of Beyoncé’s I Am... Sasha Fierce. Both the Washington Post and Rolling Stone noted similarities in the track’s sound to that of Nine Inch Nails, while the San Francisco Chronicle compared it to Björk’s work.
The song itself is not Stephen Sondheim-level in terms of lyrical complexity. Example: “I know you like that/Turn you into a star? I got it like that/Like that, baby, don't fight it/'Cause when I miss your call, I hit you right back.” Similar to Britney Spears describing the concept for the video “Circus” as “basically about, y’know, a circus,” the song “Video Phone” is about Beyoncé wanting to be recorded on her, y’know, video phone… ostensibly dancing for a man, or, as insinuated, doing more lascivious acts. Listen, you do you.
The original version of “Video Phone” that did not feature Lady Gaga was initially sent to U.S. urban contemporary radios on September 22, 2009. The release was recalled shortly thereafter when Life & Style released a story alleging that Beyoncé was teaming up with Gaga for a “top secret” project. "On Oct. 7, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé were working on the video together at a studio in NYC," an insider revealed. "Everything on the set was being kept very hush-hush, and security was extremely tight." A week later, on October 15, a spokesperson for director Hype Williams confirmed the news to MTV. By October 27, Gaga was spilling the beans entirely. "When I was doing [Beyoncé’s] video with her, she called me and said, 'What do you want to do?'" Gaga explained in an interview with New York's Z100 radio station. "And I'm like, 'I don't want to show up in some frickin' hair bow and be fashion Gaga in your video.' I said, 'I want to do you.'"
On November 17, 2009, the video debuted, introducing the remixed version of the song, which included a new verse from Gaga. Those expecting added layers of lyrical complexity be damned! “You're my phone star/And I'm happy when my light’s flashin'/'Cause you on my receiver (Oh)/Hubba, hubba,” Gaga sang.
But it’s not the song that I want us to reconsider.
The video begins in black and white with Beyoncé, serving immediately out the gate, flanked by men in suits — an homage to Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
Color seeps into the shot and then we’re with B dancing in a studio as two men with cameras as heads snap photos. Gaga appears shortly thereafter and they’re both clad in white latex leotards, brandishing toy guns (Bey red; Gaga yellow) as Bey dances seductively behind a blonde bombshell-era Gaga. It’s all well and good, but dare I say a touch quaint in comparison to where they’d both go career-wise in the aftermath.
Then comes the chairs. What you really want in a collab of this magnitude is synchronicity. It’s why we love videos like “Lady Marmalade,” “Rain On Me,” “WAP” — the opportunity to truly crystalize and then maximize the power of the joint slay. Here we get the two ladies sitting side by side and having, to bring it back to our earlier conversation, a true mother off.
Jessel Taank recently asked, “Is it there?” about the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan. To borrow: Is it there? “It” being the choreo in “Video Phone.” To quote another Real Housewife of New York: Not really! So what are we reconsidering?
Chemistry. See, as it turns out, it’s the “Behind the Scenes” that actually proves more entertaining than the video itself. Interestingly, Part 1 of the BTS has either been scrubbed or gone missing, as I can only find Part 2 on Bey’s official YouTube. It’s evident how much Gaga reveres Beyoncé and how grateful Bey is, in turn, to have Gaga giving over her time and talents. “How is it? How’s it going?” Beyoncé asks. “It’s fun… it’s really fun. I’m having fun flipping my hair,” a visibly nervous Gaga tells her. “I never have any, like, front hair on my head, so…” She beams at Beyoncé, who responds simply, “You look sexy.”
It’s in this featurette that we’re given the genesis of the collab when Beyoncé reveals that she was at the Billboard Awards earlier that year when the idea came about. She called Gaga thinking it’d be a fun moment; Gaga instead wanted it to be an event. “This is what makes Beyoncé so amazing at what she does,” dancer Bryan Tanaka (Mariah Carey’s current boyfriend) shares in the video. “She understands that Lady Gaga just learned this yesterday and you can see her over by the screens watching and learning and seeing what she can do to adjust herself to Gaga.”
We then watch an — I don’t know what you’d call it; a dress rehearsal? — take before the frame adjusts and we’re watching the camera monitor. After a few seconds, chatter and laughter slowly filter into the frame and we realize we’re watching the footage along with Bey and Gaga. They’re both still in their get-ups (sans heels), holding each other’s hand as they watch along, tickled by their creation. “I like when I look like your back-up dancer,” Gaga tells a cracking-the-fuck-up Beyoncé. “‘Cause I look like your fly girl.”
Gaga: I love, like, the… it’s almost like… it’s just like real woman alliance.
Bey: Right.
Gaga: It’s like we’re friends. Women should support each other.
Bey: Absolutely.
Gaga: It’s so nice.
Bey: It’s great.
I must admit: Something has been making me remember this video for the past 14 years, so I was waiting to rediscover the moment that had kept it burned in my brain. It’s so sweet and adorable and a side we don’t often see of these women in how unguarded and playful they both are. But whatever singular beat I was waiting for never arrived. So what kept this video stored and cataloged? I think, most obviously, it’s the power that these two possess and how it’s amplified by them joining forces (the aforementioned joint slay). But I think it’s also bearing witness to the love they both have for their craft and how that love is telegraphed to one another because of their respect for the other's craft. It’s the most high-wire version of game recognizing game, then taking it a step further and saying, “Let’s play the game together.” Gaga was right: It really is the real woman alliance! And we get to witness not just the product, but in this rare instance, the process. I long for more of this! As artistry of this time tends to (often, but not always) move toward perfection, I find myself ever more curious about the road there. I reckon I might feel more strongly about a lot of media I’m mid on if I had the opportunity to see how the sauce was made. Maybe then I could fully appreciate it! I think it’s perhaps why I love the And Just Like That… writers room podcast; it provides the roadmap — even if I still find myself getting lost.
I was watching the just-shy-of-fantastic docuseries The Super Models last night and towards the end of the first episode, Linda Evangelista said something that gave me an aha moment. “Nowadays, all the magic happens in post-production,” Evangelista explained. “In the 80’s and the early 90’s, all the magic happened exactly at that moment that you heard ‘click.’” The making of the “Video Phone” video feels akin to the era she’s speaking of, and the fact that we got a BTS of it provides a rare glimpse at the magic itself, rather than the distillation of that magic. Is the outcome stan-worthy? No, especially when compared to “Telephone,” Bey and Gaga’s follow-up collab that would be released months later. But the making of this video is definitely a time capsule of what I see as one of the last nuggets of the veneer-less pop star. It’s not about throwing two stars together to generate PopCrave tweets; it’s about two fierce mothers-before-the-term-mother-was-overused-thanks-to-people-like-me coming together to pop off and give the people something to talk about.
Later, Beyoncé speaks to the camera as she departs: “It started out as a dream, and it became a reality. And Lady Gaga might be the sweetest, sweetest angel ever. Everybody is just so amazing. When everyone is connected, and everyone is in their zone… that’s when you make art. And that’s what we just made. And I am on to see my husband. I’m happy. I’m happy. I’m happy!”