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Players: Madonna, the blonde Queen of Pop who's basically immortal and in the midst of MDNA tour; Lady Gaga, the blonde Princess of Pop who's on her way to immortality and in the midst of her Born This Way ball
The Opening Serve: This spat actually started a while ago, back before anyone knew the lyrics to the pop perfection known as "Call Me Maybe" and perhaps back when One Direction were still zygotes in that lab in Uzbekistan. Back in February of 2011, Lady Gaga had released "Born This Way"--the song she wanted to become a gay anthem, but never really took off the way "Bad Romance" did, partly because it was shrouded in a lot of chatter about it sounding like Madonna's "Express Yourself." Well, eventually Madonna did comment on the similar sounding chords, and it was not pretty, telling 20/20 that the song felt "reductive." (She told her puzzled interviewer to "Look it up." And we did, and we really think she meant derivative, but, oh well.) Let's fast forward to Madonna's current MDNA tour, where the 53-year-old has now opened her MDNA tour with a mashup of the two songs:
The Return Volley: Lady Gaga has fired back by ummm... Not firing back. The freshly-concussed Gaga was performing her song "Hair" and added an interlude seemingly aimed at Madonna. "It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves to put other people down," Gaga purrs (video below). "That doesn't make me feel good at all... That just makes me feel like I'm not a good human being... At the end of day I learned so much this year about that." She continues, "I learned about negativity and I learned a lot about people trying to tear you down... and I don't even want to fight back. Because it's more important to me to keep writing music."