16th Apr 2011

Art of the Leak: Lady Gaga's New Hits Judas and Government Hooker

Lady Gaga's new singles Judas and Government Hooker are leaking/exploding onto the internet, providing real-time remix opportunities for her little monsters. As the remix becomes the realtime remix, these two highly anticipated tracks are quickly morphing into user generated hits in their own right, before the official tracks even drop in iTunes and other digital outlets.

Government Hooker first appeared as part of Gaga's turn on the runway at the Thierry Mugler show during Paris Fashion Week on 3 March, 2011. As Creative Director at Thierry Mugler, Nicholas Formichetti's ongoing collaboration with Gaga is jolting the brand with new energy, and snippets from the show found their way onto the web and went viral, then fed a mashup loop with Mugler zooming along behind it.

Judas broke on the web three days before its official debut on 19 April, and promptly drove hundreds of thousands of page views to quick-footed monsters trying to repost and title-spam the works on Youtube, Vevo and other video sharing sites.

It all just adds fuel to Gaga inferno, and the clever leaxploitation of the remixes ensure even more demand when the official versions drop, finding their way everywhere from Soundcloud to Spotify in a plethora of real-time reincarnations. As such, Lady Gaga may be the first pop-artist to not just realize, but embrace, the collective nature of ownership the realtime web implies. She leaks, links, likes. Watch: