Madonna Covers Gaga's Born This Way, Good Policy Or Petty?

The Material Girl officially kicked off her tour in Tel Aviv tonight, and beyond asking for peace in Middle East, the singer followed through on the promise of her rehearsal footage and played a medley featuring “Express Yourself” and “Born This Way”. Ordinarily, when a musician covers someone else’s music in concert, it’s a loving tribute and a way to have fun. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem likely that’s what Madonna was doing here.

Way back when “Born This Way” was first released, the track drew a ton of attention for a perceived similarity to Madonna’s “Express Yourself”. Given how the Internet operates, the controversy likely would have gone away within a few weeks, but the Material Girl later stoked the fire by calling the track “reductive” and agreeing she too found similarities. Gaga responded in short order denying she’d ever pilfer content from Madonna and begged anyone to point out any similarities beyond the chord structure.

After the sting of each lady’s words softened, people once again stopped talking about the mess, but now, thanks to Madonna, the feud, at least between the singers’ fans, will probably start up again. According to Ace Showbiz, the “Express Yourself”/ “Born This Way” medley was even finished off with a snippet of the musician singing “She’s Not Me”.

I get why Madonna would be agitated. I even get why she might complain to her friends about the similarities between the two tracks, but I’m still not quite sure how I feel about her commenting on it so publically in concert. What do you think? Was it good policy for Madonna to cover Gaga? Let us know your thoughts by voting in the poll below…



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