We typically don’t question Lady Gaga’s endeavors, whether it’s showing up to the Grammy awards in a giant egg, her provocative and sometimes absurd costume and stage gear choices, or her jaw-dropping and detail-oriented collaborations and music videos… because at the end of the day, to her, it’s all about performance—that’s in part what makes her so successful.
It’s also the reason why we were floored to hear that in order to promote her new album Born This Way prior to its May 23rd release, Gaga has resorted to partnering with Facebook (and iPhone) app FarmVille. If you’re not familiar with the game (10% of Facebook users play, which roughly makes for a whopping 60+ million), it allows you to manage a virtual farm by plowing land, raising livestock, planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops—but mostly it just spams the shit out of your Facebook friends’ newsfeeds.
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Beginning May 17th, there will be a new farm on the FarmVille block—GagaVille. There’s no word if any McQueen will be available, but GagaVille will include items like crystals, unicorns, and sheep on motorcycles. Players will also be able to unlock exclusive songs off the upcoming album, or if you go as far as purchasing a $25 Zynga game card, you can download the album plus bonus tracks. Buyers of the card will also receive an exclusive Lady Gaga unicorn avatar in FarmVille and a chance to win a spot on the set of her next music video.
While chilling with crystal adorned unicorns doesn’t sound half bad, we’re not convinced that Gaga’s little monsters are going to rush to Best Buy to purchase the game card and barter away all their harvested ears of corn to listen to a snippet of a song (that’s what illegal downloading is for), but we could be wrong.
Maybe she’s just trying to channel her inner Nebraska, but most likely she’s just flexing her shocking muscle once again… and this time she really got us. We can’t help but think this is the start of a bad, bad romance.
