ARTPOP—Lady Gaga's third studio album—was, like any piece of media ahead of its time, vastly underappreciated upon release. The album rollout and promotion was mired with controversy, from Gaga's oft-criticized South by Southwest set to the scrapping of the music video for "Do What U Want" (which featured now-disgraced singer R. Kelly). Though the Joker: Folie à Deux star is no stranger to controversy, the more contentious aspects of the album rollout overshadowed many of ARTPOP's highlights, which is a crying shame, because 2014's "G.U.Y."—officially titled G.U.Y. (An ARTPOP Film)—is probably one of Gaga's best music videos, even if it's one of her most forgotten.
The video, one of only two released during the ARTPOP era, not only accompanies one of the best songs on the album but is truly iconic in the way it thoroughly weaves pop culture and elements of Gaga's own life into its visuals. To the surprise of many, this included not one but several cameos from a few pillars of 2014 pop culture: Andy Cohen and the (incomplete) cast of Bravo's The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. "G.U.Y" serves as a real throwback in 2025, so let's take a quick look at one of 2014's most effective time capsules.
Lady Gaga's 'G.U.Y.' Is a Snapshot of 2014
Directed by Lady Gaga herself and filmed in California’s Hearst Castle, the esthetics of "G.U.Y." are an ode to opulence and pop culture, as well as the ARTPOP album itself. The nearly 12-minute video is bookended by three additional tracks from ARTPOP—"ARTPOP", "Venus", and "Manicure"—and opens on a dark but striking note. We see the A Star Is Born actor as a fallen angel, felled by arrows amidst a crowd of corporate-looking men in suits, fighting over money as it rains from the sky, in what seems to be a reference to Gaga's opinion on the music industry and her place in it at the time. Speaking to Sirius XM in 2014, Gaga elaborated on her inspiration for the video's opening sequence: "The video is a journey, and it's written sort of like a visual story. But it is sort of a metaphor for my life and the many things I've been through. It's indicative of how disorientated I feel in my experience of pop culture, and the pedestals we put people on." Gaga is then scooped up and carried away by her followers, to be revived in Hearst Castle’s Neptune Pool. "I'm snapped back into reality with the water and reality television." Gaga continued.
So much of the video—up to and including the lyrics of "G.U.Y."—screams 2014, from the inclusion of Andy Cohen and the Housewives to the repeated Minecraft references. "Love me, love me, please retweet," Gaga sings, referencing the now-defunct Twitter as she teams up with former Youtuber SkyDoesMinecraft to reanimate seminal figures from pop culture history, including Jesus, John Lennon, and Michael Jackson. In another scene, Gaga's head is superimposed onto a version of artist Nathan Sawaya's Lego sculpture, Yellow. The video's fashion, too, is of the era, as Gaga dons a paper teddy bear suit by Polish designer Bea Szenfeld, a piece from the designer's Spring 2014 "Sur La Plage" collection of swimwear. "It's okay to be confused," Gaga told Sirius XM, discussing the wide variety of references in the video, "Because the intention was there for to be a hallucinogenic quality when you're watching it, like pop culture acid."
'G.U.Y.' Was a 'Bravo' Family Affair
What happens when you combine Lady Gaga, a bevy of Bravo celebrities, and visuals inspired by Greek mythology? You get Andy Cohen as God, apparently. As an homage to the way "reality TV and reality media really run our lives," the "Disease" singer cast Cohen as a shirtless, Zeus-adjacent god. In the video for "G.U.Y.", the Watch What Happens Live host smiles down on Gaga from high in the sky, in a very Baby-Sun-from-Teletubbies sort of way. Not to be outdone, the RHOBH cast—Lisa Vanderpump (accompanied by her dog, Giggy), Yolanda Foster, Carlton Gebbia, Kyle Richards, and Kim Richards in particular—appear early in the video as Gaga's girl band, decked out with a tamborine, a harp, and the like. Vanderpump and Kyle Richards even accompany Gaga, in one of video's more horrific scenes, as she takes revenge on the corporation of men who left her for dead in the video's opening seconds.
So, how exactly did Andy Cohen and the Housewives end up in a Lady Gaga music video? According to Kyle Richards, it was Gaga herself who requested the cameos. "Bravo contacted me and said you’ve been asked to be in a video," Richards told The Hollywood Reporter, "We had to sign a nondisclosure agreement before we found out who it was. I was so curious, and then when I saw, I was completely blown away." Vanderpump elaborated on why Gaga asked the Housewives to appear in the video, saying, "She’s very Bravo-aware. She’s right in the center of pop culture, and Housewives is very much of the culture." One of Gaga's main goals in regard to the Housewives cameos was to make the women “feel and look beautiful and fierce," according to Richards, who described Gaga giving her notes on how fiercely she needed to whip her ponytail in a particular scene. "Even if I get whiplash, it’s OK. Lady Gaga told me to do it." Amen.
