Bad Romance is the first single out of Gaga’s Fame Monster album. If you look back at her past works, the main message of her music is that she is willing to do anything, even sacrificing herself, to obtain fame. The video continues in the same direction by depicting Gaga as a willing victim in the music industry’s shady inner-workings. She wants to live a Bad Romance with the abusive, cruel and satanic music industry. She knows of all its flaws but she still desires to be part of it more than anything else. She is a Fame Monster…she feeds from fame…she enjoys being famous…if she is not famous, she’ll die or something…you get the picture. At face value, the song lyrics seem to be about her wanting to get “banged” by a kind of psychopath, but the video reveals that the psychopath is in fact the music industry.
The song starts with a weird chant that goes

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-roma-mamaa!
Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!
Want your bad romance
This is the type senseless crap drunk people like to yell in those disco dance parties you crazy kids go to. Is there a deeper meaning to it? Gaga says it in a weird, gothic accent, in a ceremonial/incantation matter, a little like the “Bum-bum-bedum” of Rihanna’s Disturbia (article here). Ra is the name the ancient Egyptian sun god is still of a great importance in today’s occultism (see the “Eye of Ra”, the All-Seeing Eye). Roma is maybe a reference to the roman catholic church, but I’m not sure. This could be interpreted in many ways so I won’t linger on it.

I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything
As long as it’s free
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love)

I want your drama
The touch of your hand
I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand
I want your love
Love-love-love
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love)
Right away, it is obvious that the love that Gaga is seeking is wrong and sick. She’s a sex slave and, apparently she likes it. She knows that the industry is ugly but she still wants in. There is an obvious sense of sadomasochism, as she seems to know that this love (of success in the music industry) will hurt her and treat her badly, but she’s up for it. As we will examine in the video, there is also a spiritual meaning to the lyrics where fame equals submitting to the dark, satanic side of the music industry. In other words, the song is also about submitting to evil and the imagery of the video corroborates this fact.

I want your horror
I want your design
‘Cause you’re a criminal
As long as your mine
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love-uuhh)

I want your psycho
Your vertigo stick
Want you in my rear window
Baby you’re sick
I want your love
Love-love-love
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love)

Here again, there is a mix of the “horror” of evil with hardcore sex references, which convey the fact that she wants to be “penetrated” by this evil influence in order to gain its favors. There are references to Hitchcock movies (Psycho, Vertigo) but cleverly turned into sexually explicit lyrics.
During the bridge, Gaga sings emotionally “I don’t wanna be friends“. She does not want to be an outsider of the music industry, she wants to be part of it. Later she says “I want your love and, All your lovers’ revenge”, which means that she wants all of the attention of the music industry to the point that she also wants the “hate” of the artists who are jealous of her.
Of course, the lyrics can be up for interpretation but visuals of the video really give a particular meaning to the words. Gaga is not singing to persoin, but to a group, an entity, an organization. She is signing to the Illuminati, to the music industry, to Baphomet, to the ones that have the power to make her famous. She wants to be part of that sinister and corrupted system and write a Bad Romance with it

In Conclusion

Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance is by far the densest and most symbolic video I’ve ever analyzed. It is a metaphorical yet accurate description of the steps needed to be taken in order to part of the “mega-pop-star machine”. Submission, control, business negotiations, initiation, secrecy and the embrace of dark forces are all represented in the video. Once decoded, the song describes indeed the Bad Romance of the music industry. The machine uses artists, it pimps them, it cheats on them with new, hotter artists and it finally dumps them when the initial appeal is lost.

Gaga, the “Fame Monster” wants to be treated that way, knowing that there is not other way to obtain world-wide fame. One might be extremely creative and talented, fame is however only achieved through the exposure that can only be provided by media corporations. They are owned by a secretive elite, which is represented by the masks on the faces of the bidders in the video. Bad Romance, more than simply serving the required dose of subversive symbolism to the MTV generation, offers a chilling description of the music industry ruled by the elite. And now comes the hardest part: getting this damn song out of my head.