THE AUSTRALIAN
Just a disco doppelGaga?
Rhys Blakely
August 09, 2011
LADY Gaga , she of the meat dress and pet teacup, has built a career on being eccentric.
Now, however, the musician faces allegations that she plagiarised one of her most controversial songs, the recent hit Judas.
Rebecca Francescatti, a singer from Chicago, has filed a lawsuit, alleging that Gaga’s track copied one of her own, entitled Juda.
Francescatti says the similarities were not a coincidence, and that Brian Gaynor, her former bass guitarist, now works with Paul Blair, a music producer and engineer known as DJ White Shadow, who collaborated with Gaga on her most recent album.
Francescatti’s lawyer, Chris Niro, told the TMZ celebrity website: “Though the songs are different styles, the composition is the same and the chorus is the same melody . . . [my client] is seeking recognition for what she created.”
Francescatti, whose song was released in 1999, is suing for unspecified damages. Her lawyer said that musicologists had supported her claims. Representatives for Gaga, whose real name is , did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit is the latest controversy surrounding an artist who was recently judged the world’s most powerful celebrity by Forbes magazine.
Last month Bette Midler appeared to take umbrage after Gaga went on stage dressed as a mermaid, in a wheelchair.
Midler wrote on Twitter: “Dear @ladygaga I’ve been doing singing mermaid in a  wheelchair since 1980 — You can keep the meat dress and the firecracker tits — mermaid’s mine.”
Midler has been performing as Delago, the mermaid character in question, since 1978. When Gaga was asked if her routine was meant as a tribute to Midler, she said: “Not in the beginning . . . because I didn’t know that she’d done [it], but I do now and I think it’s great.” Gaga’s version of the character also upset quadriplegic groups, and she was also
pelted with eggs at a show in Sydney.
Through Gaga’s career there have been detractors. Some have criticised her eccentricity as affected; others have claimed that her earlier single Born This Way recalled Madonna’s Express Yourself.
Last month Christian groups reacted angrily to Judas, which includes the lyric: “I’m just a holy fool/ oh baby he’s so cruel/ but I’m still in love with Judas, baby.” Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, called the song “a stunt . . . tries to continue to shock Catholics and Christians in general: she
dresses as a nun . . . she swallows the rosary. She has morphed into a caricature of herself.
“She is trying to rip off Christian idolatry to shore up her talentless, mundane and boring performances.”
