Lady Gaga hatches from egg to express herself at Grammys

Lady Gaga finally entered an awards show without causing a stir about her outfit — because we couldn’t see what she had on. We couldn’t see anything. The “controversial” pop diva — notorious for some wild event outfits, including a dress made of raw meat at September’s MTV Video Music Awards — was carried along the Grammys red carpet inside a mostly opaque, greenish-white egg.

After the top-volume Aretha Franklin tribute opened the show, Gaga’s egg was carried on stage, from which she began singing her new single, “Born This Way.” Since its release on Friday, the song has been the subject of a blogging frenzy about its uncanny resemblance to Madonna’s “Express Yourself.” In her Grammys performance, wearing a subdued flowy dress of muted cream and yellow tones, the similarities were enhanced by choreography that mimicked the right-angle joints of the “Express Yourself” video as well as every forearm weave from “Vogue.”

Before the egg hatched, Gaga had won two (“Bad Romance” picked up pop vocal performance and short-form music video) and lost two (dance album, pop collaboration with vocals) of her six nominations. Midway through the show, she won for pop vocal album (“The Fame Monster”). Her acceptance speech sold the same against-all-odds story Justin Bieber sells (who was actually telling these people they wouldn’t succeed?) and thanked Whitney Houston: “When I wrote ‘Born This Way,’ I imagined she was singing it because I wasn’t secure enough in myself.”

She also made early online headlines Sunday evening with a pre-Grammys interview with Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes,” in which she confessed to smoking marijuana. From the CBS transcript …

LADY GAGA: I smoke a lot of pot when I write music. So I’m not gonna, like, sugar coat it for “60 Minutes” that, you know, I — I’m some, like, sober human being, ’cause I’m not. I —

ANDERSON COOPER: You still smoke up?

LADY GAGA: — drink a lot of whiskey and I smoke weed when I write. And I don’t do it a lot because it’s not good for my voice. … I don’t want to encourage kids to do drugs. But when you asked me about the sociology of fame and what artists do wrong — what artists do wrong is they lie. And I don’t lie. I’m not a liar. I built good will with my fans. They know who I am. And I’m just like them in so many ways.