"Yoü and I" was inspired by Gaga's relationship with former boyfriend Lüc Carl, and is a slow tempo song featuring instrumentation from electric guitars and piano, with Gaga and Lange providing background vocals. The song received positive critical appreciation, with reviewers listing it as one of the highlights from Born This Way. After the release of the parent album, "Yoü and I" charted in Canada, United Kingdom and the United States, due to digital downloads from the parent album. Season ten American Idol contestant Haley Reinhart performed "Yoü and I" in May 2011 prior to its release, earning positive reviews. Her studio recording was released to the iTunes Store as a single, and appeared on the compilation album, American Idol Top 5 Season 10.
The accompanying music video for "Yoü and I" was released on August 16, 2011 and was shot by Gaga's long-time collaborator Laurieann Gibson in Springfield, Nebraska. The video features Jo Calderone, Gaga's male alter ego, who is also featured on the single's cover, and Yuyi, her mermaid ego. The main concept behind the video was Gaga's journey to be with her beloved one, and was portrayed through an assortment of scenes displaying her in various avatars, including the previous two mentioned. After its release, the video was met with positive reception.
Background
"Yoü and I" was written by Lady Gaga and produced by Gaga and Robert John "Mutt" Lange, and was one of the first songs previewed from the album. Gaga said that the song was written in New York, while she was busy playing her old piano. The singer had first played "Yoü and I" at Elton John's White Tie and Tiara Ball in June 2010. She said that the song was bit of a "rock-and-roll tune", predicting that it may not be released as a single from Born This Way, but that it will remain "very dear" to her heart. Footage of the performance appeared on the Internet soon after, and positive response encouraged Lady Gaga to perform the song during the first concert of the North American leg of The Monster Ball Tour in Montreal. Gaga told MSNBC's Meredith Vieira and Ann Curry that "'Yoü and I' was written about the most important person that I ever met." Although Gaga did not confirm who that person is, People revealed it to be Lüc Carl, her former boyfriend she had made amends with. They clarified that "Yoü and I" talked about how they had got back together in their relationship. She further explained how the relationship became the inspiration of "Yoü and I", to Don Sheffield of Rolling Stone, in their July 2010 issue:
Release and artwork
"Yoü and I" was announced by Gaga on July 22, 2011 as the fourth single from Born This Way. The single cover for "Yoü and I" was released on August 5, 2011, via TwitPic, accompanied with the line: "You will never find what you are looking for in love, if you don't love yourself." It features two black-and-white images of Gaga's male alter ego Jo Calderone, while smoking a cigarette and sporting sideburns. Previously the character of Calderone had made an appearance in June 2011, when Gaga posed as him for a series of photos in London by photographer Nick Knight and arranged by stylist Nicola Formichetti. One shot features him wearing a blazer and white T-shirt with his head down and smoking a cigarette. The other image is of Jo Calderone in silhouette puffing out a cloud of smoke.
Composition
Lady Gaga - Yoü And I (Official Video)
"Yoü and I" has rock music and country music influences, and samples "We Will Rock You" (1977) by British rock band Queen; their guitarist Brian May is also featured on the track. It was recorded by Tom Ware and Horace Ward at the Warehouse Productions Studio in Omaha, Nebraska, and Allertwon Hill in the United Kingdom, respectively. Along with May, Justin Shirley Smith also played guitars, while Gene Grimaldi did the mastering of the track. Additional recording and programming were done by Olle Romo. Before production credits were announced in April 2011, Gaga had teased that "someone legendary" would be producing the track. Gaga, a Queen fan, and took her stage name after their song "Radio Ga Ga", admitted to "falling to the floor crying and laughing" when she found out that May agreed to the collaboration. Lange requested that Gaga record a "rough lead vocal" for the track while she was touring. Gaga later recalled: "I had about 30 cigarettes and a couple of glasses of Jameson and just put on a click track and sang my face off, thinking we'd redo the vocals." However, Lange was satisfied with Gaga's recording and it was used as the final recorded vocals for the track. Ware recalled that the song was recorded the night after Gaga's March 17, 2011, concert for The Monster Ball Tour. Gaga welcomed his opinions and encouraged his input, which according to him, helped make the four-hour session the best working experience he has had with a celebrity. "She was flattering toward the studio — and Omaha, too, for that matter. She is a bright young lady with remarkable music instincts who charts her own path," he added.
Critical reception
After hearing the White Tie and Tiara Ball performance, Entertainment Weekly's Leah Greenblatt complimented the song for its "torchy, slow-burn cabaret quality" and for lacking "Auto-Tune, fancy production, or performance gimmicks". McCormick, who noted the differences between Gaga's live and studio versions of the song, described the studio version as "bigger, bolder and less quirkily emotive, a custom-built radio rock ballad to induce hand claps in packed stadiums. This is not music for the underground: it is cheesy, high-gloss, pop rock for the mainstream middle, a kind of instant Eighties retro classic to seduce middle-aged rockers – possibly the last demographic to remain sceptical about her appeal." Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone called the song a confessional power ballad "with a torrid, sturm und drang vocal turn". In his review for The Guardian, Tim Jonze said the song "aims for a 'Hey Jude' style singalong but – owing to its determination to have someone playing kitchen sink in the background – ends up as bloated as Oasis' 'All Around the World'." Dan Aquilante of The New York Post wrote a less-than-favorable review of Born This Way but complimented "Yoü and I" and the "uniquely earthy quality" that Lange brought to the album.
Chart performance
In the United States, "Yoü and I" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number thirty-six on the chart dated June 11, 2011, after selling 83,000 downloads. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the song has sold a total of 124,000 digital downloads as of June 2011. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 96 on the issue dated August 27, 2011, while debuting on the Pop Songs chart at number 35. The next week, the song was the greatest gainer on the digital chart, entering at number 24 by selling 56,000 copies, while moving to number 35 on the Hot 100. It also gained airplay and became the highest debuting song on the Radio Songs chart, entering at number 58 with 22 million audience impressions. Following the performance of the song on the MTV Video Music Awards, "Yoü and I" moved upto number 16 on the Hot 100, with a 92% increase in digital sales to 109,000 and 50% increase in airplay to 32 million, according to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems.
In Canada, the song entered the Hot Digital Songs chart at number 14, consequently debuting on the Canadian Hot 100 at number 27.
Music video background
"It was so sweet, and I looked out and it's so beautiful, that tall corn... Then all of a sudden you start to see these monsters pop up. I love this place [Nebraska] so much, and it really comes from a genuine place. The person who I wrote this song about has been my buddy and my best friend since I was 19 years old, and he's from here."
—Gaga talking about her love for Nebraska, and the shooting of the video.
The music video for "Yoü and I" was filmed in Springfield, Nebraska and was directed by Lady Gaga's choreographer Laurieann Gibson. In the video, Gaga walks from New York City to Nebraska to get her boyfriend back. According to Gaga: "I'm walking with no luggage and no nothing and it's just me and my ankles are bleeding a little bit and there's grass stuck in my shoes and I've got this outfit on and it's real sort of New York clothing and I'm sprinting... And the video is about the idea that when you're away from someone you love, it's torture," she continued. "I knew I wanted the video to be about me sprinting back and walking hundreds of thousands of miles to get him back."
The music video was announced to be released alongside the 1,000th message posted by Gaga on her Twitter account. Gaga confirmed to MTV News that the video was set to premiere on August 18, 2011 on MTV. However, two days before the video's television premiere, parts of the clip leaked on the Internet, prompting Gaga to post three tweets which, together, read "FUCK THURS DAY". The messages were immediately followed by her 1,000th Twitter message, "You must love all + every part of me, as must I, for this complex + incomprehensible force to be true," including a link to the full music video, which was uploaded onto Gaga's YouTube channel two days earlier than the scheduled premiere.
Synopsis
The music video begins with Gaga, dressed in black clothing, sunglasses, bloody feet and seemingly bionic features, walking through a desert in Nebraska; having returned on foot after years of absence. Gaga goes to buy ice cream from an ice cream truck, but she suddenly drops it as a toothless man grins at her with a doll in his hand. She begins to then have flashbacks to her time spent in Nebraska as scenes of Gaga having a wedding, being tortured by a man inside a barn and being inside a water tank are shown in quick succession. The song starts playing as the camera slowly zooms towards Gaga, who is standing bent forward as she begins singing. The video continually switches to scenes where Gaga, with little make up, a simple gray-colored hair style and a white dress, plays a piano in the middle of a cornfield, while her male alter ego, Jo Calderone sits on top of the piano, smoking and drinking a beer. As Calderone pulls up his sleeves, present day Gaga is shown still walking through the desert.
During the second verse, a mad scientist, portrayed by Kinney seemingly tortures Gaga, who is wearing a yellow dress with glasses made of barbwire, as another version of the singer with teal-colored hair does a dance routine with her backup dancers in a barn. As the chorus begins for the second time, Gaga is portrayed as Yuyi the Mermaid, with gills on her face and neck, as she lies in a tub filled with dirty water.
Reception
Following its premature release on the web, the music video for "Yoü and I" was met with positive reviews. Matthew Perpetua from Rolling Stone felt that the video was an improvement from her previous videos, "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory", saying, "the best moments of the video put a distinctly Gaga-ish spin on the iconography of Americana and traditional love stories." Jillian Mapes from Billboard wrote, "torture contraptions, mermaid sex, a wedding, bondage in a barn, an ice cream truck, and to top it all off, 'Children of the Corn' and religious overtones thrown in for good measure," and thought of the video as the the strangest representation of Nebraska, the video's setting. Leah Collins from Dose named the video a "great opportunity for the singer to finally find out what it's like to make out with herself." Kyle Anderson from Entertainment Weekly made note of the video's scene in which Gaga plays a piano in a cornfield alongside her male alter ego: "She’s just Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, playing a piano in the middle of a corn field—with a little making out on the side, of course." Gil Kaufman from MTV News believed that Gaga was not joking when she talked about the video being about the "torture" of being away from the one you love. "And, man, based on the bruising final product, she wasn't kidding," Kaufman concluded.
Fashion films
On September 1, 2011, Gaga announced on her Twitter account that she had shot five "fashion films" related to the music video of the song, with Dutch photographer duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.[65] After the tweet, Gaga released the first video, titled "Haus of Ü Featuring Nymph". The two-minute black-and-white video featured Gaga with minimal make-up and performing ballet choreography, while wearing a short dress. As wind blows around her, the singer looks intently towards the camera, with the parting shot being in color film.
Live performances
After the first performance of "Yoü and I" at Elton John's White Tie and Tiara Ball, Gaga performed the song live on television program Today on July 9, 2010, before an estimated crowd of 18,000–20,000 people, the largest ever to pack Rockefeller Plaza. It was next performed on the July 31, 2010, Phoenix stop of the Monster Ball Tour, where Gaga contested Arizona's immigration law SB 1070—which mandates that state police officers "question any person they suspect to be an illegal immigrant and imprison any aliens not carrying one of four allowed forms of proper identification"—and dedicated her performance of "Yoü and I" to a boy whose family was affected by the law. Gaga performed the album version of the track on The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 5, 2011, using a piano constructed from a wire high-heel structure while sitting on a high stool. The "less organic" version for the final "Harpo Hookups" episode featured an electric guitar and modified lyrics to include Oprah's name.
The song was included in the setlist of the HBO television special, Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden, which originally aired on May 7, 2011, in the United States. Gaga's performance of "Yoü and I" from the HBO special aired on American Idol, the night after she mentored the four remaining contestants and the week following Haley Reinhart's performance of the song. A jazz version of "Yoü and I" was performed by her at Radio 1's Big Weekend in Carlisle, Cumbria on May 18, 2011.
Cover versions
Prior to the release of Born This Way, season ten American Idol contestant Haley Reinhart sang "Yoü and I" as one of two performances for the "Songs from Now and Then" episode. It was requested by Jimmy Iovine, head of Gaga's record label and Reinhart received Gaga's permission prior to the performance. Reviews of Reinhart's performance were mostly positive. Len Melisurgo from The Star-Ledger considered the selection to be risky, since the song had not been released, but accepted that Reinhart "sounded amazing" by hitting "some really high notes". Brian Mansfield from USA Today described Reinhart's performance as an "old-fashioned dance-hall groove, kind of like a mid-'70s Elton John number. It's perfectly suited to that slippery growl that such a distinctive component of Haley's style. By the end of the song, she turns it into a gospel-style rocker, and she takes it to the house." Mansfield also noted that the American Idol judges—Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler—reacted positively to it.
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