Lady Gaga VMA 2011: Jo Calderone 'Degraded' Awards Show

The people have spoken, and most are in agreement: Lady Gaga's performance as Jo Calderone did not impress.

It seems that Gaga herself wasn't sold on her own peformance, if repeated references to Lady Gaga not being here and reminders that she was, in fact, a man are any indication. The fact that she was consistently introduced as Lady Gaga and not Jo Calderone probably didn't help matters.

Gaga's shtick wore out its welcome in the first two minutes. In her effort to be original and run away from the cube hat wearing copycats, like Katy Perry, I think she might have pushed the audience too far, Los Angeles-based television and music producer Edward Paige told Fox News. People originally embraced Gaga because in all her quirkiness was authentic in that she didn't fit in. But stepping outside the more comfortable vixen role could hurt her. Does MTV or its throngs of little girls' fans want a diva that looks like Ralph Macchio doing a Lenny Bruce routine? I doubt it.

Jed Smith, the head of music composition company Beta Fish, was equally underwhelmed.

Gaga's persistence as 'Joe Calderone' degraded an otherwise enjoyable VMAs, and stood in stark contrast to tasteful and classy presentations by the likes of Adele, Smith told Fox News. Gaga's performance art philosophy may excuse this, but it remains a poor execution of what, at this point, falls squarely into predictably 'random' pattern of behavior.

Though Gaga consistently tops lists of performers with the most Twitter followers, even Gaga devotees were not fans of Jo Calderone:

@ITweetYouuLOL: Lady Gaga... As A Man? -________-.. She must be running out of ideas

@87daysbefore: lady gaga needs to stop giving me reasons to hate her

@danielwcarlson: If you saw a homeless person acting like Lady Gaga, you would call for cops or an ambulance IMMEDIATELY.

@ScottLowe: Lady Gaga is one painfully contrived publicity stunt away from being completely irrelevant

@daveihl: I really like Lady Gaga's message to never be yourself

Some have accused Gaga/Jo Calderone of lifting Annie Lenox's gender-bending performance at the 1984 Grammy Awards. Back then, the Eurythmics frontwoman wore an outfit and hairstyle eerily similar to Calderone's during a live peformance of Sweet Dreams -- though Lenox did have more pronounced sideburns.

Linking to a YouTube video of Gaga's VMA performance, Kelly Osbourne tweeted: I love lady gaga but I wish she would start giving credit where credit is due!