Lady Gaga performed at the first-ever YouTube Awards tonight (Nov. 3) and she did so memorably. She wept before launching into her new piano ballad 'Dope' and even cried during the heartfelt performance of the weighty 'ARTPOP' track.

Mama Monster was gangsta chic, wearing an oversized flannel with no pants, no shoes and a baseball cap. The ensemble was worn with no makeup and she let the tears stain her face. Gaga introduced the song by claiming, "This is for my fans… this is for my lover." With her, aren't they one and the same?

She almost couldn't start the song and she struggled to gather her emotions and to compose herself so she could perform the song. Her look was androgynous, but her there was no mistaking her voice and her passion as she sang the best "released song" from 'ARTPOP' so far, in our opinion.

Gaga cried during the performance and while the instinct would be to call her overly dramatic or histrionic or pushing it with crocodile tears, she wasn't.

Gaga is a performer through and through and we felt every note of this emotional and musical bloodletting, especially when she sang, "Three spirits / And 12 lonely steps / Up the stairway to gold."

Wow. Just wow. Gaga sliced open her heart and let the contents spill out onto her piano with this song.

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