Mermaidgate: Lady Gaga Responds To Bette Midler’s Tweets

Lady Gaga’s feud with Bette Midler is over just as it was getting started. (Too bad – we welcomed the break from the incessant Madonna/Gaga debate.) Apparently, the “Edge Of Glory” singer riding around in a wheelchair as a mermaid was neither a rip-off or an homage to the singer-comedian — it was just a coincidence. “I had no idea that she did that and I’m a huge Bette Midler fan,” Gaga told Access Hollywood‘s Billy Bush. (Er, we guess she can’t be that big of a Midler fan if she didn’t know one of her most well-known numbers.) More of Gaga’s response below.

Gaga explained that the performance wasn’t a tribute to Midler, as she had no knowledge of her mermaid bit. “Maybe we’re just cut from the same cloth,” she said. “I couldn’t hop around in that tail so I just stuck myself in a wheelchair.”

“Obviously I feel connected to women in theater and women from the past,” she continues. “All I’ll say is that I… admire her and find her to be one of the most brilliant and incredible performers, so that’s all I’ll say.”

And that’s that. Now that everyone’s made up, can someone please mash-up “Wind Beneath My Wings” with “Poker Face”?