MTV Video Music Awards: Watch Lady Gaga perform ‘Applause’

Lady Gaga opened the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night with a bang -- and more wigs than an episode of “Real Housewives.”

Performing “Applause,” the lead single from her upcoming “Artpop” album, the pop superstar took the stage of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in a typically wacky outfit that suggested the Flying Nun crossed with SpongeBob SquarePants.

Then she changed costumes. And changed again. And again, each time donning a different hairstyle, until she finished the song wearing a seashell thong bikini and what appeared to be long blond extensions.

PHOTOS: MTV Video Music Awards | Show Highlights

It was, of course, the kind of spectacle we’ve come to expect from Lady Gaga, who famously emerged from an egg to sing “Born This Way” on the VMAs in 2011. But the performance also had an appealingly low-rent quality to it that may (or may not!) indicate what’s in store on “Artpop.”

Watch “Applause” below.

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Twitter: @mikaelwood