Everything about Lady Gaga shouts: "Look at me if you dare." Then there's her white hair, radioactive tan and pale-pink frosted lipstick. She proclaims on MySpace that she's into "drag queen divas and hot groupie chicks". She sings on Boys Boys Boys, "I'm not loose, I like to party/Let's get lost in your Ferrari."

On Lovegame, meanwhile, she is imploring some torrid young lover: "Let's have some fun, this beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."

Disco stick notwithstanding, the exhibitionist self-proclaimed retrosexual New Yorker (just like that exhibitionist self-proclaimed retrosexual New Yorker before her, Lou Reed) wears her heart on her sleeve. The look she rocks includes black rubber dress adorned with gold origami pyramids, crystal-encrusted sunglasses and Vertigo-inducing high heels, and equally long false eyelashes to match. There is no one quite like her on the planet.

The Italian-American attended for a time the same private school, Convent of the Sacred Heart , in Manhattan as Paris and Nicky Hilton. Asked if the Hilton sisters had any affect on her, she replied: "They're very pretty, and very clean. Very, very clean. You know, I never saw Paris, she was older than me, and it's funny that the press always write that I went to school with the Hilton sisters, but I actually only went with Nicky. Paris, I believe, left and went to Dwight. But, you know, it's impressive to be that perfect all the time, these girls.

"I was always a weird girl in school, who did theatre and came to school with lots of red lipstick on or my hair perfectly curled, or whatever I was doing to get attention. It's funny as it's almost like they were there to make me aware, because so much of what I do now is that I try to twist my world into the commercial community. So I guess they've been quite an influence on me. Not them in particular, but the idea of the self-proclaimed artist."

The self-proclaimed artist is a drop-dead delightful disco diva -- a 21st century pop star who is currently setting popular culture alight. She reached No 1 in 20 countries with her single Poker Face. Rolling Stone put her proudly on the cover in an eye-poppingly hermaphrodite-ish pink rigout (she appeared on stage in the UK earlier this year in a clear plastic bubble dress). "I don't feel like I look like the other perfect little pop singers," she told the magazine's Brian Hiatt. "I think I'm changing what people think is sexy."

When she took the stage three weeks ago to perform at Gavin Friday's Carnegie Hall (RED) Nights concert, she looked like a vamped-up character from David Lynch's Inland Empire. At New York's Fashion Week, the city's Observer newspaper was proclaiming 'Fashion Designers Are Gaga For Lady Gaga'. Her look, such that it is a look, caused as much admiration as confusion among the fashion power brokers: "Designers either talked about how much they loved her style and reviewers speculated about the singer's "pantlessness" affecting designers' collections this season."

Pop writer Kitty Empire, reviewing Lady Gaga's debut album The Fame in January, wrote that "pop has been waiting for a copper-bottomed female auteur for a long time. There are none in the highest echelons of contemporary pop -- just singers of varying degrees of fabulousness for whom the onerous business of making music is sub-contracted out."

"Beyoncé, Britney, Christina . . . the alphabet goes on. Even Madonna depends on collaborators to assist with her revamps. Twenty-two-year-old Lady Gaga is acutely aware of the vacancy." Time will tell whether she fills it.

Her gender has caused controversy as much as her music. An internet rumour has grown exponentially that lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite (more the Aphrodite of New York Disco, in my view) since she was seen at a concert with what appeared to be a penis under her dress. "My beautiful vagina is very offended. I'm not offended," she replied, " my vagina is offended." She added: "I'm not embarrassed. I sold four million records in six months. I'm not embarrassed about anything. I think this is society's reaction to a strong woman."

"The idea that we equate strength with men and a penis is a symbol of male strength, you know, it is what it is. But like I said, I am not offended at all, but my vagina might be a little bit upset."

It is hard to predict what Lady Gaga will do or say next. And that is a good thing. Earlier this year, the anti-star took a pretty purple teacup with flowers on it on to Jonathan Ross's TV chat show on the BBC. She was later photographed by London's best paparazzi still carrying it.

The next night Lady Gaga took the cup with her to the Ivy restaurant, where she accidentally left it behind. When she got to her hotel and realised she was without her favourite little teacup, pop's favourite little teacup immediately dispatched a taxi back to the restaurant to retrieve it.

She is the arthouse Madonna subverting the construct of the modern pop star. "My ideas about fame and art are not brand new," she says.

"We could watch Paris Is Burning [Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary about New York drag artists], we could read The Warhol Diaries, we could go to a party in New York in 1973 and these same things would be being talked about. I guess you could say that I'm a bit of a Warholian copycat.

"Some people say everything [in music and fashion] has been done before, and to an extent they are right. I think the trick is to honour your vision and reference and put together things that have never been put together before.

"I like to be unpredictable, and I think it's very unpredictable to promote pop music as a highbrow medium."

Lady Gaga live at the 02, Dublin. February 20, 2010 and at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast, February 22. Tickets on sale now. For the Dublin show, tickets are €44.20 Seated & €36.10 GA, on sale now from all Ticketmaster outlets Nationwide. Booking Line 0818 719300 and online at http://www.ticketmaster.ie/ For Belfast show, tickets £30.00 Seated & GA on sale now from Odyssey Arena Box Office (028) 9073 9074 and all Ticketmaster outlets Nationwide. Booking Line 0844 277 4455 or book online at http://www.ticketmaster.ie/