How Gaga Felt About Miley at the VMAs

Lady Gaga & Miley Cyrus at the 2013 VMAs [Photos:Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for MTV; Kevin Mazur/WireImage for MTV …

When Lady Gaga took the stage at last month’s MTV Video Music Awards, most viewers expected her to deliver the night’s most shocking performance. Though she flashed her derriere, Miley Cyrus managed to generate more media buzz with her crude and vulgar onstage antics.

Gaga is now speaking out, saying that she doesn’t care if she didn’t have the buzziest moment of the night.

“For me, my performance was not about taking clothes off, if that makes sense,” she says in a new interview with The Guardian. “I wanted it to be strong and beautiful and powerful and full of confidence. It doesn't bother me, though, that there was a lot of attention paid to any other performances, it's not a competition. I do what I do and they do what they do.” She then adds, “Isn't it nice that it all happened and that it's all been recorded and we can watch it all – it's not like the good things stay and everything else gets erased."

What has Gaga peeved these days? Haters who say her career is over because her latest single, “Applause,” hasn’t taken off yet on the Billboard charts like some of her past hits.

"It's literally not even been two weeks since my first single came out and it's all, 'She's over', or because I'm not No. 1 yet, 'She's finished'," the singer laments. "People focus less on the music and focus more on how the music's doing; how it's faring from a numbers perspective, from a financial perspective. If you think I give a damn about money then you don't know me as an artist at all."

When asked if she feels persecuted, she tells the paper, “Yes! I certainly feel that at this time it's almost as if people are surprised they haven't already destroyed me."

"It gives them a sense of pleasure when they believe that they've destroyed me or taken me down,” she continues. “It's almost entertainment for people to poke fun at Lady Gaga, but at the very same time they have no idea the album I've made. They have no idea what I put into this, they have no idea the work that I've put behind my performances and what I do. In fact, people have no idea what it really took for me to get here. So it doesn't bother me, it's just an interesting observation of where we are as a society."