Gaga saw the opportunity, she's a mediocre performer, and thus forced a "shock" factor to try and create something memorable. There is NOTHING "iconic" about this performance at all.
Slave was on the cover of newspapers the next day, just as Oops and Madonna performance were.
Britney's performance actually bored me, surely any old dancer could do that.
GaGa was epic though, the singing and the spectacle all transpired to be the best VMA performance of all time, in the future that performance will be remembred more then S4U.
I wasn't too fond of the song at the time but the performance was brilliant. Nothing I could've expected! The shocking bleeding and her singing voice, amazing stuff. Could never forget a true performance.