Message received? Adam Levine took to Twitter on Friday, Sept. 20 to criticize an unnamed fellow musician — but Lady Gaga seems to think he was criticizing her.
"Ugh . . . recycling old art for a younger generation doesn't make you an artist," Maroon 5 frontman Levine, 34, complained in the tweet. "It makes you an art teacher."
"I unabashedly love writing and performing pop music for both myself AND everyone around me. That's It," he added. "It doesn't need any extra sauce."
The next day, Gaga, 27, seemed to tweet a response to Levine's rant.
"Uh oh guys the art police is here," the "Applause" singer wrote.
In the past, Gaga has been accused of releasing songs similar to Madonna's hits — by the 55-year-old pop icon herself. In a January 2012 interview with Newsweek, Madonna commented on the similarities between her 1989 song "Express Yourself" and Gaga's 2011 single "Born This Way." She told the magazine, "I thought, this is a wonderful way to redo my song. I mean, I recognized the chord changes. I thought it was . . . interesting."
In September 2012, Madonna dedicated her song "Masterpiece" to Gaga during a concert in Atlantic City. "You wanna know something? I love her," she told the audience. "I love her. I do love her. Imitation is the highest form of flattery." The Grammy winner, like Madonna and other stars before her, has also reinterpreted images and motifs from across art history in her album art and in her videos.
Gaga released her first single, "Applause," from her upcoming third studio album, ARTPOP, last month. "'Applause' is a very meaningful song to me, because it addresses what many think of 'celebrities' today, that we 'do it' for the attention," she tweeted Sept. 18. "But some of us are 'artists' in this group called 'celebrity,' & what we create doesn't live on unless theres an audience to remember it. So I may need your attention at first, so I can sing you my song. But its the 'Applause' after that let me know if I've entertained you."
"Entertainment makes people happy, I live for the 'Applause,' to know I've spread that. I live to hear you cheer, to just be a part of that," she added. "I believe in show business. The 'Applause' is what breeds that thing that I love. When I know i've made you happy. When I know it was good."
Tell Us: Do you think Levine's Twitter rant was directed at Gaga?