Did Video (Music Awards) Kill the Lady Gaga-Kanye West Tour?

Amid reports that Lady Gaga wanted out, Live Nation pulls the plug on the duo's Fame Kills tour

Fame Kills is already dead.

The highly anticipated North American tour featuring pantsless wonder Lady Gaga and rapper turned VMAs pariah Kanye West has been canceled, promoter Live Nation confirmed Thursday.

Tickets will be refunded, and, we're guessing, very few questions will be answered.

The pulled plug comes amid reports that Lady Gaga wanted out, though reps for both artists haven't given a reason for the switcheroo—Gaga's choreographer came closest by tweeting that "creative differences" were to blame—though fallout from West's ill-advised stunt during Taylor Swift's moment in the spotlight at the MTV Video Music Awards has to be at the front of everyone's mind.

The "Poker Face" singer showed some sympathy for West just a couple of days ago, calling him a "good guy" who still feels "so f--king bad" about what he did.

"I think it's unfair to judge somebody on one mistake they've made," she told Las Vegas radio station KLUC-FM on Tuesday. "I felt like that moment kind of like really portrayed him in a way that he really isn't. It was just a random moment. I think that everyone can get so caught up in gossip and stuff."

Madonna, for one, would have given West a firm scolding if she had run into him that night.

"Yeah, he's a bit impulsive," the Material Girl told Ryan Seacrest this morning during his KIIS-FM morning show. "I would've given him a good talking-to. He needs to put a lid on it. I do think he's very talented, but he gets confused sometimes."

Case in point:

West and Lady Gaga's tour plans weren't revealed until after a remorseful West told Jay Leno that he would be taking some time off to "analyze how [he is] going to make it through the rest of this life" postoutburst.

By the following day, the three-month Fame Kills tour featuring Kanye West and Lady Gaga was planning to kick off Nov. 10 in Phoenix.

"We did not do this tour for each other," Lady Gaga said on the radio this week. "We did this tour for everybody else. We wanted to do something that no one has ever seen."

Well, sure enough, no one will ever see it.

(Originally published Oct. 1, 2009, at 4:31 p.m. PT)