Lady Gaga released her new album Mayhem. Nobody asked my opinion, but I think it kicks ass. Gaga has been out promoting the album hard — hard enough that she took the time to do a Stereogum interview,

But, at the core of Gaga’s songs are rock-solid songwriting, which she demonstrated on The Howard Stern Show today (March 11), with acoustic performances of Mayhem highlights “Abracadabra” and “Perfect Celebrity” ( the performances can be heard here ). Gaga turned the latter into a piano ballad and gave the latter a guitar-based arrangement.

Lady Gaga has joked she "blacks out" whenever she is in the presence of Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday, the popstar explained that she was inspired by the rock band's 1994 album The Downward Spiral and single Closer when recording the song Disease for her new record,