Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’

With Lady Gaga’s album now officially released, here’s an advance look at our take from the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on newsstands this Friday.

The gospel of Gaga, as told in Born This Way, goes something like this: Humanity will be damned by its own self-doubt until Gaga the Savior delivers us with the might of her music. On the album’s first two singles, the messianic “Born This Way” and “Judas,” our muffin-bluffin’ Lady of yore is reborn as an earnest dance-party evangelist, retaining the beats but trading in her disco stick for a splinter of the Cross. “In the religion of the insecure, I must be myself/Respect my youth,” the 25-year-old sermonizes on the fanatically inspirational title track.

Luckily for us heathens, most of the 14 songs on Born This Way—Gaga’s rewarding but wildly uneven latest—hold more earthly pleasures, too. The only deity invoked on rollicking cuts like “Hair” and “The Edge of Glory” is Bruce Springsteen, whose E Street sax player, Clarence Clemons, guests on both tracks. And the ’80s worship doesn’t stop there: Nearly every song is tinged with Reagan-era excess, from the evocative Depeche Mode-ian frost of “Heavy Metal Lover” to the misplaced Def Leppard stomp-claps on barroom ballad “Yoü and I.”

Lady Gaga photos: 29 Outrageous Outfits

If Gaga doesn’t find a stand-alone hit here on the order of “Bad Romance,” the album’s sprawl still shows off the breadth of her talent. She brings expert songcraft to each cut—tectonic chord changes, soaring choruses, and that sawtooth-edged voice—even when her goth-lite lyrics don’t deserve the effort. For all its fire and brimstone, Born This Way doesn’t herald pop’s second coming. But it’s not a bad way to spend the wait. B+

Courtney Love talks sex, drugs, and allegedly getting blamed for ‘the downfall of Def Leppard’ in (possibly) craziest interview to date

Courtney Love has always been a quote machine.

But I’m hard-pressed to think of an interview of hers quite as entertainingly bonkers as the two-part epic that addiction website The Fix has just published, in which the singer-actress discusses her numerous drug problems, her sex life, and a boatload of celebrity acquaintances. You’ll find a clutch of choice quotes below, but the interview is well worth checking out in full. It’s not every day someone name checks Jimmy Iovine, Tesla (the rock band, not the pioneering electrical engineer), and Carl Jung in almost the same breath.

“You couldn’t pay me a billion dollars to take marijuana. I don’t really like coke anymore. I’m scared of ecstasy. The one drug I’d like to try one day is Ayahuasca, which should be mandatory for everybody. It’s apparently this crazy tea that gives you these intense hallucinations. Everyone who takes it sees a wise old black man who takes you on a wild journey. I’m not going to name names, but everyone who takes it sees the same black guy. I’m not kidding you. Everyone!”

“Kicking heroin really sucked. Kicking coke was much easier. The truth is, cocaine was not a good look for me. If you Google me, there’s a period of time when you can clearly tell that I’m just flying on blow, it’s quite apparent.”

“After I stopped doing drugs I started to f— like a bunny! Before that I suffered from years of celibacy. I was on this whole Morrissey kick, no masturbation, no romance, no nothing! The store was completely closed.”

“A few months ago, at a party in Hollywood, Scarlett Johansson did a pretty spot-on imitation of me. She wrapped a bandage around her boobs and tumbled down a flight of stairs with a bottle of Jack Daniels in her hands. But the truth is I’ve never had a drop of Jack Daniels.

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“Jimmy Iovine even framed my amends letter to him in the lobby of Interscope Records. My letter said, ‘Dear Jimmy, I was on a whole lot of drugs for a few years and I sued you. I feel like a retard, I’m sorry, please accept my apology.’ He was cool with it. I then tried to make similar amends to my old manager, Peter Mensch, which didn’t turn out quite as well. Peter immediately called me up and screamed at me for two hours. He blamed me for the downfall of Def Leppard, the downfall of Tesla and for not winning an Oscar. It was a valuable lesson. I realized you probably shouldn’t write an amends letter that ends with you asking someone to listen to your demo.”