Bark + Bite

Lady Gaga launches the Born This Way Ball

After spending nearly all of 2011 promoting and releasing her sophomore album Born This Way, Lady Gaga is finally ready to hit the road in support of the multiplatinum set.

Gaga has released the official tour poster and announced the first set of dates for her 110-city tour. She will be hitting up the Asia-Pacific corner of the globe first, with more dates to around the globe to come.

Check out the official tour poster, the first few tour dates and a sketch of the stage below

Madonna vs. Lady Gaga: The first blow has been struck

Another idol of Gaga's is coming for her neck. After a few initial friendly encounters, including a chummy joint appearance on SNL, it would appear that Madonna's impression of Lady Gaga has grown sour. The catalyst for this shift in sentiment? Gaga's #1 hit single "Born This Way," which many music fans and critics pegged as an uninspired derivative of Madonna's "Express Yourself."

There was quite a bit of confusion surrounding "Born This Way" and its Madonna influences. First, Gaga took to late night TV to say that the song wasn't similar to "Express Yourself," and that Madonna had emailed her approval of the track regardless. Liz Rosenberg, Madonna's publicist, on the other hand undermined this spin from Gaga, saying she had no knowledge of Madonna ever sending any email of the sort to Gaga.

Things quieted down after that, but the silence on Madonna's part was an omen and in her 20/20 interview, the Queen of Pop struck back like Darth Vader at her upstart.

Sizing up the 2012 Grammys Album of the Year category

The hottest and most prized category in the Grammys each year is without a doubt, the Album of the Year category.

Many were rightfully upset that Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, one of the year's most widely praised albums, was shut out of the category. But the remaining contenders in the category are all worthy in their own way. For the most part.

Let's size up the albums that made it into the Album of the Year category. We'll take a look at the quality of the album and rate the likelihood of it taking the trophy home.

Lady Gaga loves her some Kanye and Jay-Z

Lady Gaga and Kanye West have enjoyed a relationship of (for the most part) mutual admiration. When Gaga hit the scene, Kanye seemed infatuated and stricken by the New York pop star's work ethic and massive pop songs. He quickly latched on to the star and proposed a joint tour. He even had his artist, Kid Cudi, sample her hit song "Poker Face" as his second single.

But things seemed dicey for the pair, when the Fame Kills tour was iced and Cudi was kicked off of Gaga's tour as a supporting act, after he got physical with fans. They seemed chummy at the VMAs this year when Gaga went as Jo Calderone, but in an interview with Steve Stoute, Gaga has confirmed that like everyone else, she's been spinning the hip hop duo's Watch the Throne album on repeat.

Recently I've been listening to the new Ye & Jay record. Kind of on repeat. I love it.

Not only do I love the music and have always felt that Jay-Z and Kanye were ahead of their time...

Alright, now. Gaga is still Team Ye. This is good. Let's put the Fame Kills tour back on, nix some of that heavy metal that's been polluting her pop music, set up some studio time for a Gaga/G.O.O.D. Music collabo and all will be right with the world.

Lady Gaga emerges triumphant in blazing "Marry the Night" video

Every god and goddess has an origin story and for pop believers, Lady Gaga would like the "Marry the Night" video to be considered hers.

The 13-minute opus is the singer's directorial debut, having punted big names like Francis Lawrence, Joseph Kahn and Jonas Akerlund to the sidelines. Even her former sister-in-creativity, Laurieann Gibson, has been given the boot. Lady Gaga is determined to make this video autobiographical; no co-writers necessary.

So how does she Gaga fare when seated in the director's chair? As with everything from the Born This Way, it's a bit of a mixed bag.

Watch Lady Gaga strut her stuff in her latest video below

Lady Gaga makes it clear that she's always been her own creative director

So when Laurieann Gibson went around calling herself a creative director for all things Gaga, did she get Ms. Germanotta's approval? Because Gaga made sure to press the matter in her interview with E! Online following the premiere of her latest video, "Marry The Night."

"I've always been the creative director and Haus of Gaga has always been the creative force behind everything that we've done. My choreographer, Richard Jackson, has been with me for years and he did choreography for "Bad Romance" so...there really aren't many tremendous changes," Gaga said.

Ouch. Let it burn. So Gaga's way of dealing with the ouster of Laurieann is to pretend that she didn't even matter in the first place? The two went from calling each other "sisters" and creative kindred spirits to Gaga saying she's BEEN running her own show and not acknowledging Gibson's departure as a tremendous change in her creative team?

What really went down? If we had to try and put the pieces together, it seems like Gaga might've been less than comfortable with Laurieann's knack for claiming credit for many of the Haus of Gaga's creative concepts. Like Beyonce, Gaga wants the public to believe that she is the center of her creative universe. Others may influence her work, but they never control it.

Watch the interview in which Gaga talks about her new video and her creative team below

The 2012 Grammy nominations concert starts Grammy fever off early

The Grammys has become so swollen and self-inflated that they're now booking marquee talent just to perform in between their televised nominations, a whole 2 months ahead of the actual big show. Do we love awards shows or what, people?

The Grammys booked Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga + Jennifer Nettles, Rihanna (via satellite, whomp, whomp), Usher and some country people for their big unveiling. Gaga was dressed like it Nov. 1, not Nov. 30 as she was in her best Day of the Dead garb for her "Marry the Night" performance. She then kept her scary panda eyes for her howling duet of "You and I" with Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland.

Rihanna phoned it in for her brief performance of "We Found Love" from her LOUD show in London. She looked and sounded exhausted, to be honest. Rest up, Rihanna. Soon.

Check out the performances from the nominations special below

Deck the Halls! Lady Gaga drops a holiday EP

It doesn't matter if you think she's naughty or nice, Lady Gaga is ready to jingle all the way this year with her very own holiday album EP. The four-song set drops just in time for little monsters, but this jazzy, retro-sounding set might be more to the parents of little monsters. There are no "shawty"s on here, like Bieber sprinkled on his holiday album.

The Queen of Reinvention, for once, sticks to the standards and doesn't try to reinvent the wheel with her take on "White Christmas" and "Orange Colored Sky." She also slapped on two live performances of "You and I" and "Edge of Glory" from her Thanksgiving special, neither of which is very Christmasy, but oh well.

Listen to a few previews of the four-song set from Lady Gaga below