Lady Gaga Plays Impressive Acoustic Mayhem Songs, Talks Nine Inch Nails On Howard Stern

Last week, 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, something that more superstars should do in my opinion. As part of her promo run, Gaga was on Howard Stern's satellite radio show today, and she sang acoustic renditions of songs that aren't really meant to be heard in acoustic-rendition form.

Lady Gaga is no stranger to the acoustic-performance game, but Mayhem represents her return to the realm of giddy, explosive, all-out dance-pop. Her tracks are big and loud and artificial, and they were built for maximum dancefloor catharsis. Still, Gaga is a great songwriter and a beast of a singer, and she goes all-out when it's time to radically rework her own recent tracks. On Stern, Gaga sang a solo-piano version of the knowingly ridiculous single "Abracadabra" and a voice-and-guitar take on the kiss-my-ass album track "Perfect Celebrity," and she really sang the fuck out of both of them. They both work much better in this setting than I would've expected. Here's her version of "Abracadabra":

And here's "Perfect Celebrity":

Gaga also talked to Stern about Nine Inch Nails, who were an influence on Mayhem and whose t-shirt she coincidentally wears in a Mastercard spot also out today: