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What Is Going On With Lady Gaga's "Do What U Want?"

Whether or not you think that ARTPOP was one of the highlights of 2013 or one of its disappointments, everyone has to agree that something very strange is going on with Lady Gaga's second single off the album, "Do What U Want." Not only has the Terry Richardson-directed music video been delayed, but Gaga released a new version of the single featuring that replaced R. Kelly's vocals with Christina Aguilera's. Is it all because of behind-the-scenes creative concerns or is Gaga distancing herself from R. Kelly? What's true? What's false? What is happening in the land of Gaga?!?!?

Lady Gaga originally released "Do Want U Want" as a single back on October 21, a few weeks before ARTPOP hit the shelves. Early critical response to the song was much stronger than what was written about "Applause," which led Gaga and Kellz to promote the single with some interesting sex push ups on Saturday Night Live, which helped take the track all the way to #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

However, the music video, which was directed by controversial photographer Terry Richardson, has been delayed by at least a month. Lady Gaga took to the Internet last night to apologize to her beloved fans for the delay and explained that the video wasn't ready yet due to some behind-the-scenes shenanigans.

However, there are some buzzing that the real reason behind the music video's delay is because Gaga is trying to distance herself from the recent R. Kelly backlash. In case you missed it, Kelly got shredded in the media over past allegations that he repeatedly had sex with minors, which was curiously followed up by Gaga performing "Do What U Want" on the season finale of The Voice alongside Christina Aguilera. Most thought this was just going to be a one-off performance, but then Gaga went ahead and officially dropped a brand new version of "Do What U Want" featuring Aguilera's powerful vocals and distinctly more feminist lyrics.

It would seem likely that the delay and the new version of the single are Gaga's attempt to perform damage control, but her personal message to her fans suggests that there's been something a bit more happening behind-the-scenes. Namely, that Mother Monster has been pressured by her handlers to make decisions that she thinks have handicapped ARTPOP.

So what's really going on? We probably won't know until the music video is released. Maybe it will be the original Richardson/R. Kelly collaboration--or maybe Gaga is going to reshoot a whole new video with XTina. Even then, we can't know for sure what's happening behind-the-scenes. All we have is the music.

Which leads us to wonder which version is musically better? Do you prefer the original version with R. Kelly or the new version with Christina Aguilera?

[Photo Credit: NBC]