Lady Gaga and Madonna's 5-Year "Feud" Is More Complex Than You Think

Nearly a year after "Born This Way" came out into the world, Madonna finally broke her silence on the whole thing. And boy, did she have some choice words for Lady Gaga. In a 20/20 interview in January 2012, she said, "I certainly think she references me a lot in her work. And sometimes I think it's amusing and flattering and well done," she said. "When I heard ["Born This Way"] on the radio . . . I said, 'That sounds very familiar.'" On a final note, she remarked, "It feels reductive." If you hadn't guessed, that's not a good thing to be called at all.

Around the same time, Madonna expressed the same sentiment to Newsweek in a slightly different flavor. "I thought, this is a wonderful way to redo my song. I mean, I recognized the chord changes. I thought it was . . . interesting." Huh.