Lady Gaga Is Wiping "Do What U Want" From Existence In Response to R. Kelly Controversy

Trigger Warning: This article discusses sexual assault.

Lady Gaga has promised to remove "Do What U Want", her 2013 collaboration with R. Kelly, from iTunes and streaming services.

She made the announcement shortly after the airing of Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, which restated the allegations that Kelly has sexually abused underage girls.

"I stand behind these women 1000%, believe them, know they are suffering and in pain, and feel strongly that their voices should be heard and taken seriously," she wrote on Twitter. 

When "Do What U Want" was released in 2013, it arrived under a cloud of controversy (precisely because these accusations against Kelly had been around for many years already). A music video (directed by Terry Richardson, who would also be accused of alleged sexual harassment in the midst of the #MeToo movement) was subsequently scrapped without seeing the light of day. Gaga then re-released the song with Christina Aguilera subbed in for Kelly. However, the original version remained on her album ARTPOP.

Gaga hasn't played the song live in five years (after performing it with Kelly on SNL and the AMAs). Now comes her announcement that she's seeking to have the song scrubbed entirely, commenting that the tune was a "twisted" response to her own experience of sexual assault.

"As a victim of sexual assault myself, I made both the song and video at a dark time in my life, my intention was to create something extremely defiant and provocative because I was angry and still hadn't processed the trauma that had occurred in my own life," she said.

"I'm sorry, both for my poor judgment when I was young, and for not speaking out sooner."

As of this writing, "Do What U Want" feat. R. Kelly has been removed from iTunes, and ARTPOP is now listed as a partial album. It doesn't appear that you can purchase the album as a whole; rather, only song-by-song. It's unknown if iTunes went to the additional effort of removing it from the personal libraries of those who purchased it in 2013 or prior to this week.

(In this particular instance, deletion is probably the right move, as R. Kelly is listed as a co-writer and benefits from sales and streams. However, it reiterates the benefit of buying physical media: if you own the CD, artists can't take songs away from you because they change their mind half a decade later.)

The good news is that the (superior and not quite as problematic) Christina Aguilera version can still be purchased, and it still slaps. But as Gaga now explains, "Do What U Want" is a malformed response to her own sexual assault. Can it still be enjoyed, perhaps now as an empowerment anthem? Shouldn't her original, imperfect artistic interpretation of a trauma be considered valid? Or, should we let her, as a survivor, move on from it and leave it in the past?

Those answers don't arrive easily. As she writes, "Til it happens to you, you don't know how it feels."

In 2015, Gaga was nominated for an Academy Award for the song "'Til It Happens to You", from the documentary The Hunting Ground, which centers on campus rape in the United States. As her message above suggests, she may consider the message of this song a more fitting response to her experience.

Have you experienced sexual assault or sexual violence? Seeking to support someone who has? Call 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732.

Header Image: ABC