Mechanical Animal: Lady Gaga's Insane Album Cover Is the Best Part of 'Born This Way'

Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" is very closely associated with the motorcycle road movie Easy Rider. That's the primary clue we're working with today in our investigation into why Lady Gaga decided to make her Born This Way album cover a strange mix of a calendar hanging in a mechanic's office crossed with the snarling jaguar on the cover of Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure. (Unless she's paying homage to Judas Priest, repping for the small segment of the population that emerged from the birth canal with handlebars, or making a really bold statement about other pop stars being mechanical.)

Evidently some of Gaga's fans don't care for the cover, but it's our favorite part of Born This Way yet by a long shot. Little Monsters are so upset, there's actually a theory circulating that Gaga is betraying her fans three times (and we thought Kanye West had a Jesus Complex!), and that the cover she tweeted is a fake.