VIDEO: Lady Gaga Releases You And I

Just when it seemed like Lady Gaga could not make a bigger splash, she went and released her long-awaited, over-the-top video for "You and I" two days early, via Twitter. The video for the latest single from Born This Way was supposed to premiere Thursday on MTV, and Gaga had earlier promised she would also post it as her 1000th tweet. On Tuesday, she made her 997th, 998th and 999th tweets spell out the message "F*** THURSDAY," then linked the video in the 1000th with the message, "You must love all + every part of me, as must I, for this complex + incomprehensible force to be true."

Stills from the video had been popping up on the internet over the past few weeks, building interest in what has turned out to be a visually saturated hodgepodge of pop culture allusions (Gaga plays piano in the Field of Dreams), wince-inducing makeup (witness her bruised and battered hitchhiker's feet), provocative camera tricks (Gaga in drag makes out with Girl Gaga), mythical creature fetishization (a shirtless mad scientist makes Gaga a bathtub-imprisoned mermaid) and, what no great video can do without, compellingly original dance sequences (choreographed by longtime Gaga collaborator and video director Laurieann Gibson). And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Watch the video for "You and I" here: