Lady Gaga gives revealing response to question about rape

On "The Howard Stern Show" Tuesday, Stern asked Lady Gaga, 28, about the controversy surrounding her performance of " Swine " at SXSW in March. During the song, "vomit painter" Millie Brown spewed neon green liquid all over the pop star.

Gaga explained, "I wrote a song called 'Swine.' The song is about rape. The song is about demoralization."

When Stern came out and asked her if she had been raped, Gaga replied, "I don't want to...I don't want to...happy times! Let's talk about happy things!"

Stern pressed the pop singer further, and she admitted, "I went through some horrific things that I'm able to laugh [at] now, because I've gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy and emotional therapy to heal over the years."

At the time, Gaga said that she "wasn't even willing to admit that anything had even happened."

"I don't know what I was thinking. I didn't tell anybody ... And I didn't even tell myself for the longest time."

She explained, "It happens every day, and it's really scary, and it's sad. It didn't affect me as much right after as it did about four or five years later ... It hit me so hard. I was so traumatized by it that I was like, 'Just keep going.' 'Cause I just had to get out of there."

When Stern asked if she ever confronted the man, Gaga responded, "I saw him one time in a store and I was so paralyzed by fear ... Because it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I went, 'Wow, that was really messed up.'" The singer said that the man even tells people that she and him used to date.

She continued, "You were 20 years older than me. I was a kid. How is that a date? It took me a long time to feel strong about it."

While the singer alluded to the fact that the rape happened when she was 19, she makes it clear why she's never spoken out about it. "I don't want to be defined by it."

Listen to the entire interview clip below: