IT’S hard to believe, but Lady Gaga has shocked the world again.

Known for pushing boundaries with her barely-there outfits and provocative performances, the US pop singer has stirred more controversy with her latest big-budget video.

The nine-minute clip for her song Telephone, also starring Beyonce Knowles, has been labelled unsuitable for younger fans because of its explicit content.

It features graphic violence, a lesbian kiss, mass murder, nudity and expletives.

Within 12 hours of the video being released on the internet it had half a million hits and nearly as many blogs dissecting its possible meanings

Lady Gaga, who is touring Australia from Wednesday, said the video had been inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s films.

“There’s certainly always a hidden message in my music videos,” she said. “I’m always trying to convolute everyone’s idea of what a pop-music video should be.”

Early in the clip, there’s a scene set in a prison yard featuring a lesbian snog between a butch lesbian dressed in leather and Lady Gaga, who is wearing a pair of sunglasses constructed from burning cigarettes.

She also almost gets naked in the video, with only some precise pixelation and carefully placed gaffer tape to protect her modesty.

Despite the explicit nature of the video many are touting it as the successor to Michael Jackson’s epic video to Thriller, which attracted record audiences when it debuted on MTV.

Lady Gaga will perform sold-out shows at the Sydney Entertainment Centre on Wednesday