Songfacts®:

• This track from Lady Gaga's 2013 ARTPOP album finds her singing about the goddess of love. Italian artist Botticelli's famous painting The Birth of Venus, is featured, in pieces, behind the Mother Monster on the album cover.
• Venus was the Roman goddess of beauty and sensual love. She was regarded by the Romans as the foundress of their people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was venerated in Roman religion under numerous cult titles.
  
  The goddess was one of the most popular subjects of paintings during the Renaissance period in Europe. As the embodiment of love and sexuality amongst the Roman gods, a degree of erotic beauty in her presentation was justified, which appealed to many artists and their patrons.
  
  Other pop songs titled after the Roman goddess include Frankie Avalon's 1959 chart-topper, "Venus" about someone praying to the goddess to send him a woman who is basically her human equivalent. Also named after the Roman deity was Shocking Blue's 1969 hit tune about a "goddness (sic) on the mountain top," which was later covered with success by Bananarama.
• The song focuses on the Roman goddess of love as well as Gaga's sudden urge to dance whenever she hears Venus' name. The extraterrestrial love song also features a cosmic shout out to all the planets in our solar system, including a cheeky rhyme when the singer arrives at Uranus.
• "Venus" was the first song on one of Lady Gaga's albums that she produced by herself.
• Gaga performed the song for the first time at the G-A-Y club in central London on October 26, 2013.
• This contains a sample of "Rocket Number 9," by the French synth-rockers Zombie Zombie. The song was originally recorded by the legendary jazz musician and cosmic philosopher, Sun Ra on his 1972 album Space Is the Place. "Venus" also borrows the chanting chorus from Sun Ra's tune wholesale.
• The music video was directed by filmmaker Ruth Hogben, who previously collaborated with Gaga on interludes for The Monster Ball Tour and photographed her for the October 2013 issue of Elle magazine.