Lady Gaga ended a five-year-long romance with actor Taylor Kinney earlier this year but says she’s still very close to him. However, she is more than happy to consider him a best friend, although the singer describes their former relationship as a “perfect illusion” in her newest album, Joanne.

She told E! News about the Chicago Fire star: “I would just say that my music on my album as well as all my albums is inspired by my personal life and this one more than others. I have said it before – I love Taylor so much and he’s my best friend.”

And the 30-year-old artist says that her song Perfect Illusion clearly reflects the way she felt during their long-term relationship. She also believes the message relates to just about everyone who has ever dealt with the pain of a relationship.

She added: “This video is a performance of a song that I wrote of that moment about how I feel, but how I’m sure he’s felt sometimes, how you have felt sometimes, how other people feel in relationships, how I see my friends struggle and become just full of rage and anger as they try to figure out how to date during a time when everybody’s sort of creating these perfect illusions of themselves on the Internet and nobody really knows what’s real and what isn’t. It’s about all of that.”

The Poker Face artist claims she didn’t need to rehearse for the video, as her performance came entirely from within.

“Nothing was choreographed. I didn’t rehearse any of those things that you see in the video. Everything in that was just completely in the moment – pure, raw performance of how I feel.

The intention was there to be no perfect illusions in the video about perfect illusions.”