THE WORD: Lady Gaga denies she and Taylor Swift are getting down

During a recent visit to Howard Stern’s radio show, Lady Gaga set the record straight about her and another pop music titan. Stern pressed Gaga with, “Someone called in and said that you are now a lover of Taylor Swift’s, that the two of you are making love to one another.” That guy, such a way with words. Anyway, Gaga insists there’s nothing of the sort going on — though she’d be totally down if Swift wanted to give it a whirl. “I don’t think she would be into that,” Gaga replied, adding later, “If she’s into that, she can call me.”

And in a totally Lady Gaga move, the “Bad Romance” singer revealed that she likes Swift because Swift listens to her music, a piece of info Gaga picked up from a stylist they share. According to Gaga, Swift “was doing a shoot and he was in there styling her … and he goes, ‘Taylor Swift is in here blasting Artpop so loud, and she is dancing and she is posing,’ and I said to myself, ‘I like this girl.'”

Who’s the undisputed king of online music? Ed Sheeran is. The cuddly British ginger was the most-streamed artist in 2014, according to Spotify, with a staggering 860 million individual streams of his songs, and his album, “X,” was the most-streamed album globally with 430 million listens. I guess that month I spent streaming the “Flash Gordon” soundtrack on repeat didn’t make as much of an impact as I’d hoped. Of course, there’s no mention of Spotify-ditching Taylor Swift in the report, so maybe Sheeran’s win should come with an asterisk. Now, for some truly terrifying numbers: Spotify’s more than 50 million registered users streamed more than 7 billion hours of music this year — adding up to about 800,000 years of music and maybe a few annoying audiobook ads.

During an interview on the “Today” show to promote her role in the new film, “Top Five,” Rosario Dawson had to firmly but politely put Matt Lauer in his place when he tried to steer the conversation toward Dawson’s recently adoption a 12-year-old daughter. “I very rarely talk about tabloid speculation and this is not an exception,” she scolds Lauer. “My family is incredibly private — most of us, anyway.” Consider yourself told, Matt.

There’s a new target for the jealous ire of all the Michael Fassbender fans out there, and her name is Alicia Vikander. Fassbender and the Swedish actress are reportedly dating after playing husband and wife in the upcoming film “The Life Between Oceans.” They’ve most recently been seen out surfing together in Australia, which I guess constitutes a date. While reps for Fassbender and Vikander declined to comment, there’s always an anonymous source willing to chime in: “Michael and Alicia are casually dating, spending a lot of time together,” a source tells E! News.

Scarlett Johansson isn’t the only actress who can keep her nuptials under wraps. Former “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” star Saffron Burrows reveals in an interview with Guardian that she and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” writer Alison Balian got hitched, oh, about 16 months ago. Surprise! “I chose to speak to you because I don’t want to lie by omission and I want to be very straightforward about my life,” Burrows tells the newspaper. “I don’t want to hesitate and feel hindered by something I haven’t said.” Well, there you go.

During a visit to “The Tonight Show,” Reese Witherspoon gets a chance to update some classic Christmas carols with nonsense lyrics. “Jingle Bells,” for instance, becomes “Small Old Man.” Witherspoon isn’t totally convinced at first, but she eventually comes around — and really sells the sure-to-be-a-classic “Squeeze the Cheese and Poke the Pony.”