We all know the bad-ass side to Lady Gaga, but in an interview with Elle magazine, the queen of pop gets in touch with her inner Stefani and opens up on the pressure of super-stardom, her struggles and preparing for her latest album Artpop. We show you here why we’re loving her honesty and why you should go out and buy Octobers issue of Elle on 24th September.
Speaking on her new album, Gaga tells of how her 19-year-old-self pointed her in the direction of her latest work, saying “I went to look back to myself being 19, with all my Warhol books and all my Yoko Ono and John Lennon CDs, my Rolling Stones CDs and my Bowie…, and I said, what would she want me to do right now? Well she’d want you to call Jeff Koons and Robert Wilson and Marina Abramović and Inez and Vinoodh…And that’s what I did!”
So if the mega-star gets what could be some of her greatest ideas from the days where she was only known as Stefani Germanotta, a wannabe singer in Manhattan, then why not take her into the limelight with her intsead of her…unusual…alter-ego? “I am—Stefani is—a perpetually tortured artist. That’s why I changed my name. I can’t be her in public. She would be a mess!”
As expected when being one of the most known celebrities on the planet, Lady Gaga has to deal with a lot of criticism, pressure and the odd A-hole wanting to make her name dirt. Yet, although she seems tormented and angered by the words of her critics, she doesn’t let the pressure get to her, “What are you talking about, pressure? I’m great under pressure. I’m a warrior. I’m Rocky, round 12.”
One of the most talked about things from some of her haters is the authenticity of her early struggles, speaking out to Elle she says, “Everyone is so cynical—that I can’t purely love my fans, or share an honest story about my past, without someone asking me if I really, truly struggled. Do you know how much dirt I ate? Do you know the men I had to crawl through, the people that disrespected my body, my mind, my heart?”
Life has it’s struggles, but I’m pretty sure no-one questions the critics’ pasts, so why tear hers apart trying to find the lies? But I’m guessing the hate just makes Lady Gaga stronger, as I’m sure we’ll see in her new album Artpop, released in November.
