In NME explosive new interview, she opens up about her music, her work ethic, and her relationship with the media. Then she starts to cry.. Meanwhile, here’s fifty things you didn’t know about her.
Gaga taught herself how to play piano by ear when she was four years old. By 13 she had written her first song, by 14 she had begun performing at open mic nights.
Early Lady Gaga gigs would see her perform as a duo with performance artist Lady Stardust. They would be billed as ‘Lady Gaga And The Starlight Revenue’.
Gaga denied that the recent protrusions from her body weren’t real. “Well, first of all they’re not prosthetics. They’re my bones,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “They’ve always been inside of me.”
The meat dress she wore to the VMA’s was made up of cheap meats. Peter Cacioppo, a butcher at Ottomanelli Brothers on New York’s Upper East Side, analysed the outfit and said: “There are no expensive cuts here, no real steaks. The best you’ve got is the flank steak on top of her head.”
As a child she said that she was inspired by the My Little Pony toys. “I was obsessed with the idea of a creature that was born with something magical that made them the misfit in the world of the stallion,” she said.
She was told by her school drama teachers that she was ‘too ethnic’ for success. She told the crowd at a recent Madison Square Gardens gig, that teachers would tell her: “You’ll never be the heroine, the blonde, the star. Your hair’s too dark, you look too ethnic.”
She got the stage name ‘Lady Gaga’ from one of her collaborators, producer Rob Fusari. It was a reference to Queen’s hit ‘Radio Ga Ga’, but it was accidental. “I typed ‘Radio Ga Ga’ in a text,” he said, “and it did autocorrect, so somehow ‘Radio’ got changed to ‘Lady’. She texted me back (and said): ’That’s it.’”
The diner used in the video for ‘Telephone’ is the same diner that appears in US cop show NCIS.
Gaga admitted that losing her virginity was ‘terrible’. She said: “I didn’t lost my virginity until I was 17. But I have to say even then I wasn’t ready and it was an absolutely terrible experience.”
Gaga made her catwalk debut at designer Nicola Formichetti’s Mugler fashion show in Paris in March.
Gaga appeared on a 2008 episode of The Hills. Before a performance her broken cat-suit zipper was fixed by ‘stars’ Whitney Port and Lauren Conrad.
Her sister Natali Germanotta makes a cameo in the ‘Telephone’ promo as a fellow prison inmate.
She once sent out for $1000 worth of Papa John’s pizza for her fans when she saw a number of them waiting for her outside a record shop where she was doing a signing.
She went to the same private school as celeb socialites Paris and Nicky Hilton. The Convent Of The Scared Heart is also the school that appears in the TV show Gossip Girl (in which Gaga made a cameo).
Her father, Joe Germanotta, pioneered the installation of wireless internet access in hotels when he started the company ‘Guest WiFi’ in 2002.
Gaga also recently revealed that her hair was falling out due to over-dying it. “I need a chemical haircut because my blonde hair is falling out,” she told People magazine.
Gaga admitted to being a borderline cocaine addict in her pre-fame years. She said: “It petrifies me when I think about laying in my apartment in New York with bed bugs and roaches on the floor and mirrors with cocaine everywhere.”
The tattoo on her inner left arm is a quote from her favourite philosopher Rainer Maria Rilke and translates into: “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spears its roots the answer and ask yourself; must I write?”
She used to work in seedy clubs, “I was working in strip clubs when I was 18,” she said. “Girls from my background weren’t meant to turn into someone like me… My act was pretty wild. I’d wear black leather and dance to Black Sabbath, Guns N Roses and Faith No More. Very rock ‘n’ roll.”
She said that pot helps her with the songwriting process. “I still smoke a lot of pot when I write music,” she told 60 Minutes. “I’m not gonna like sugarcoat it for 60 Minutes that I’m some sober human being, ‘cause I’m not.”
She has said that she overcomes feeling vulnerable by giving herself pep talks. “When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24 year old girl. Then I say, ’Bitch, you’re Lady Gaga, you get up and walk the walk today’,” she told Rolling Stone.
Her favourite song on ‘The Fame’ was ‘Paparazzi’ and her favourite from ‘The Fame Monster’ was ‘Speechless’.
She’s a fan of Bruce Springsteen. “I’m actually really obsessed with Bruce Springsteen,” she said. “My father used to play a lot of Bruce Springsteen records when I was a kid and he was blue collar American.” The E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons plays on ‘Edge Of Glory’ from ‘Born This Way’.
Gaga uses Great Danes in her videos (they can be seen in the promos for ‘Paparazzi’, ‘Pokerface’, ‘Love Game’, ’Eh, Eh’, ‘Telephone’, ’Bad Romance’ and ‘Alejandro’).
Of her habit of carrying a purple teacup and saucer in public she said: “I drank tea with my mom (so teacups) make me feel at home.”
An early job saw her working at Interscope Records writing and co-writing songs for acts like The Pussycat Dolls, Fergie and New Kids On The Block. She recently wrote two tracks for Jennifer Lopez’s new album ‘Love?
Gaga’s been dissed by Christina Aguilera who said “I don’t know if it is a man or a woman.”
The singer called the unofficial ‘Baby Gaga’ ice cream (which is made by a London based company and includes breast milk as one of its main ingredients) “nausea inducing”.
Lady G says that her forthcoming perfume would ‘smell like an expensive hooker’. And added that, “We’ve taken blood out of my own blood sample for it.”
She said that she’d like The Wrestler actress Marisa Tomei to play her in a film of her life. ”I am such a Marisa Tomei fan, all my friends call me ‘Marisa’ when I get angry because my New York accent just flies out of my body.”
She was bullied at school. When she made the cover of Vogue, she Tweeted: “They used to call me ‘rabbit teeth’ in school and now I’m a real live VOGUE BEAUTY QUEEN.”
Gaga wasn’t always encouraged in her success. She said: “I had a boyfriend who told me I’d never have success, never be nominated for a Grammy, never have a hit song, and that he hoped I’d fail. I said to him, ‘Someday when we’re not together you won’t be able to order a cup of coffee at the fucking deli without hearing or seeing me’.’’
Her track ‘Telephone’ was written for Britney Spears and intended for use on her ‘Circus’ album, but it was dropped.
Snoop Dogg has said he wouldn’t like to bed Gaga. He told Blackbook: “She’s weird as fuck. Who knows, she might have a snake or a knife in her pussy if you try to get some from her.”
There’s a Star Wars reference in her video for ‘Telephone’. When she is making poison in the diner kitchen, some of the ingredients are from the film – ‘Fex-M3’ is from the Star Wars Extended Universe, ‘Meta-cyanide’ is from Dune and ‘Tiberium’ is from Command And Conquer.
She told People that she dyed her hair blonde because she was once mistaken for Amy Winehouse when she was a brunette. “I want to be known for my own look,” she said.
Gaga wrote ‘Born This Way’ quickly. “I wrote (the song) in 10 fucking minutes,” she told Vogue. “And it was a completely magical song. After I wrote it the gates just opened… it was like an immaculate conception.”
She has referenced brown eyes in more than one song, in ‘Brown Eyes’ from ‘The Fame’ and ‘Again, Again’ from her early ‘Red And Blue’ EP with its line: “You’ve got brown eyes like no-one else.”
She is the creative director of Polaroid.
Her drink of choice is a Jameson Irish Whiskey.
The heart tattoo on her left shoulder says, ‘Dad’, which she got because her father had heart surgery during the first leg of her North American Monster Ball tour. “I obsess about his health,” she told Vogue. “I ask my mother if he’s been smoking.”
She is only tattooed on one side of her body. “It was actually per my father’s request,” she said. “He asked that I remain, on one side, slightly normal. So I only have tattoos on my left side. I think he sees this as my Marilyn Monroe side and he sees this as my Iggy Pop side.”
She said she would never make a reality show. “You will never see me do reality television. Don’t even ask,” she said. “It will never happen. It’s just, I’m not that kind of person. My whole life is a performance piece.”
She flew the equivalent of five times around the world on her ‘Monster Ball’ tour. She tracked up 130,000 air miles in a year as she traveled to 78 cities.
She’s more NYC than LA. “I don’t like Los Angeles,” she said. “The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.”
She has said that she wouldn’t ever get plastic surgery. “I’ve never had plastic surgery. I think that promoting insecurity in the form of plastic surgery is infinitely more harmful than an artistic expression related to body modification,” she told Harper’s Bazaar.
She is godmother to Elton John and David Furnish’s baby Zachary. “That is true, it’s not a joke,” he said.
Gaga said she’s on the ‘drunk diet’. “I like to drink whiskey and stuff while I am working,” she said. “But the deal is I’ve got to work out everyday, and I work out hungover if I am hungover.”
As part of her childhood acting career she played the role of Adeleide in Guys And Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.
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