Lady Gaga released Mayhem on Friday and the pop star discussed how getting back to her early sounds, an amalgamation of “the music that helped me fall in love with music,” felt right despite her having some “fear” about doing so in a new interview with The New York Times. The star also discussed some of the challenges in her career early on, and how she’s balancing her authentic self with her stage persona.
In the interview, Lady Gaga addressed her decision to reclaim her pop roots on Mayhem, addressing her initial apprehension. She said that in the lead-up to first studio album The Fame, she was immersed in a community that “lived and breathed art,” which the album was also borne from, but she acknowledged she’s no longer the teenager living in that same community, and she also didn’t want to retread what she had previously created. “But ultimately I decided that I really wanted to do it and that this sonic style and aesthetic really did belong to me,” she said.
Among the subjects she addressed in the wide-ranging interview is how art gets wrapped up in image and by “brand” in the music world. This was emphasized to her early in her career. “That started to affect how I made music,” she said, explaining that she was “bridled to think about women in music” in those terms.
“It’s the way they talk to you about who you are. When I moved to Hollywood and was playing my music for Interscope for the first time, they had conversations about, what’s your look going to be? And you’re thinking, It’s going to be me. How are you going to dress? Well, I’m going to wear what I usually wear when I’m onstage. They introduce you to start thinking about it as a business as opposed to a performance.”
While she emphasized how grateful she is for her career, having been in the music industry since she was a teenager, “some of it is how much you are willing to give away.”
“I’m sure that must sound peculiar to people because they see you on top of the world and they think you’re the boss, but as a woman in music, I would say it took me 20 years to become the boss. I am now,” she said, crediting being surrounded by a supportive community of people, including her fiancé Michael Polansky, who executive produced Mayhem.
“I wrestle with this, how to talk about it. Because I want to acknowledge all the blessings in my life while also speaking up for women in this industry,” she continued. “There are no laws around who can be a producer, and they’re not vetted by anyone. So when you’re 17 years old and you are invited into a studio, you have no protection. You don’t know where you’re going. You may not even have an adult in the room with you other than the person that you’re working with. It’s not the safest industry.”
On Mayhem, as Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos wrote in the review of the album, “Gaga feels like her most authentic self from start to finish on this album: There’s no characters, concepts, or aesthetic impulses overshadowing the songs,” And in her interview with The New York Times, Lady Gaga discussed authenticity, and also how inhabiting the different personas she explored had become detrimental. “I was falling so deeply into the fantasy of my artwork and my stage persona that I lost touch,” she said.
She said that while the image side of her music career is a factor and something she partakes in and respects, “It feels further away from who I am.”
She also opened up about the challenges posed to her mental health, discussing having psychosis around five years ago. She said it took a lot of hard work to get herself back. “I had to figure out a way to integrate myself fully with my stage persona and kind of inhabit Lady Gaga’s boss energy in my everyday life but in an empowered way, and make sense of maybe two things that don’t make a ton of sense,” she said.
Lady Gaga is set to host and serve as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live tonight, March 8. It will be her second time serving double duty on the show, having performed both roles previously in November 2013.
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