My Own Boyfriend Wanted Me to Fail, Gaga Tells Cosmopolitan

As Cosmopolitan puts it, Lady Gaga never looks boring. In fact, Gaga is never boring, whether for the things she says, wears or does on stage. A carefully crafted public persona, Gaga is a product herself, one that she sells with the skills of a businesswoman. However, though she’s confident and has the entire world at her feet, not everybody believed in her from the start, she reveals.

Back in the day before she was famous and not a day went by without at least having her name mentioned in the media, Lady Gaga had a boyfriend who laughed at her plans of being a pop star. It wasn’t just him, though, that secretly wanted her to fail, as the entire industry seemed closed off on her, not yet ready to take her in for reasons that mostly held no water, the singer says for the publication.

“I had a boyfriend who told me I’d never succeed, 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 a the [expletive]-ing deli without hearing or seeing me’,” Gaga says. Clearly, she’s had her revenge, what with all her singles released so far climbing international charts and breaking record after record, not to mention her live performances, which continue to be among the most hyped gigs of the day.

The industry was equally blind to what she had to offer back then, she goes on to say. “I ate [expletive] for so long, being told I didn’t fit the mold and that I was ‘too pop’ or ‘too theater’… I’ve always been delusionally ambitious to the point where people don’t understand me,” she explains. But now, she gets the reward for which she worked so hard: “My friends joke that I’m dead until I get onstage. I’m dead right now as you’re speaking to me,” she jokes.

The full interview with Lady Gaga is in the latest issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, out on newsstands right now. It comes accompanied by a rather mild / tepid (by Gaga’s standards) but positively gorgeous photospread by Kenneth Willardt.