14 DAY TRIAL // When Lady Gaga first broke on the scene, she was a breath of fresh air for the pop industry as regards both sound and look. She continues to be just as unique in everything she does as she was when she started off, but talk of how she’s only doing it to get thrills has also been making the rounds lately. To counter all that, she’s saying the only way she’ll drop the Lady Gaga persona is if she’s dead, People magazine writes
Speaking with Rolling Stone, Gaga defended herself against accusations that she’s only using her outrageous public persona to grab headlines and cause a stir in the media, which, in turn, translates into more exposure and publicity for her work. Lady Gaga is part of who she is and, even if she has moments when she feels she can’t pull it off, she quickly checks herself and does what she’s meant to do: she entertains, the singer says.
“When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl,” Gaga says for the July 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. “Then I say, ‘[Expletive], you’re Lady Gaga, you get up and walk the walk today.’ If I were to ever, God forbid, get hurt onstage and my fans were screaming outside of the hospital, waiting for me to come out, I’d come out as Gaga,” the singer adds, speaking of her determination to stick to this larger than life persona that she’s created no matter what.
Entertaining is art and that means sacrificing who you are as a real person in order to become this persona, she says. Moreover, she has Michael Jackson to look up to. “Michael got burned, and he lifted that glittered glove so damn high so his fans could see him, because he was in the art of show business. That’s what we do. I don’t even drink water onstage in front of anybody, because I want them to focus on the fantasy of the music,” Gaga adds. She’s referring to an incident that occurred when Michael was shooting for a Pepsi commercial and his hair caught fire – resulting in serious burns that reportedly were at the root of his addiction to prescription pills.
This is not the first time that Lady Gaga speaks of the image she’s created for herself in terms of “art.” About one year ago, in an interview with Out, the singer was saying her sole purpose in the industry was to tell a story as glamorous as possible – nobody wants to know the real you, they all want you to sell them illusions, she explained at the time.