14 DAY TRIAL // For months, Lady Gaga has been telling her critics that what she does is live art, insisting that she’s not a fake and she’s definitely not putting up this entire act for the shock factor. She makes the same point in a brand new interview with Rolling Stone, to promote her latest album “Born This Way.”
Speaking of her early days in the business, the singer insists that it wasn’t an easy journey, even if most people would assume it was: at one point, she actually grew tired of being endlessly questioned, doubted and under the lens.
No one could believe that she was the real thing and that she wasn’t just acting out to get people’s attention, Gaga tells the music magazine.
It was as if no one wanted to believe that she could be this complex as to breathe art through every pore, every wacky outfit and every out-of-this-world performance.
“Is it that you believe that I am attention-seeking or shock for shock’s sake, or is it just that it’s been a long time since someone has embraced the art form the way that I have?” she says when asked what she’d tell those who argue that she’s only doing all this to attract attention and keep herself relevant.
“Perhaps it’s been a couple of decades since there’s been an artist that’s been as vocal about culture, religion, human rights, politics,” Gaga ventures a guess.
“I’m so passionate about what I do, every bass line, every EQ. Why is it that you don’t want more from the artist, why is it that you expect so little, so when I give and give, you assume it’s narcissistic?” she asks.
Gaga is passionate about everything she does, but nothing compares to how she feels about her fans, without whom she says she couldn’t imagine herself.
It’s not just that the fans are those who pay the bills and make her who she is: she believes they share a very special connection, one that she would never wish to have severed.
“We have this umbilical cord that I don’t want to cut, ever. I don’t feel that they suck me dry. It would be so mean, wouldn’t it, to say, ‘For the next month, I’m going to cut myself off from my fans so I can be a person.’ What does that mean? They are part of my person, they are so much of my person,” Gaga says.
As she sees it, fans make up 50 percent, if not actually more, of who she really is, so there can be no severing of ties from her point of view.
For the full interview with Rolling Stone, see here.