Believe it or not, there was a time when Lady Gaga, and I quote, “didn’t even want to sing anymore.” Lady “I literally have a treble clef tattooed on my lower back” Gaga. Yep. Her. Seriously.
In the new cover interview for Parade, the “Applause” singer opens up about the tempestuous last year of her life and how Cheek To Cheek, her upcoming collaborative jazz album with Tony Bennett, saved her from the storm. Gaga also touches on the early days of her career and directly addresses the (relatively) low sales of her last solo release. Suddenly, the Koons is intrigued.
Ben Baker for Parade
As Gaga tells the magazine, 2014 started out rough: “I was so sad. I couldn’t sleep. I felt dead.” Only by recording Cheek To Cheek, which drops on September 23, did she rekindle that fire inside. “Working with Tony has reaffirmed everything I knew but that you start to forget when your life changes and it gets really noisy. For Tony, it’s all about great music.”
According to the 28-year-old singer, not all of her past collaborators had such a focus. She cites a lack of control around the time that her debut album, The Fame, was released in 2008, claiming that a lot of time was spent altering her voice to make it “more electronic and auto-tuned for radio” — hence why she probably felt so liberated on the more vocally driven Cheek To Cheek.
But does the Lady feel grateful for the “17 million” that LP sold? Absolutely, but she’s not letting that success affect the way she views what some might call the lackluster release of ARTPOP last November. “It didn’t grab the whole world the way The Fame Monster did,” Gaga admits, concluding, “that’s okay, because I know it’s good.”
“That’s what Tony has taught me,” she continues, “that my intuition is right. When he talks about the 66 albums he’s put out, the peaks and valleys, and how it’s not about having a hit record — it’s the most inspiring thing.”
Sounds like Gaga’s gonna keep on singing. Check out the full Parade interview for more details.
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