As her latest album is released, Andy Welch finds out what the queen of reinvention Lady Gaga thinks about her monsters, massive sales, and that meat dress.
"THERE are a lot of artists who put out number one single after number one single," says Lady Gaga, in her hotel room hours before going on stage for an impromptu one-off performance of her newest hit single, Born This Way.
"But they don’t sell any albums," she adds, pointedly.
It’s the start of the next colossal wave of publicity for Gaga as her second album is released.
Sales are certainly not a problem for Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Her first album Fame Monster set the record for digital album sales and the LP of Born This Way sold more than 100,000 copies in one day – and that was just in the UK.
In challenging times for the music business, Gaga’s found a way to make big, bright, pop music with a heart and a soul, and to make people actually buy it.
Apparently the secret is simple: "Every single song on this album can be played on the piano," she says.
Lady Gaga learned to play the piano aged four and at 14 was performing at open mic nights in her home city of New York. She walked away from a degree course at the distinguished Tisch School of The Arts three years later and began writing songs professionally for bands such as New Kids On The Block and Pussycat Dolls, before heading to Los Angeles and recording her first album.
It can be very easy to forget Lady Gaga makes wonderful music. She’s more often discussed for wearing meat dresses and turning up at this year’s Grammys in an egg.
For the release of Born This Way, she’s plumped for prosthetic bones in her face, creating an otherworldly visage that looks part-alien, partplastic surgery disaster.
If she keeps the look up, she’s in for a trying few months in make-up, because she’s talking about releasing a Michael Jackson-esque nine singles from the album.
But while nobody will ever look like Lady Gaga, more importantly, no one else sounds quite like her either.
Influences range from Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, to hard German electronic dance music, and the results are quite unique.
What’s most refreshing is that in a world of what Gaga describes as "plastic popstars", she’s doing it all her own way.
"I don’t have a record label behind me going, ‘You have to put this out, you have to put that out’," she says.
"I played them the album, they heard songs they knew could be singles, they were happy."
While other A-listers are calling in the same, tired old producers and songwriters, Gaga’s been working mainly with comparatively unknown producers Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow.
Hanging out with the three of them in her dressing room, it feels like they’ve bonded into an incredibly tight unit during the recording of the album, and Gaga puts it down to the fact they all found themselves on uncool fringes when they were growing up.
"It’s nothing short of revenge of the nerds when it comes to Fernando, White Shadow and I," she explains.
"All three of us, we’re part of that same mentality."
She talks about how one of the album’s big themes is about how you deal with having been bullied as a kid, later on in life.
"Maybe that’s the reckoning with this album. Do I want to be one of them or not?"
Aside from such self-reflections, Gaga insists everything she does is for her fans – those ‘Little Monsters’ who hang on the every word of ‘Mother Monster’.
During her record-breaking, 201- date Monster Ball tour, which finally ended last month, she saw "a couple of real meat dresses".
"They stunk as bad as mine did," she laughs. "I’ve also seen a lot of red tie-dye. Fans know how to express the idea of meat through fashion with a white t-shirt and some tie-dye.
"So if I wear a meat dress, they will tie-dye a white shirt and wear a steak on their head. It’s like a garment metaphor. They’re very funny, very clever and very smart. That’s what I love most about being on stage."
And did she see many people turning up in eggs?
"A few," she smiles. "I saw lots of prosthetics on people’s faces. The first few rows at my shows are all the super-fans so there are lots of piercings in lips, ears, shoulders.
"It looks like a disco. A Seventies underground disco. It’s just amazing.
And there are lots of Lady Gaga tattoos."
Real ones? "Yes, real ones..."
The first few rows of her concerts might be dressed up to the nines, but Gaga’s plugged in enough to know you don’t become one of the biggestselling album artists in the world without some mass appeal too.
"It’s not just kids, who feel disenfranchised, who listen to my music, all sorts of people do," she says, understanding there’s no point in preaching acceptance if only minorities feel comfortable at Gaga shows.
"I love the fact my music gets played on a pop radio station and people from all sort of different walks of life love it," she says.
"That’s the whole message behind it!"
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