Lady Gaga past regret on inventing famous persona as she undergoes huge rebrand

Lady Gaga releases ­Mayhem – her first album for five years – this weekend, it’s like the mother of reinvention has never been away.

Even before the new release, she was making waves – having just broken the all-time Spotify record for the most monthly listeners by a female artist – surpassing Ariana Grande, who had previously overtaken Taylor Swift.

With more than 120 million listeners on the music streaming platform, things are looking good on all fronts for the Chromatica star. In fact, they’re about as far from mayhem as you can get!

While anything is possible for the singer, who once wore a dress made entirely of meat to the 2010 MTV awards and even planned to saw her own leg off “for ‘ fashion”, she seems calmer, softer.

Speaking to the BBC’s Mark Savage of her struggles to identify where Gaga ended and her real life persona Stefani Germanotta began when fame kicked in, she said: “I had created this public persona that I was truly becoming in every way. Holding the duality of that and knowing where, you know, I begin and Lady Gaga ends was really a challenge.

” I think what I actually realised is that it was healthier to not have a dividing line and to integrate those two things into one whole. “

One of her songs on the new album, Perfect Celebrity, refers to this identity crisis and she describes it as” probably the most angry song about fame that I’ve ever written in my whole career. “,

But Lady Gaga is far from angry, crediting her positive outlook – and her return to her pop-dance roots – with the love and encouragement she receives from her fiance Michael Polansky.

Dating since 2019, the couple got engaged in April last year. “He actually proposed to me, with these blades of grass. He asked me a long time ago. We were in the backyard, and he said, ‘ if I ever proposed to you, how do I do that? ‘ And I just said, just ‘ get a blade of grass from the backyard, and wrap it around my finger, and that will make me so happy. ‘” she told Mark Savage.

Recalling some personal sadness, when she lost a friend in her forties to cancer, her eyes brightened, as she spoke of her recent good fortune and the “amazing thing that I have a partner”.

She mused: “It was interesting getting engaged at 38”

And she doubts her single Die With A Smile would have happened if she hadn’t met venture capitalist Michael.

The classic soft rock ballad, which draws inspiration from Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner’s 1970s partnership, has become the fastest song to hit 2 billion streams on Spotify. It also won the award for Best Duo Collaboration at the 2025 Grammys with Bruno Mars

Of her new album, she continued: “Michael’s very present on the record. We wrote a lot of songs together for the album as well, because we’re with each other all the time and, you know, we make a lot of things together.

” So it was a special experience. Love is a big part of Mayhem. It’s the end of mayhem too, I wanted mayhem to have an ending. I wanted the chaos to stop. So it ends with love. “ENDs

The Interview – Lady Gaga: Inside the Chaos is available to watch on BBC iPlayer now

Source: Mirror