Martha Debayle went to Los Angeles to exclusively interview the most important singer, actress, songwriter, and icon of the last ten years, who did not hesitate to open up and talk about her sorrows and joys. Discover everything behind Lady Gaga and her new album, Chromatica in this new interview for Moi magazine.
NO JOKE, I'M GOING TO VOMIT. WE (ME, MOI's EDITOR AND MY MAKEUP ARTIST) TAKE 15 MINUTES OF CURVES ON A SLOPE OF ALMOST 90 DEGREES, RISING A MOUNTAIN, WHICH, WITHOUT BEING VERY FAMILIAR WITH LOS ANGELES, I THINK IT MUST BE THE SIGN OF HOLLYWOOD. WE ARE LOOKING FOR LADY GAGA'S HOUSE.
Almost 22 minutes later, dizzy and feeling allergies at the top, because I see a lot of trees, bushes, and flowers, we reached one of Lady Gaga's houses, where she has the studio where she records most of her songs.
At the door, we were asked to wash our hands and spray antibacterial gel. We thought it was an exaggeration; we are at the beginning of March, and we did not see this about COVID-19 as serious or as close. I came from shooting a campaign in Palm Springs, Lady Gaga the one from her new production: Chromatica. Everybody was happy because this was the only interview she will give for Latin America and the only cover: the Moi magazine one. Both were ready for new triumphs on April month... two days after, we never left our houses again.
The release of her album, originally intended for April 10, was postponed and we will not be doing the cover with her until new notice. All plans went directly to trash, because as they say well: "Do you want to make God laugh? tell him about your plans." In this case, he must have laughed out loud.
This is a very important launch for her, it is her sixth studio album. She worked for three years on her production with BloodPop®, who also collaborated on her 2016 album, 'Joanne.' There were also part of it the German electronic producer and DJ BoysNoize and Swedish House Mafia. It sounds dance, doesn't it? Affirmative. By now, surely many of you have already listened to the first single from Chromatica, "Stupid Love", which is indeed quite dance style; well that's the feel of the whole album. But let's go back to Lady Gaga's studio house...
We entered and passed into a waiting room. All a little bit nervous, me, threatened by Natalie (Moi's editor) that my allergic asthma would not betray me and I must hold on if I felt like coughing because we were going to be kicked out thinking we were infected.
I feel here with the moral obligation to give you context, so you can understand how was my first encounter with her. As I was saying, before arriving in Los Angeles, I was in Palm Spring shooting a campaign in which I had to use these sixtyish-style false long nails. In the interview, I realize we have a fallen soldier and, that soldier was my little finger's and since the interview was going to be videotaped, I couldn't go on it out without it. Oh, surprise! It turns out the fingernail has now lost inside my huge bag and I began to search it frenetically because it didn't appear. Then I hear this voice: “Hello, how are you, all? Thank you so much for coming. Please let my team know if you guys need anything, coffee, food, and we’ll get it for you”.
It was her! I smiled and I keep looking for because I was running out of time. I was so into it that I didn't realize that I had her in front of me trying to greet me until I hear: “Hi Martha, thank you for coming, I’m so glad to meet you. I feel like home, she has these almost-25 centimeters tall platform boots, her makeup style a la Amy Winehouse, a black oversized leather jacket and she is just as you could imagine her: small, slim, flamboyant and stylish. We sat down side by side in her studio-home and, we began.
"I heard you're the queen of the show, so la Reina, Martha".
Your Spanish is good!
"No, just la rrreina [queen]"
It feels so refreshing to hear you talk with so much freedom about your mental health. In everything I do, I always say, "share knowledge," because you never know when your story can change someone's life. I know about the rape, PSTD, and all the struggles you've lived but the fact that you are so open with it is very touching.
"Yes, sharing your story is very important. And I share it because it is part of being kind and empathetic. Because what you're saying is, ‘look, this happened to me’ and someone can feel identified and less alone.
The other day I had an episode of trauma response, which is already part of my life. Once in a while, my brain goes kind of gets tripped up and I think that there is a crisis when there is not and I am really making a lot of sense and is very very scary. It is like someone's like stepped on the panic button in my brain and gone crisis, crisis, crisis!
And I feel like I sense of outer body that I'm not grounded and my brain's kind of offline and, I've just learned how to bring myself back. It's about moving your body, taking care of yourself, being compassionate to yourself, so my whole view on kindness is not just about being kind to other people, it's about being kind to you too."
When you talk about pain, do you talk a lot about fibromyalgia?
"Yes, I am talking about fibromyalgia, which is a form of neuropathic pain”. "I feel like it's one of those things that we haven't figured out well, I've found some treatments that work for me, but what works for me doesn't necessarily work for someone else. ”
The Album, Chromatica
That morning, we went around a lot, this time in Santa Monica, because we couldn't find the Universal Music offices to sit down and listen to the 6 tracks from the album, extremely necessary to be able to speak with more knowledge. We arrived and we entered to a meeting room with eight spectacular speakers and, after we have delivered our cell phones and signed an NDA in which we swear we will not going to say and/or reveal anything before the official release, they played “Chromatica I”, “Free Woman”, “Sour Candy”, “Fun Tonight”, “Rain on Me” and “Stupid Love'' for us.
The whole album is very dance, very happy, very Lady Gaga from the beginning. "I love how you say it, Chrrromatica, and you remember all the names after one time!" She says, very surprised at my memory, haha!
Was it therapy?
"Yes it was, but normally I don't say that about doing music because I go into the studio and I don't see it as writing in your journal. For me it is still poetic, it is still poetry, it's still sitting down and writing certain chords on the piano or write prose that really speaks to my heart. Sometimes I say I open a realm to another world and I'm trying to listen to hear sounds and things that God is asking me to tell the world. And to me, God can be anything to anyone, is just the universe, you know? I have a very open concept of God. But the reason it was as therapy for me was because of how difficult it was to get into the studio ”
And here you recorded it?
“Yes, this is Haus of Gaga studio type. This is the studio down here and the offices upstairs and rooms too, but BloodPop® would go up to the kitchen and say to me, ''come on, let's make some music,’' and there were times when I was super depressed and sad and I answered, ‘I don't even know what I'm going to write, I feel miserable, should I be Lady Gaga? Should I be making music?" and he would say, 'come on, let's go down there.' I went down and almost without realizing it I started to write and sing. I never hear a song for the first time without a microphone in front of me, because the best ideas always occur to me the first time I hear something.
Actually, as you say, it was a therapeutic process because when I listened to it again I thought, ‘I can't believe how happy is this, I can't believe the celebration, I can't believe it's dance music while I'm in so much pain.”
“My mission with this album is that people know that even when they are suffering, they are going to overcome it; They have to believe in themselves and they have to be willing to endure difficult times, surrender to them and say, "This is not going to be easy, but I am going to try." I tried every day and managed to make this record."
I was reading the lyrics to the songs, and there's one that made me think about the moment so important for women that we are living in Mexico. I was saying that we actually ended up having a national march because every day 6 to 7 women are murdered, just for being women! And in most cases, it is at the hands of their partners. Just one of her songs appeals a lot to the theme with a phrase that says, "I'm still something if I don’t have a man”, which we all have to hear more often, understand and take ownership of the concept.
It is so interesting that you bring this up because I think abuse in relationships is something that is not talked about enough and I also think as an American watching television and like reality shows like all these dating shows and stuff, you watch things where you realize that the producers of the shows or the executives that are running the TV show, they actually are normalizing the abuse on TV.
I watch this stuff and I go like this is an abusive relationship. Why is this being documented and shown and then, celebrated like its normal when it's not normal. It is not normal for a man to control a woman. It is not normal for a man to manipulate a woman and make her feel like she is crazy just for being herself.
" I've seen things like this and I have to say that it literally makes me sick when I hear that a woman has been killed by the person she is with because they were in an abusive relationship and she maybe couldn't get out and, I wish to speak to young women and all people and say that emotional abuse is also abuse, you don't have to get hit and it's not something that should be normalized and I'm glad and hoping that the march was in favor of everybody."
I've been in abusive relationships and I will tell you that I wrote a song [¡Free Woman'] specifically about saying you know that, I'd rather be alone and free than being in prison with a man and, sometimes it's really hard to make that choice because you're going: 'I don't want to be alone I would I'd rather take all of this pain instead of being by myself' but you know what, you do not need a man to be strong, you do not need a man for anyone to respect you, to be powerful and intelligent.
What matters is that you are like holding yourself up to the highest in like you put yourself on the pedestal a man does not decide what pedestal you're on or a woman. It took me a long time.
Are you free?
I'm so free but it took me forever. But I was realizing that I was going with guys like: 'are you gonna put me on a pedestal?, are you gonna do it?, how high am I up? and now I put myself on my own pedestal.
There is another phrase that I loved: "If you want to fix me, let’s break up here and now.''
Yeah, because I don't need fixing cuz I'm me and if you think that there's a problem with me we shouldn't be together.
I loved what you said! You have found your passion with a lot of work and you said something: "passion is discipline as well". Tell me about that for everybody that must be reading to this conversation and thinking that passion is just like the butterflies and the bees, No it's a lot of work as well.
You know, passion I think comes in two parts: one is when you're passionate and that maybe you have an ability that is also in form by inspiration so, you have a skill like a gift from the other realm you know, the heaven's coming down and giving you this gift but, the second piece is that you have to be steadfast in like a marriage with your passion and you have to work hard you know. I think that there's this idea that either with social media or whatever it is that you're doing, that you can just get lucky and become famous but actually I don't even know how I'm still alive that I'm still here but, I worked so hard to get here and I do my vocal warm-ups, I train my voice and my body so that I can do my shows even though I have a chronic pain condition because I don't want to give up and it takes a lot of work.
I guess what I would say is to anyone that has big dreams, you can have big dreams but got to work for those big dreams and it's okay, it doesn't mean that you're not amazing it just means that it's hard to get to the top. There's an old AC/DC song and the title is: "it's a long way to the top if you want a rock and roll you got to be willing to take it."
"Radical acceptance" I love that concept. Explain it really fast, really quickly!
''What radical acceptance is in terms of like how I use it in my life in terms of my mental issues, I've had to radically accept that I have mental issues, I've had to radically accept that I have chronic pain and I hate saying it honestly because the first time someone brought it up to me I was like 'you want me to radically accept that I'm gonna be in pain maybe for the rest of my life? like you've got to be kidding me right like are you crazy?; But once I accepted it I was like: 'okay, can I live for the rest of my life in chronic pain?, can I do this? and I said: yes I can! I can so, every day that I said ''I can, I can, I can," the pain gets less and less.''
''In some days it gets worse but I come back but it's so much better than it used to be so for anyone that's out there that has mental issues or that has chronic pain or any anything that you're dealing with, I would just say like believe in yourself, radically accept that things are the way that they are and it's okay you're gonna be okay but, you do have to do that work, you have to also radically accept that it's gonna take a lot of hard work to get through it.''
Thank you so much, it was great talking to you. See you soon in Mexico!
"Te amo, te amo, te amo." [I love you, love you, love you].
(This article was translated by Little Monsters Official and taken from the original Spanish interview)
