As she melds her pop music with performance pieces, Lady Gaga has managed to cultivate a sense of authority in art and fashion that goes beyond her enigmatic nebula of glamour and wigs.
She did her best to maintain that authority, while also getting very personal, in an interview with the New York Times, fulfilling her new promotional duties for the M.A.C. AIDS fund and Viva Glam.
“It’s hard knowing who to trust with your personal life,” Lady Gaga revealed to fashion reporter Horacio Silva in a piece that will run in this weekend’s T magazine. “When you cry in your room at night, you don’t always know who to call. So I am very close to my family.”
The singer also touched on betrayal and the need to move on from elements of her past life, including drug use.
“I left [my past] behind because I had to,” she said. “For many reasons, like drugs. It’s no secret that I have had problems with drugs in the past. And some places represent to me things in terms of my mental and physical health, so you learn to move on, to preserve what your mission in life is, and my greater mission is my fans.”
Lady Gaga has consistently used the concept of fame as a motif in her art and music.
“I believe in the glamorous life and I live one,” she said.
However, the artist also expressed her distaste in “celebrities” and explained how she tries to challenge the paradigm of fame with her fans.
“I think I have changed the way they look at and devour fame. It’s something that tastes a little too sweet but is not so difficult to swallow.”
After discussing her “spiritual guide,” the interview highlighted another unique thing about Gaga: She refers to herself in the third person.
“I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does,” Lady Gaga explained. “I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans. And that way, I have to think about not what is best for my vagina but what is best for my fans and for me artistically.”