 10/02/2009 The following interview was extracted from Notion Magazine, issue 37. Having taken place September 2008, it was the first interview with Lady GaGa to be printed in a UK publication. Lady GaGa has since gone on to have a number one single (Just Dance) and album success with her debut, The Fame. The photographs accompanying the following interview have been edited from an exclusive photo-shoot as printed in Notion Magazine.
For her photo-shoot with Notion, Lady GaGa dons two homespun outfits that cast her as D.I.Y dominatrix and noughties Virgin Mary consecutively, exhibiting exactly the firm creative control, commanding identity, wit and passionate vision we like from our future icons. Voguing for the camera like a veteran, and merrily readjusting her makeshift bin-bag hood, here is a girl who knows exactly what she’s after. Notion takes a taxi with Lady Gaga to her hotel, where she is to relax those hyper-active vocal chords – that naughty ‘Playboy mouth,’ - before firing up a London Fashion Week bash later in the evening.
At the start of your mini promo video, ‘The Fame,’ the message, ‘POP MUSIC WILL NEVER BE LOW BROW’ flashes up on your sunglasses…
Well my show is supposed to be an installation experience… I made those glasses out of i-pods and they’re compatible with i-pod software… the House Of GaGa! I make money as a (song)writer for other artists, and instead of buying a house and a car and going on vacation, I make technology, and fashion, because I’m a total nerd! So I made these glasses, and it’s me taking a vow about my work; putting pop music on the top of the table, as opposed to how people brush it underneath. It’s me as a commercial artist wanting to make commercial pop art that is considered high-brow, and fine…
What makes you a ‘performance-art pop-star,’ and does this detract from the actual tunes?
I think it makes it better, more fun, like a whole lifestyle. You can download a song, but you can’t download the clothes; the feeling; the excitement. All the work I put into the clothes, the visuals and the installation of the performance, that’s what makes it believable, and liveable and loveable… And so much more than anything that’s out right now.
Do you reckon that your music and your ideas might actually be more conservative, had you not attended the Convent of Sacred Heart school in Manhattan?
Yes and no… I was slightly exposed to things when I was younger, because I used to rebel. You know, ‘I’m going to the East Village tonight!’ I wasn’t inspired by my life in private school, that was not what made me tick. But I do think my education has made me a better artist – the mixture of the discipline, with the rebelliousness of me. Even though I’m singing about fashion and money, and getting drunk and making pop art, and fame as something self-determined, the way I do it is very smart. I use interesting lyrics with excellent references, the fashion is not typical, it’s fashion-forward, and very graphic. On stage, I’m creating certain shapes that I’ve really thought about. Like, ‘I want to make an upside-down triangle,’ and I do!
On myspace you only list your male equivalents – ‘Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Boy George and a cross-dressing John Lennon at Studio 54.’ Are you just bored by other female pop icons?
Brunette, I was Cher, right? Now that I’m a blonde, I’m Madonna; I’m Britney; I’m Christina Aguilera; I’m Gwen… What about Blondie? Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons? What about… what about… Twiggy? If I get onto the ‘Worst Dressed’ list in An American tabloid, I’m like, ‘What fucking twenty-five year-old jackass in a Juicy Couture sweatsuit wrote that?’ I’m a bit arrogant about my work, I’m like, ‘Who’s reviewing it?’ It’s my way of asking people to look at me and everybody else in a different way. Don’t look at me as a woman! Look at me as an artist!
We put Britney, Christina Aguilera and Madonna in a room. You can collaborate with one on a song, go partying with another, and push the remaining one off a podium…
Oh God! Well, I’ve already written a track for Britney… I’d love to write a track for Madonna – for all three of them, and go partying them all! The whole ‘Put me in the ring with a super-star’ thing, I’m not really looking at them. It’s not that I don’t see myself in that arena, because I do, that’s how I expect I will exist… I don’t wear the scenester patch on my sleeve, like, ‘Oh, I’m an indie pop artist, emerging from this group of electro-pop…’ Whaaa-da-whaa-da, it’s just so boring, and it’s so like, ‘What scene?’ There isn’t a scene. When someone comes up next to me, I’m not sizing them up, I’m like, ‘Hi! How you doing? Keep going!’ You pass echelons of artists, and then before you know it, you’re standing next to Christina and Britney and Madonna, and you’re still looking straight ahead.
Which elements are needed to make a perfect pop song?
Well, it’s gotta be a hit! And catchy! You’ve gotta be able to play it anywhere, to any kind of person, and it has to really hit them… I try to write stuff that’s meaningful: I want to make important art; important music; important fashion… Whether it’s a bunch of London paparazzi clapping, or Americans going, ‘What the fuck with the glasses and the stick? She’s so weird but I just can’t stop watching it!’ That is great too! Those articles are so pissed – ‘Why the fuck is she on ‘So You Think You Can Dance’?’ I’ve gone on with serious technology, serious electronics, a light sabre, with these insane, fashion, extreme glasses, and I’m like, I’m doing it!
Which male pop artist has the most desirable disco-stick?
Like, who would I like to shag? Oh, I was actually singing about an English guy in (‘Love Games’), but he’d be too embarrassed! It was pretty off-the-cuff; you know, I was having a real lusty moment as a girl, and I was like, ‘Eeergh! That’s fucking funny!’ Right? But I would probably say Sean Connery, when he was playing James Bond…
Most of your tunes seem to have been written in a state either of intoxication, or arousal, or both. Do you write tunes for the Generation of Excess?
(Laughs and claps effusively…) Well, that is what we are! That is my lifestyle; what inspires me as a twenty-two year-old blonde who likes to date rock-stars… I think I’ll always, always, always sing about fashion. I’ll always make music that could be played on a runway…
Last year you toured your provocative ‘Lollapalooza’ show with Lady Starlight – do you get off on the power pulling sexy moves with another woman has to make men weak?
Honestly, I’m not ever thinking about how to get the guys hard – I couldn’t care less. And I don’t have a real conventional beauty, but I am very sexy. My friends used to say, you have this dripping sexuality; you just always look like you’ve just been fucked – always! The show I did with Starlight was like a-maz-ing, but fucking weird! We played the ‘Clockwork Orange’ tune as a disco-ball dropped; there were turntables; we go-goed to Black Sabbath; set hairspray on fire, and we did very synchronised, Vanity 6-style dance moves – it was fucking special. I used to hump my piano, I mean it was like, super campy! Guys wouldn’t voluntarily see Mandy Moore, even though she’s very sexy, very pretty, but they will come to my show – straight guys too, rockers! I think that says something about what I do, it’s provocative, but it’s not really about the sex, it’s hitting them in a new way about girls.
Would you say your songs express a mixed and modern kind of sexuality, where anything goes, or are these more typical girl-on-boy pop tunes?
Do I look completely straight to you? Do I not look a little bit sideways? I think it’s a bit of both; I’m a very free spirit. That’s sort of the nature of our society right now, but I am careful – I don’t like when artists use the gay community to get like, edgy attention, that’s lame. I don’t want my sexuality to be what makes me edgy - to me, that’s not interesting.
If we were to engineer the perfect bionic body with you, which female body parts and which male body parts would you use?
That’s a fucking great question! Honestly, I’m seeing a bald woman’s head… Her eyes blocked out with like a strip across, a very pouty mouth, and I see creamy white… All the limbs are detachable, and black here (gestures around the face and chest)… I see nothing on the crotch; not vagina and not dick, not even a hole, just… skin. Boobs, but not like, Playboy boobs, functional boobs, something really alien-esque. The shoulders are high, and kind of triangular… I see a giant prosthetic that’s in a permanent position of couture, and, she’s definitely on her toes…
‘Just Dance’ is a call to keep raving in the club, whether you’ve lost your phone or you can’t see straight – can you tell us your most shambolic clubbing tale?
One tale? Yes, I can! I have it on film. It was at Rated-X, a party in New York at Luke & Leroy. It was the after-party to my performance with Semi-Precious Weapons. I smoked some weed in the dressing room and it must have had something sprinkled in it, ‘cos I went crazy! I drank fucking red wine like you’ve never seen… My boyfriend at the time – I’m single right now and I’m not interested – was like, ‘Babe, did you take fucking pills?’ I was like, ‘N-nno, yeah, er…’ Then me and Starlight, we started rolling around on the dancefloor with our legs up – I just remember the floor felt so fucking good! I have this giant disco ball that we travel with, and I was throwing it at people, like totally belligerent…
Which couture show would you most like to work the runway for?
Chanel. I would have to compose something special for it though, see the clothes. But for now, I’ve gotta say (Maison Martin) Margiela, ‘cos I wear it all the time – I wouldn’t wear Margiela if it didn’t speak to the records…
Have you visited many fetish clubs in New York?
I have! This guy was wrapped in a carpet underneath the bar, and it said, ‘To order a drink, step on this carpet.’ So I got up there, and then I realised that he was really aroused!
 You say you’re here to ‘try to change the world one sequin at a time’…
I’m changing the world with what I do, but there’s a sense of humour about it. I’m not singing about politics or saving the environment – I believe in saving the world with happiness; with joy; with a good time – that’s where the sequins come in!
‘Dirty Rich’ describes a world where club kids are polished to perfection, yet also ‘wrecked’ and struggling for money; would you agree that this contradiction between style and substance is one of the foundations and great complexes of pop culture?
Truthfully, that record - we all spent all our money on drugs. But we looked fucking great and we were all so high that we thought we were famous as shit, right? It’s really our fault; it’s not because pop music suppresses us and our music doesn’t make it into the mainstream and nobody knows what real art is… No, it’s because we’re lazy, and we were really fucking high, right? I’m a smart girl and I happen to make really great music, and that’s the substance, right? But on the surface, ‘The Fame,’ it’s not about being famous; it’s about everybody wanting to know who you are… I’ve been con-arting my way into celebrity bashes and nightclubs and getting my photo taken since I was fifteen! Anybody can do it, any fucking person, but it’s uneffective (sic) if you don’t have substance, it will only go so far…
Interview: Lucy Wilson. ‘The Fame’ is out now (Interscope). To subscribe to Notion Magazine CLICK HERE. |
