She is known for her talent, her wacky antics and confidently living outside of the box but according to the singer she wanted to give that all up on 2014.
Lady Gaga has been named Billboard’s Woman Of The Year but has revealed she came very close to not being eligible as she almost gave everything up.
The 29-year-old told the magazine she started to feel trapped by her career and fame in 2014 and came close to quitting.
The star told the magazine: ‘At the end of 2014, my stylist asked, ”Do you even want to be a pop star anymore?” I looked at him and I go, ”You know, if I could just stop this train right now, today, I would. I just can’t. [But] I need to get off now because I’m going to die.”’
The ride that is being Lady Gaga was clearly becoming too much for the woman who says she ‘craves normalcy’ despite living in what she calls ‘the theatre of the absurd’.
‘When you’re going so fast you don’t feel safe anymore, you feel like you’re being slapped around and you can’t think straight. But then I felt hands lifting me. It was like everybody came together to try and put a star back in the sky, and they weren’t going to let me down.’
The revelation came after her album Artpop failed to be as well received as her previous albums and she parted ways with her manager claiming she was being over worked.
The star – whose real name is Stefani Germanotta – said she found herself again working with Tony Bennett and looked at Artpop not as a failure but as a time to take stock and find out what is important to her.
She told Billboard: ‘You can’t sell your soul once you make it. It’s a big mistake to just go after the money to try to stay on top. I think that’s what everyone wanted me to do. But I’m a different kind of girl, and when being different is not in style it’s hard for me to function.
‘People think, ”You can just sit down at a piano whenever you want and write,” but I couldn’t write for two f**king years. For Artpop, I was doing beats instead. I didn’t want to be near that damn [piano]. It was too emotional. I would start to play and sing, and my mind would go, ”You are way too talented for this shit. F**k, your voice sounds good. F**k, that’s a beautiful chord. F**k, that’s an amazing lyric. Why are you letting these people run you into the ground? When did you become the fashionable robot?’ Can’t being an artist be enough? Is talent ever the thing?”
‘I think for Adele it is. I think for Bruno Mars it is. But that’s what I learned from working with Tony: If talent isn’t the thing, then you are way off-base.
‘That’s why every up and down of my career was worth it – it has led me to epiphanies. We can’t create without epiphanies. You could have one and not even know it because you’re so high or there are seven models sucking your d**k or you’re so intoxicated by the lifestyle. I’m grateful for what I have, but that doesn’t mean I don’t value the gift of life. Because while this house is beautiful, once I cross my property line I’m no longer free; it’s legal to stalk me all over the world. The thing that makes me happy is that piano.’
While she wanted to give everything up and seems to have a love hate relationship with music industry, the 29-year-old said she was blown away by the honour of being named Woman Of The Year.
‘It speaks volumes to me that I’m being recognized as Woman of the Year in 2015. This is the year I did what I wanted instead of trying to keep up with what I thought everyone else wanted from me.’
It has certainly been a big one personally too, with the star getting engaged to Taylor Kinney and it is also her last year in her Twenties.
As you would expect from the Poker Face star, Gaga plans to take a stand in her thirties.
The star said: ‘I already mourned that in a way, and now I’m really excited about showing girls, and even men, what it can mean to be a woman in her thirties.
‘Why is it that we’re disposing of people once they pass that mark? It’s suddenly, ”You’re an old woman.” I’m not f**king old. I’m more sexual and powerful and intelligent and on my s**t than I’ve ever been.
‘I’ve come a long way through a lot of heartache and pain, but none of it made me damaged goods. It made me a fighter. I want to show women they don’t need to try to keep up with the 19-year-olds and the 21-year-olds in order to have a hit. Women in music, they feel like they need to f**king sell everything to be a star. It’s so sad. I want to explode as I go into my thirties.’