Lady Gaga has given one of her most stripped-back interviews yet – in more ways than one.
The singer and actor, 33, has posed for a stunning cover and given an intimate chat with Paper magazine ahead of the release of her sixth solo album Chromatica.
The interview touches upon her conversation with Oprah Winfrey during her Visionaries Tour where Gaga, real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, spoke about being repeatedly raped by a man she knew in the showbiz circuit aged just 19.
The star has now linked the hugely traumatic experience in her past to her fibromyalgia diagnosis, which she announced publicly in 2017.
“Essentially it’s neuropathic pain: My brain gets stressed, my body hurts,” Gaga explains.”[I’m] angry at my body, angry at my condition, angry that when I’m stressed my body hurts.”
However, Gaga, who is returning to her disco synth-pop roots for her new album, says she’s using Chromatica as a means to “dance through the pain.”
“You have to ‘radically accept’ that you’re not going to feel well every day,” she says. “I can go, ‘Well, my hands work; my arms work; my legs work, even though they are sore; my back works; my brain works; my heart works; I’m taking breaths, my lungs work.’ You can just be grateful for what you can do.
“We don’t stop being that happy. You will hear the pain in my voice and in some of the lyrics, but it always celebrates.”
While Gaga also acknowledges her ongoing struggle with depression, she tells Paper she’s looking “to make the world dance and smile.”
“Happiness is not that simple,” she says. “I want to put out a record that forces people to rejoice even in their saddest moments.”
And teasing some of her hotly anticipated release, Gaga hinted at a collaboration with “a fellow female pop star” who has also suffered “immense trauma in the public eye.”
Read the full interview in Paper magazine, out now
