Zane Lowe aired his full interview with Lady Gaga and you can check out the full interview below.
Lady Gaga Interview:
On Zane’s quote on the album “As an album this is searching for a good time and it’s searching for a party but there are some unavoidable truths that need to be dealt with. “
That was such a beautiful statement that you made, actually Bobby my manager read that to me and I thought it was a great way putting it. It says that you wanna have a good time but there’s some pain you gotta get through.
On 2016 being an extreme year
It’s a very extreme year and a very high stressful time for people of all ages I think are feeling it especially politics and with society and the way things have been moving the chaos in America. This was a lot of my inspiration on the album.
On hearing her on Joann ‘without her makeup on’:
Well I think that the sentiments and stories on the album don’t have any makeup on. There’s no filter this record goes right for the gut. Vocally, lyrically, I am trying to tap into vibrations to make you feel like I'm giving you a giant hug in a way. Or giving you a release a place for you to rage. Or to feel healed, a place for you to close your eyes and listen. That’s the hard part. Sometimes you don’t want to listen to a song that makes you go there. But that’s what this record is. This record is makes you go there. But it’s also I have to say one of the most rewarding musical experiences of my life, making Joanne.
On the album sounding like it was fun to make:
It was really fun to make. Everyday was full of, I would say, taking that pain and turning it into strength. Taking that fear turning it into joy. We became the album. And we still are. I mean I can’t tell you all day long Mark and I back and forth, calling, texting, blood pop the whole gang you know, we’re so kind of micro focused on most importantly getting the message of the music into the world. Meaning to get the music to as many people as possible.
On what music felt like to her before this album was made and if music was still in her:
Yes. Well music’s always in me you know, everyday I hear things all the time. Melodies, thoughts, lyrics. After working with Tony Bennette and singing classics and spending sometime to also challenge myself to sing in Soprano in The Sound of Music when I sang ‘Till It Happens to You’ the song I wrote with Diane Warren at the Oscars. It was totally a different kind of thing for me and I love that. I love all different kinds of music I love diving into different genres and becoming an expert. You know Jazz was something I was already very versed in but with Tony I feel that I am becoming more and more an expert in Jazz. He gave me a master class. Tony just wanted people to know I could sing Jazz. If you ask him about it he’ll just say she can sing Jazz. And learning even more how to improvise and more who to be present. The thing about Jazz is mindfulness. You gotta be really mindful when you're working with Jazz music and you should be mindful anyway period when you're making music, performing. Every musician were all communicating and talking but with Jazz music because it’s so off the cuff and because Tony can just change it to be whatever he wants it to be whenever he decides [laughs] you gotta be ready. I would say I was in a very authentic and child like phase with music when I began this album. It’s like I closed my eyes and thought where’s the first place I fell in love with music and I can see myself when I was a little girl just four years old. I was just four the first time I began to play piano. I would sit there for hours and play, play, play and sing in my own little way. And this childlike love of music this is where i began with Joanne.
On going back to her roots for this album:
You have to erase it. You gotta erase all that success in a way it like I always say when you start a record you gotta take all the platinum records of the walls. Put them in the back. Make room for more. You can’t create records resting on either the laurels of your previous success or caring about that. At the end of the day that’s not really what I’m here for. I've always been obsessed with music. I enjoy transformation. Transformation through music is really one of the most beautiful gifts. You learn about yourself when you write music. You learn about your family, you learn about your family and friends. You learn about your relationship with the world and Joanne is my middle name and it’s the middle part of me. It’s something I was able to return to because I discovered that inner child in myself that loved music. All the other stuff if you boil it down yeah the truth is I made all those records and it became this big thing right, but all of the stuff on Wikipedia and all of the charts and all the accolades this is fantastic noise.
On what she had to go through to get to this album:
I had to go into the deepest pain in my life. I had to go into the part of myself you don't want to face. For the past five years it’s been different for me. You know I went through a lot of pain. You leave yourself behind in a way. Because the truth is that I can alway bring the past with me that little girl who loves music but I can never go back Zane. My life will never be the same.
On Fame:
Letting go of who I was before and I don't mean becoming Lady Gaga and leaving that behind, that’s not what I mean by that. What I mean is that my life is different now I cant walk down the street the same way and be me. When I meet people they are not always interested in speaking to me about real human things like we are right now. They want to know about superficial things, they want a photo, or a selfie, or a Snapchat or Instagram or Insta-snap story - whatever it is they want. [Zane: you went Jazz on me there] I just went jazz. You got kids with like 9 Go-Pros attached to their heads and —yeah it’s the fame monsters in a way. I had to reckon for myself that my life would never be the way that it was and I loved being that girl who walked down the street on the lower Eastside that nobody knew. I loved being that girl just rolled in from club to club and played my music and discovered new people and had a community with artists. I don't and I’ve never felt a connection to Hollywood and even though I’ve written about fame and you see me in Hollywood, I still feel very grounded in my family. I don't feel ever that I want to transition into a new type of me that’s gonna be completely open to someone who adores ever red carpet and wants to be at all the events.
On coming out of her rapid success:
Pure adrenaline of the world adoring you and then you realize it will never be the way it was before. [Zane: Did it make you paranoid?] Yes. Paranoia, fear, alcohol, drugs, anxiety, body pain, and a lot of it has to do with feeling unsafe in my own body because I leave the house and there’s people touching me, grabbing me, yelling. But particularly, I’ve been open about this before the sexual assault I experienced when I was 19 in the industry. My body doesn't know the difference between sometimes a normal touch and being assaulted and it’s just something that’s inside of me and I have to work on everyday, it’s powerful.
The truth is that Joanne and this record, I looked back on my father’s sister who I was named after and her pain. It gave my strength to go on. You know life is a dog fight for a lot of people and you gotta be a pitbull.
On feeling as though her father’s pain as a child was her fault:
Oh yeah. My whole life I thought it was my fault my father was angry. It’s like my whole existence in some way has been to make my father proud. I’m just an Italian girl who wants her dad to be proud. And he is.
On the song “Angel Down”:
I wrote this song about Trayvon Martin, actually a couple years ago when he was shot and murdered and the epidemic of african americans being murdered in this country. I was overwhelmed by the fact that people just stood around didn’t do anything about it and that the justice system continues over and over again to not seek justice for these families. Also
listening having my ear to the ground of my fans young African American women and boy who are terrified. They tell me when they drive in their car and they hear sirens there is a paranoia that rushes through their body, that they freeze up that they can’t think. This is tremendous anxiety, this is something that I care about. This is something that has to stop. Something that we all need to heal from. And ‘Angel Down’ the lyrics.. ‘Doesn’t everyone belong in the arms of the sacred why do we pretend we’re wrong has our young courage faded? Shots were fired down the street by the church where we sued to meet. Angel down, angel down. Why do people just stand around?’
On being drawn into the conversation:
I can only pray on that. You know that my voice and my lyrics will reach people. It’s also a complicated thing. I’m not an African American woman. How do you speak about things. It feels impossible how can I not say something. How can I possibly make an album about tweaking my ass in the club, being honest, in my mind I cant reckon it. It feels empty. It feels irrelevant. When I go into the studio at this point in my career I cant possibly just think oh what would be just fun. Because the thing is there’s a lot of fun music on this record. We all can’t [escape the truth]. We all can’t. No matter how much we want to just have fun the more that we mask the shame of this anxiety the hard it’s gonna be to heal. The way that it is for me as a songwriter at this moment in my life I absolutely cannot write anything that doesn't have a voice and a purpose in the universe. It’s like why would I have this voice? Why would I have this platform?
On her songs from the past not saying as much as they do now:
I’ve had that. I’ve done that, that was great. I loved it. That was amazing. And I will sing those songs for you and for everyone for the rest of my life. I’ll tour until I’m seventy-five maybe ninety live Tony. I can’t wait. I think I’m going to peak at seventy-five. Long white-gray hair, sleeve tattoos just banging around pa-pa-pa-pa-poker face. I wanna be at Oldchella. I wanna be at OldChella. But I’m a woman now. I’m a woman and I care about the world and I care about young people and that’s what I want to make.
On the difficulty of working on her album while ending her engagement:
Very painful. I mean who wants to see that. It’s hard enough when love isn't working out the way you want it to and then you gotta see it on the news. And you gotta walk down the street and someone says ‘are you okay’?
On if it’s possible to keep it private:
No. I can barely keep anything private. And that’s part of what I meant before when I said there’s no turning back. And that’s why I need Joanne cause she reminds me that, that little girl’s always gonna be there. That little girl at the piano. That’s who I am.
On ‘Perfect Illusion’
‘Perfect Illusion’ is about, yeah, trying to get your bearing in a very chaotic universe. Whether your relationship’s in chaos and you’re wondering right, if any of it was real at all? Was this real? Did we really love each other? Was it a perfect illusion? Mistaken for love - what am I missing man. How did i not fucking catch that. Because my guessing game is strong. It’s way too real to be wrong, right. I don’t date the same way my friends date. I see my friends dating on the internet and Instagram and everything everybody go through and man is it rough. I see my friend going “Well, he told me he was here and looks whats going on Instagram. Whats this post?” They’re looking at Instagrams ruining relationships, SnapChat’s ruining relationships, and Twitter and all of that. It’s like people are subliminally telling each other stuff through social media about what they feel about each other and it’s all a perfect illusion. The real stuff is what we do in the room together when we look in each others eyes and all that floats away because let me tell you something, the internet is just like the Earth in a way. We’re going to destroy it. It’s like a big toilet you know, it’s a garbage can. I can’t sort between what’s real and what’s not. I’m watching all these young kids die, right and you go in the internet and it’s a bunch of garbage in the way of the truth.
On the title track “Joanne”:
That’s a one take that song. We did it that was the first take we did it. He kept the vocal. He kept the vocal he wouldn't let me change it. We wrote it, I have a picture of it, someone took a photo of me and Mark we were on the grass with the Hummingbird, he gave me a Hummingbird guitar, he was playing it, I named her Amy. We were sitting there and I had my typewriter out and we were writing this song and someone took a photograph of us. And it was that day that Mark said to me ‘what do you have to write about? What do you HAVE to write about? Not just let’s write because you can write whatever you want. And it’s true and I don't mean that in an arrogant way. I love writing music I could go in for any artist and help them write their dream album, but he’s like what do YOU have to write? And I had to write about Joanne. I had to. Because it’s the single most important event in my family’s life and it’s the thing that has made me who I am today.
On her fans being there with her on her journey:
My fans are my heart and my soul in so many ways because they’re on a rolling coaster - you can’t see where it’s going.
On not basing her music around what her fans might want from her:
I don’t think its a healthy way to make music. I think that when you’re thinking from other people’s perspectives too much in that way like what musically do you wan from me. That’s trouble, that’s toxic.
On some of her contemporaries how sit down trying to write ‘the thing’:
Yeah I find that completely boring. It’s a business and it’s basically an algorithm. That I’m not interested in being a part of - that’s not music to me. That’s becoming part of the system and the more that you become part of the system the more that you lose yourself. You just become a robot you know? I wanna create things that people never forget. I don’t want to be one in the pack.
On what success is to her now:
Well the thing is you never know what’s going to happen. When I put ‘Just Dance’ out there was nothing on the radio like ‘Just Dance’. ‘Bad Romance’ was like nothing on the radio. ‘Born This Way’ was like nothing on the radio. ‘Applause’ was like nothing on the radio. And ‘Perfect Illusion’ is like nothing on the radio. I alway say to people did everyone get the memo, it’s never gonna be whats happening because that’s just not what I do. I’m what’s happening. I think that’s message that artist’s should take with them. That you are what’s happening. Why surgically create something of yourself to fit into an algorithm. That’s math. That’s something else. That’s the business of music. The business of music is not something that's good for me. It’s not healthy for me. I have a need to make music i don't have a need to be famous. It’s totally different.
On her work in ‘A Star Is Born’:
We haven’t started yet but it’s amazing. I’m lucky. [Zane: Did you have to audition?] Yes I did. [How was that?] Scary, exciting. But you know I’m aroused by danger. That’s part of me and that’s on the record too. Why am I aroused by danger, ‘John Wayne’
On her song ‘John Wayne’:
That record is about why do i chase wild men? I chase wild men because I chase my dad. My dad is a wild man why is he a wild man? Because he lost his sister when he was fifteen. And since he lost his sister he’s been chasing away to not feel the pain.
On what the future looks like now:
Healing, joy, a way of giving that as much as I can to other people. Sharing that story and helping them realize what’s happening in their own families and their own lives. I want people to hear Joanne and go oh that’s why I do that. Oh that’s why I act that way. [Zane: Still making mistakes though?] Oh fuck yeah I still make mistakes. On ‘Diamond Heart’ I say ‘I might not be flawless but you know I’ve got a diamond heart….Young wild American, looking to be something out of school go-go-ing for a hundred or two some asshole broke me in wrecked all my innocence but I’ll just keep go-go-ing because this dance is on you. One, five, ten, lay a million on me before the end of this song. Young, Wild, American come on baby do you have a girlfriend? Rain on me a million, I’m not flawless but I’ve got a Diamond Heart.’
That record is about what your willing to do to survive. What you’e willing to do to achieve the American dream no matter how tough your family made you. You know I felt a lot of shame my whole life wondering if it was my fault my dad was angry. If it was my fault when my mom would shut down because she couldn't quite handle the chaos. And then you go oh I get it. You’ve just been through a lot now it’s just time to heal.
On her family:
Working class and gave up everything for me and my sister so that we could blossom. And could you imagine giving us everything education and all and I say I want to be a singer. When I was a teenager I was wrecked trying to be independent in a family that was - my father feared my death. In the most powerful way. My dad didn't want to lose me. He overprotected me my whole life and I was always going what did I do wrong? What’s wrong with me? Why do I need to be inside? And what did I do.. I sat at the piano and played till my fingers bled and I wrote songs and I became who I am.
