Lady Gaga reflected on her journey from struggling musician to Oscar winner during a concert on Monday.
The 33-year-old singer took to the stage at The Apollo Theater in New York on Monday night for a performance of her Enigma show for SiriusXM + Pandora. During her set, she opened up about the battles she fought upon her first introduction to the music industry.
"(Critics) tried to take me down, and I put my head back down and got back to work," she shared. "Then I looked up one day and had a f**king Oscar, man. You can do anything that you put your mind to."
Gaga won the Best Original Song Oscar for co-writing the tune Shallow from her hit movie A Star is Born, in which she also starred opposite Bradley Cooper.
Midway through her 14-song set, the Born This Way star, who started her career performing in dive bars, once again paused to reflect on just how far she's come.
"This is a very special experience being here, playing here for 1,500 people," she explained. "It's been over a decade since I was playing for crowds like this. I went from 30 people to 300 people to 1,500 people ... to 150,000 people. And that's because of one thing: everybody believing (in me). I'd be nothing without you and I."
Elsewhere in the show, Gaga, a longtime supporter of the LGBTQ community, spoke about the importance of Pride and the lesson she's learned in recent years.
“I’ve learned something very important to people now, and I wish to share this with everyone who’s listening, not just in this theatre, but around the world. Ask the question: ‘What is your pronoun?'" she explained.
"Because for a lot of people, it’s really hard, and their pronouns aren’t respected or they’re not asked, and for me I’ve grown and changed over the years in a lot of different ways - I’ve felt misunderstood in different ways."
Gaga added: "All our hardships are different; I don’t mean to compare; I just mean to say we’re in this together, and I’ve had a million reasons to want to give up, and sometimes if you’re lucky you just need one good reason to stick around."
