Lady Gaga joins Zane Lowe to reflect on her massive year. They chat about how MAYHEM has reenergised her relationship with her fans, her ongoing world tour, and how Harlequin set the stage for it. They also discuss plans for 2026 and recent rumours around a potential collaboration with The Weeknd.
Lady Gaga talks with Apple Music about revisiting Born This Way through live performance
Lady Gaga: It's funny how songs really change what they mean to you over time. Whether you're a songwriter or you're just like a music listener, I feel like you can put a song on and it just changes. And I felt really excited to perform it.
Zane Lowe: Which ones have presented themselves too different since you've been playing them live in front of people?
Lady Gaga: Going back into “Born This Way” was really an interesting thing. That music has, for me, such significance in the way it connects me to New York. And I think I haven't really lived in New York for a long time, but it really formed me as an artist. And so I think going back and playing them at the piano and exploring the stories now has just been, it's just been really interesting. I find myself kind of learning over and over again about why I'd started to make music to begin with. And I really feel like it had so much to do with not feeling seen when I was in high school.
Zane Lowe: It's an interesting time in your life when you're trying to form the beginnings of your identity and you're relying on others to help you show the way. And when they ignore you or when you don't get that validation, you search so much more for those answers within you. And I think that's quite common amongst the artistic and creative community that ultimately you're left to your own feelings and your own answers rather than seeking them from others.
Lady Gaga: Yeah. And whatever you're going through with your family or you're going through with friends or people that are not friends and whatever kind of is coming your way, for me, music was always the way that I dealt with it. I wouldn't say it was therapy. I don't know why I've always had an aversion to that, to saying that. I don't know why, because it feels different from that to me. But yeah, revisiting those songs, it kind of made me realize also how much it's still alive in me that no matter how far I come and how much music I make, that that is just kind of ever, that feeling of yearning for an understanding of self and to find my own place, that is like it's still very much alive.
Lady Gaga reflects on the last 12 months and talks with Apple Music about being back in the studio
I'm doing good. I was in the studio yesterday. I've been making a lot of music and it's kind of the best making music when you get to see your fans every night because you're energetically just right where you need to be. I'm really, really happy. This album, it's just so, so cool the way that it is connected with my fans. And every night that we play it's just a very special thing. I've made records that have connected with one part of my fan base. I've made the records that connected more with the general public, and then you make records that can connect with both at the same time. And that's really a very special feeling. It's a totally different type of show when you're taking the audience through some of your classics, but then also they're just going up for the new record and it's just, it's awesome. And what I love about this show is as for as heavily choreographed as it is, there's actually a ton of room for me to tell the story differently every night.
Lady Gaga talks with Apple Music about putting her authentic self in her music
I think what I know now without a doubt is that if you authentically give a piece of work your best and you leave no stone unturned with every instrument, every melody, every lyric, every vocal, that you don't ever have to wonder if you gave it your best, because if it's authentically you and you don't look back, there's kind of nothing else that you ever really had to give except some weird version of the truth. Trying to manipulate the truth to help people understand you better is it's so backwards in a way, because you're overthinking something that's so natural and you're trying to package it in this way. My favorite music and my favorite artists have always ... It's been like, it doesn't matter how much artifice or art direction or style or attitude there is. There's something that is really who they are.
And so I think what I ultimately walked away from was like, the only trick that you need to do in the studio is the one where you are yourself and you're exactly who you are and you just push yourself further than you've ever gone, but that I don't have to manipulate it or it doesn't have ... Yeah, it's so silly with a song like “Abracadabra,” but it doesn't need to be a magic trick in that way. It's like the trick is being you, I think.
Lady Gaga tells Apple Music about why she's not afraid of AI in music
Being a human being, I don't think is going to go out of style anytime soon. And I certainly hope that's at the core of, I think, the way we understand each other, the way we communicate. And even in pop music where it can be if you want it to be, it can be this kind of perfectly mathematical polished thing, but it still has a ton of discipline and it's been so deeply informed. So it's funny, I think if I could some this whole last year, two years for myself in one word, it would be craft.
Craft is just where it all is for me. And how do you enjoy the thing that you love learning about and let yourself just be endlessly curious. And yeah, I think the world can in the space of music and otherwise be a very competitive place and it's very like more is more. And what conversation are you having with yourself? And for me, it helps me when I'm talking to myself to keep things simple because when it gets overly complex or I'm trying to win at something, I always ask myself, what are you trying to win? Where are you actually going? But if you can win, I think with yourself, and for me, winning with myself means that I've learned something new or I found something new. So yeah, I think that's a lot of what MAYHEM taught me. And not every record teaches you everything, but I do find that music is, for me, my great teacher.
Lady Gaga talks with Apple Music about her Grammy nominations
Zane Lowe: You got the Grammys coming up, most nominations you've ever received, which I know that we just talked about the competitive nature of music and the idea of authenticity and everything else, but I always think that they speak to the team. It's not just about you, right? It must be something you feel very proud of to be honored like that even before the ceremony, just on behalf of all the work everybody puts in.
Lady Gaga: Oh, yeah to be there with my partner, Michael, and all the musicians that played on the album and everything, I'm just excited to be there man. You know what I mean? I know it's a competition, but I'm just really happy to be there and I feel really grateful to be celebrated for my musicianship after all these years. And it's also really fun because we started out last year, you and I talking about Harlequin, my jazz record and to be there for both albums is really cool because they're so vastly different. They do kind of inherently thrive in chaos and misunderstood ladies. And we did a lot of really cool stuff with Harlequin that really kind of got me in the zone for the show that we put on with MAYHEM. Jazz music, it's a totally different animal and I feel really grateful for all the different genres of music and all the different pockets I get to play in because it's kind of like jumping into different galaxies and you can really kind of get lost somewhere else completely.
Lady Gaga tells Apple Music about making jazz music without Tony Bennett
Jazz music is like, what I love about it is you are inherently breaking it the whole time. Kind of your ability to love it comes from how much you're going to explore it, how much you're going to mess it up and break it. So I think that that's a music too, that I will kind of forever be a student and I can't wait to do more. And yeah, Harlequin was my first moment without Tony. And I don't know what Tony would've thought of it. I think he was always so sweet. Whenever I thought he wasn't going to like something, he would go, "Wow." He was kind of like the most punk rock because he was really into art.
And yeah, whenever I thought he was going to think something was too much, he would really be fascinated by it. And so that changes the way I approach jazz music for sure. So yeah, I'm excited for the fans to eventually see more of what we have been cooking up.
Lady Gaga talks with Apple Music about new music, teasing a potential collaboration with The Weekend
Zane Lowe: Everybody wants to know, is there something coming with you and Abel?
Lady Gaga: I love Abel, and that's all I'm going to say. I'm a huge fan of Abel.
Zane Lowe: That's beautiful. It's all we need.
