Gaga is featured in this month’s issue of Costco Connection. She sits down for a rather brief, face-to-face chat with the magazine and discusses her definition of fame, her journey to where she is today and more! Check out the interview after the jump.
She Was Born This Way By Gary Graff
It’s gutsy to call your first album The Fame before you’re, well, famous. But Lady Gaga knew what she was talking about.
Since her debut in 2008, the multimedia pop auteur (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in Yonkers, New York) has sold more than 15 million copies of her two albums and 51 million singles worldwide, topping the charts with hits such as “Just Dance,” “Poker Face” and “Born This Way.” The last is the title track of her new album and the fastest-selling single in iTunes history, moving a million cop- ies in just five days. Five Grammys are among the 104 awards she’s won around the globe.
Her Monster Ball Tour was one of the most successful of 2010 and is on target to gross nearly $200 million worldwide. She took Kermit the Frog as her date to the MTV Video Music Awards. Elton John likes her so much he made her godmother to his son.
Gaga, 25, is perhaps the most provocative pop star since Madonna, and with the same sensation-causing knack for outrageous fash- ions (for the record, that raw meat jacket she wore to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards was not made from Kirkland Signature beef), envelope-pushing performances and the occasional juicy media quote. But as she sings on the song “Born This Way,” it’s what she feels she was meant to do.
The Costco Connection caught up with Lady Gaga for a face-to-face interview.
Costco Connection: What’s your definition of fame?Since her debut in 2008, the multimedia pop auteur (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in Yonkers, New York) has sold more than 15 million copies of her two albums and 51 million singles worldwide, topping the charts with hits such as “Just Dance,” “Poker Face” and “Born This Way.” The last is the title track of her new album and the fastest-selling single in iTunes history, moving a million cop- ies in just five days. Five Grammys are among the 104 awards she’s won around the globe.
Her Monster Ball Tour was one of the most successful of 2010 and is on target to gross nearly $200 million worldwide. She took Kermit the Frog as her date to the MTV Video Music Awards. Elton John likes her so much he made her godmother to his son.
Gaga, 25, is perhaps the most provocative pop star since Madonna, and with the same sensation-causing knack for outrageous fash- ions (for the record, that raw meat jacket she wore to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards was not made from Kirkland Signature beef), envelope-pushing performances and the occasional juicy media quote. But as she sings on the song “Born This Way,” it’s what she feels she was meant to do.
The Costco Connection caught up with Lady Gaga for a face-to-face interview.
Lady Gaga: What I’ve learned is that you really don’t need to be a celebrity or have money or have the paparazzi following you around to be famous. Me and my friends just simply declared fame on our own, and we made art and we said, “This is the future,” and we dressed in a way that says, “This is fashion.” It was our confidence and our conviction and our abilities—and our vanity—to be the lit- mus test of pop culture, and having that be in every fiber of our being. You can talk about it all day, but it’s not true unless you do it.
CC: Did you grow up in an artsy household?
LG: Yes. My mother was in theater when she was young, and my father did some music in high school. They just were very supportive of anything creative I wanted to do, whether it was playing piano or being in plays or taking method acting, which I did when I was 11. They liked that I was a motivated young person.
CC: You went to parochial schools. Is your art a rebellion against that?
LG: No, it was actually helpful. I got a tre- mendous education, and they taught us to be independent as women. I had a really won- derful childhood. I had a rough couple of years at certain points, but why would I focus on those years?
CC: You’ve done a lot of outrageous things, especially onstage. Are you ever apprehensive that those will repel rather than attract an audience?
LG: I think that’s always what drew people to me. I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, truthfully, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.
CC: What makes pop music the best vehicle for you?
LG: Because it was the most provocative thing that I could do in the underground scene. Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, “What kind of music do you make?” and you say, “Pop music.” You might as well have “I’m not cool” stamped on your forehead. So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre of music that everybody who’s cool hates— and then making it cool.
CC: You started off writing songs for Britney Spears, Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls, New Kids on the Block. Were there ever moments of despair about getting your own career going?
LG: Of course there were. But a record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist. If you only believe that you’re an art- ist when you have a big [financial] advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.
CC: So now that there is success, and fame, what kind of pressure do you feel as you take your next steps?
LG: I’m very hard on myself—very hard. The pressure is more personal than anything, and I know when I’ve done a great job and I know when I haven’t. But [Born This Way] is my best work, and it was a true labor of love and blood, sweat and tears.
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