- 7 weeks ago
Lady Gaga goes deep on the music that has soundtracked her life in Rolling Stone's new video series 'My Life in 10 Songs.' "When you find records that help you understand or see yourself, that's pretty powerful," Gaga tells Rolling Stone.
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00:00Hi, this is Lady Gaga, and this is my life in 10 songs or more.
00:11One of the first songs that I chose kind of instantly was Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen.
00:21Springsteen has influenced me my whole career.
00:24My album Born This Way was heavily influenced by Bruce Springsteen.
00:28Bruce had a very particular kind of grit and soulfulness,
00:32and when I was making Born This Way I thought a lot about how to incorporate who I really am into my music,
00:38even more than I did during the Fame.
00:40The Fame was an album that was more about my dream for myself.
00:44Born This Way was more of an album that was looking back on like a particular time in my life.
00:49I think I fell in love with New York all over again through Bruce's music
00:54because of the proximity to New Jersey and, you know, that whole kind of like area,
00:59even Billy Joel being kind of like the other side of that.
01:02I think the music that affected me the most in my life happened pretty early.
01:07I feel like those formative years when you're first discovering music
01:10is when you're like a sponge and you kind of soak everything up.
01:13I remember feeling like I was learning about my dad through the song
01:18because my dad is from New Jersey.
01:20Bruce is from Jersey.
01:21It was the way that he told his life story.
01:25It was incredibly visual and poetic.
01:27You know, the record is kind of one long poem.
01:30It doesn't have all the qualities actually of other kind of soulful Americana songs.
01:35It's got this like unique fingerprint.
01:38I think this is for me where I realized that music could help you get to know
01:43not only yourself but someone else better.
01:45So my dad used to play it for me in the living room when I was a kid.
01:49My dad used to sing it to me like as if he knew I was going to grow up one day
01:53and like leave him behind.
01:54In a way, I think Bruce is singing that like Mary's going to leave everyone behind in this.
01:59It's always kind of what I made up about it is that it was a song that was romanticizing the past
02:10but in this way where you kind of have this beautiful memory of how you let things go.
02:14Nicotine and Gravy by Beck.
02:21I definitely fell in love with Beck in high school but then even more when I left school
02:27I sort of became like obsessed with his music.
02:30Midnight Vultures, Guero, Gueralito, Odile.
02:33I mean, I was like so into him as an artist.
02:37He is just like such an innovative artist.
02:40He has a unique kind of like ability to navigate himself through so many different genres of music
02:47with like a lot of fun and humor but it's serious business, you know?
02:52It's like you have to be like really proficient to do it.
02:55Nicotine and Gravy I just always loved because it was just so much fun.
02:58It was so creative and it was so imaginative
03:01and it had this style and this swagger and this sound that was so uniquely him.
03:12I think Nicotine and Gravy was like a song that was about kind of like falling in love with the fantasy of somebody.
03:17It was really fun and kind of wild but my understanding of that song actually changed the older that I got with the release of more of his music.
03:27This was a very different Beck.
03:29When I look back on Midnight Vultures it had kind of this like youthful quality to it that was about exploratory and voyeuristic way of life.
03:38And then I think Morning Phase was really about healing and about stillness and calm.
03:42For me, Nicotine and Gravy really spoke to who I was as a, you know, 19 year old living on the Lower East Side and kind of getting my kicks with the locals.
03:51I looked back on it going like, oh, he changed.
03:54I would say the way that it affected my life the most is that watching Beck change made me feel like I wanted to change.
04:00I was born this way, Carl Bean is a record that a friend of mine, Jeppe Larson, brought to me when I was like in my early twenties.
04:12And it was before I wrote Born This Way.
04:20I learned all about him and his life and he was this pastor in California that was incredibly inspiring and he had this career in music.
04:29And he made this amazing song that was so inspiring to the LGBTQ plus community.
04:35And he was such a force and a leader.
04:37I was so inspired by that song.
04:39I heard it and I was like, I wonder if there's a way to like flip this into like a modern pop record.
04:45So I worked with Jeppe on it and we got to work.
04:47But I think it's like kind of this classic record that is so important.
04:51And it's so meaningful to me too because the entire energy around Born This Way, my song, entirely depended upon the song.
05:00The genesis of this gave way to something that I think for me is the most important record of my whole career.
05:11Not just for me artistically, but for what it means.
05:14And every night that I play it, I think about Carl Beane and I think about I Was Born This Way.
05:23Inicata da Vida is a song by Iron Butterfly that my mom played for me when I was, I think in high school.
05:31Don't you know that I'm loving you?
05:36I had been like writing songs that were kind of like fantasy with like nonsensical words in it.
05:43And my mom was like, you got to hear this song.
05:45I think they were like really drunk in the studio and they were trying to like sing in the Garden of Eden.
05:51And then it came out as Inicata da Vida.
05:53And then they kept it that way.
05:55So I thought that was always, I don't know, just really cool.
05:57And I know it like stuck in the back of my mind that you could make a hit record with words that you make up.
06:04That definitely stayed with me through like all my music and then like made a comeback for Abracadabra.
06:09Some version of real words, but not really.
06:11When I am writing songs, I'm listening to something that's coming to me in my head and then I'm putting it down.
06:25Usually the way I hear it is the way I want it.
06:28It's got to evoke a feeling.
06:30It has to be catchy and it has to be fun.
06:33The most honest thing I could say about it is that I like, I'm hearing something in my head as we're writing and I got to get it down.
06:39Usually the way I hear it is the way I want it.
06:41Watch That Man by David Bowie is a record that was on my turntables in my kitchen on the Lower East Side.
06:56I had my two turntables and that vinyl up every day and every morning I put it on.
07:01I really discovered David Bowie through my friend Lady Starlight.
07:05You know, I would kind of like vent to her in my apartment and just say like, I play out and I, you know, was like hustling with record labels and executives.
07:14And they would say, yeah, you know, you have an amazing voice, but you know, you're really theatrical.
07:20It's pop, but it's, you know, it's really theater.
07:22And then I would like audition for musicals and, you know, theatrical productions and then be like, you know, you're very pop.
07:28I had this like conundrum as a young person.
07:32I was like a little too or not enough something.
07:35She like said to me, she goes, you know, David Bowie was very theatrical and David Bowie.
07:42I started to kind of try to understand him as an artist and delved into his music.
07:47The album Aladdin Sane is like a very, very amazing album.
07:52I felt like I identified with it, like that feeling of like leaving your apartment and walking down the street.
07:58I had such a dream of making something of myself that it became kind of like this pump up song for me.
08:05My love of David Bowie just like, it just like deepened from there.
08:08But I would say that that was one of the first songs.
08:11And then I'll add a song, a song called Hey Little Girl by the Heavy Metal Kids, which is like this really camp metal band.
08:18I used to listen to like kind of coupled with Watch That Man.
08:26It sort of had this like, I don't know, this like theatrical cabaret rock thing to it.
08:32And then I would listen to the Dresden Dolls and I would listen to Franz Ferdinand.
08:36That kind of music had a huge influence on me as I was gearing up to make my first album.
08:43David Bowie and the musicians that I just mentioned, they were like forming like a way of thinking about music in my head.
08:51When you find records that like help you understand or see yourself or they become like the sound chuck to you and your friend group, that's pretty powerful.
08:59There was this idea that like you could be kind of like rough around the edges and still glamorous.
09:05And at the time that meant a lot to me because I didn't really have much to offer other than the music I was making and all the jobs I was working.
09:14So that was pretty cool.
09:16And then that actually led me also to Semi Precious Weapons, who was headed by Justin Tranter.
09:22And they had a song called, I Can't Pay My Rent But I'm Fucking Gorgeous.
09:25That was like a huge hit in our local community.
09:33And I like adore them so much.
09:36And I used to go to their shows.
09:38I got like, you know, asked to open for them.
09:41And that was like this huge deal for me that that happened.
09:44And then all of that music that I just mentioned was like happening for me at like a formative time.
09:49Like as I was making my first album, I chose Superstition by Stevie Wonder.
09:54I also could have chosen Signed, Sealed, Delivered.
10:03I could have chosen I Wish.
10:05I loved and still love Stevie Wonder so much.
10:08And his records were among the earliest ones I ever listened to.
10:12And I think it was kind of his abundance of joy.
10:16I always felt in his music that he wanted everyone to be happy.
10:19That was something I started to notice was like different and who was available to share their joy with the listener.
10:26And who was kind of like maybe more tortured in a different way.
10:30Specifically from Superstition, that bass line is like one of the most exciting bass lines I'd ever heard in my whole life.
10:37I started just to think about music differently.
10:40Listening to Stevie Wonder helped me to kind of think about how I could compose differently.
10:44It's like the kind of music that you have to like seep into your bones and your soul until it like finds its way into something true that's authentic to you.
10:51But I definitely like had my moments on Mayhem where I was thinking about him.
10:59Tapestry by Carole King was just like an amazing like album actually.
11:04It was just like unlike any way that I had heard a woman write before.
11:17She just was this like amazing writer.
11:20I had first fallen in love with Carole King through You've Got a Friend, James Taylor.
11:24And when I was really bullied in high school, I listened to Carole King's music and I always felt her voice and her songs are like a warm hug.
11:32And I think because I played piano and I wrote songs that I saw like a path for myself and I really just looked up to her.
11:39And I would also listen to like, you know, like totally different types of artists.
11:44Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Dinah Washington and Ella Fitzgerald, Anna James.
11:50That's kind of how I experienced music.
11:52It's like, it's like a web in my mind of like all the artists that I loved, their records and then like how each record led me to another one.
12:00I would say another thing that Carole King taught me was it can be good to think about another artist while you're writing.
12:06Imagining a superstar singing the song.
12:08Cause I'll go like, is this good enough for someone else?
12:11What might be good enough for me may not be good enough for someone else.
12:14I thought she was such an incredible vocalist.
12:17And then I learned how many songs she had written for other people.
12:21That kind of taught me too, about being an artist that your song should be so good that, you know, you don't have to sing them.
12:27So it like raises the bar.
12:28And his hand came down empty.
12:33Dinah Washington is one of my absolute favorite jazz singers.
12:39She has like this very sweet, but humorous quality to her voice.
12:44She just makes me like smile and giggle and feel it so deeply.
12:48And what a difference a day makes was written by Maria Grever.
12:52It is an absolutely beautiful song about how you can just be so down and out and it just takes one day to get you back.
13:06I sung it a lot in my jazz shows.
13:08I didn't sing it on tour with Tony Bennett.
13:10I kind of like discovered it later.
13:12I think I found a bit of myself, you know, as a solo jazz singer without Tony with that song, just personally.
13:18When you hear Tony sing his records, the standards that he chooses at his shows, he had like, you know, arrangements that he loved and it was like Tony's jazz.
13:28Part of what makes me a jazz singer is what I select to sing and what arrangements and why.
13:33And sometimes you like find old arrangements that you like fall in love with or you like make entirely new ones or you modernize them or you change something.
13:41It's what you select and how you choose to sing it that makes you who you are.
13:46I would say what a difference a day makes was extremely important to me because it was Dinah's Charts that I sang when I first did it.
13:54And it's kind of like what was my voice, you know, without Tony.
13:58And I was just starting to do that.
13:59So it was, yeah, kind of very special to me.
14:01And the difference is you.
14:06So What by Miles Davis.
14:07Well, this is another great like segue into like how I learned as a young artist.
14:14It's how you think about music and that everybody can think about music differently.
14:17It was the way that Miles thought about music that I was like really moved by as a young person.
14:29His album Kind of Blue was like critical.
14:32And this was long before I ever met Tony.
14:34And it was much earlier in my life that led me to John Coltrane and Giant Steps and to Thelonious Monk, Count Basie, Duke Ellington.
14:42So like all of this music kind of like fed into each other.
14:46You start to realize that jazz is something that you have to learn it.
14:49You have to also be willing to learn about yourself.
14:51You're funneling, you know, your desire to speak through somebody else's composition.
14:57And then the way that you do it is what makes it yours.
15:01Jazz without vocals was like very profound for me.
15:05Like it allowed me to kind of actually step away from the beauty of the vocalist and focus on the beauty of these players.
15:11But I loved So Wet.
15:14I love So Wet.
15:19Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil.
15:26To me, Sympathy for the Devil had like a speed of rock and roll that I hadn't heard before.
15:30When I see different speed of rock and roll too, it was also so different from like Led Zeppelin and Whole Lotta Love.
15:35Thank You was a softer record, but you know, it didn't have like the same kind of like coolness that Sympathy for the Devil has.
15:43Thank You was like a more sincere love song.
15:45Pink Floyd, they were like more hallucinogenic in their music.
15:49Money was a song that had a huge effect on me.
15:52It was like one of the first records that I remember listening to.
15:55My dad put it on and I said, Dad, is that a cash register?
15:59And he was like, yeah.
16:00And I was like, but why?
16:01It's music.
16:06I think I really was always like fascinated with how you can style rock and roll differently.
16:10I love Thank You by Led Zeppelin because they had, you know, this like razor sharp, loud, just kind of epic music.
16:20And then Thank You is just like quieter and it's pretty and it's so sincere.
16:31It was kind of like, you know, learning that the unattainable rock and roll God could like really love you.
16:37There was like a human being underneath the legend of it all.
16:41This idea of like drama and theatricality in music and then sincerity.
16:47I think those are two things that kind of yin yang for me.
16:50Every time I saw these like amazing artists do something unexpected,
16:54it just reminded me that they were doing it because they love artistry and they love music so much.
17:00And they were like exploring it as if it was uncharted territory.
17:04Like they just wanted to know what was in the world of music.
17:08In the history of like music artists like time and time again were like criticized for not giving the audience,
17:16maybe the thing the audience fell in love with to begin with and like doing something new.
17:20I found it really always exciting and fascinating and interesting and cool.
17:25And on my album mayhem, I like returned to a sound I created for myself.
17:30I think the reason I did that was because something that I created earlier in my career was new for me.
17:37And I think that like my deviations from it were like a combination of wanting to be unexpected and also not wanting to be told who to be.
17:46Tear You Apart by She Wants Revenge is a song that I just like fell in love with when I was like 18 years old.
17:56Tear You Apart by She Wants Revenge
18:02At that same time, I was really into The Cure while also listening to She Wants Revenge at the same time.
18:07So like those two kind of happened at the same time for me.
18:11This kind of more electronic thing was starting to percolate for me.
18:17I think something about living on Stanton Street and the clubs I was going to.
18:22What's funny is that the clubs I was going to, a lot of them were playing metal records,
18:26but I would listen to She Wants Revenge and The Cure when I was at home in Depeche Mode.
18:30That was kind of like my internal soundtrack to what the DJs were playing.
18:35My favorite The Cure song was Never Enough.
18:39And I just like am obsessed with the production on that song.
18:48I love the song also, but the production on it is just like something else.
18:52I also I think I related it to kind of that time in my life.
18:55I like couldn't stop partying.
18:57I mean, I was writing songs and partying and that's all like on a loop.
19:01So I think that song was also kind of like the soundtrack to my routine.
19:06So I put Stress by Justice on here too because French electronic music was something that I discovered more when I moved to California.
19:19They are just like so incredibly brilliant and talented.
19:24And I remember I kind of learned about them for the first time watching the video and listening to the record.
19:31The production was so unique and so special.
19:36And the video was extremely anxiety inducing.
19:44This was like a new thing for me.
19:46I somehow felt like I deeply understood it.
19:50It almost had like a motivational grit to it.
19:53The music would like really pump me and like amp me up.
19:57I started to think a lot about like aggression in music and how beats can really change the way you experience the song.
20:05Because if you like think of it, the song is separate from the production.
20:09I put that record on here because I can't actually even think of like a time in my career that I didn't think about Justice when I was making music.
20:17It had to do with that like unique specialness.
20:20That thing that only, only they had.
20:23That's more than ten.
20:24And I could go on and on and on.
20:26I'll be right back.
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