Lady Gaga Gets Candid on ‘Exhausting’ Experience of Being a ‘Woman and a Product’ at the Same Time in Pop Music

Quite a bit of pressure comes along with being Lady Gaga.

In a new Elle cover story interview, the Grammy and Oscar winner opened up about how the music industry landscape has changed for pop stars since her first album, The Fame, came out in 2008.

“I’ve been in this business for years,” Gaga, 38, told the outlet. “Being a woman and a product at the same time was really exhausting.”

These days, the “Die with a Smile” singer looks to artists like Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli xcx who’ve experienced major breakthroughs in recent years and admires how “strong and vibrant and creative and artistic” they are.

“They’re amazing,” she says of the group, adding: “I think they’re being celebrated because they’re wonderful.”

Roan, 26, previously revealed Gaga contacted her to discuss the hardships that come along with fame, and the “Born This Way” artist dished to Elle on the advice she’d give younger pop artists — “that the whole you matters,” she explained.

“Who you are at home is just as valuable as who you are when you’re onstage,” said Gaga. “And no matter what anyone says to you, you can value who you are outside of all of this.”

The pop superstar recently announced her upcoming seventh album Mayhem, and she told the outlet its cover artwork (a black-and-white photo of her posing in a broken mirror) references the “radical acceptance” of both positive and negative aspects of fame.

“[I’m] having a lot of fun exploring imagery that is different from things that I’ve done before,” explained Gaga. “Things that used to really scare me are now really exciting.”

She cited “playing with transgressive and challenging themes that make me think of my own anxiety” as one such thing. “I couldn’t do that for a really long time,” said the Joker: Folie à Deux actress. “And now it’s just what I naturally want to do.”

Gaga continued, “It’s interesting that I could go through a period of being afraid as a person and wanting nothing to do with those themes and then feeling good now and being like, ‘Let’s do all this dark stuff.’”

While she used to spend a lot of time “looking for an out” from the pressures of her career, Gaga noted that today she’s focused on “being present.”

“As an artist, it’s hard to go through that and not want to share that with my fans,” she said.

Mayhem is set for a March 7 release via Streamline and Interscope Records.

Source people.com