Trivia / Lady Gaga

• Artist Disillusionment: In around 08-09, she was worried that her over-the-top sexual lyrics and stage antics were inappropriate with the relatively little benefit she perceived women derive from sex.
• Ascended Fanon: In 2009, rumors circulated on the internet that Gaga was either a hermaphrodite or a transsexual. When these rumors reached Gaga, she pointedly refused to deny them… until the Telephone video came out and she flashed her genitals at the camera.
  Prison guard: I told you she didn't have a dick.
• Banned in China:
  • Gaga's album Born This Way is banned in Lebanon because it, as officials say, is "offensive to Christianity" (mostly due to "Judas").
  • Following threats by Islamic fundamentalists, Gaga's scheduled performance in Indonesia was cancelled due to security concerns.
  • Born This Way was temporarily banned due to the religious themes of the song above, "Marry The Night", "Bloody Mary", and "Electric Chapel".
  • Now as of mid-2016, she's actually banned in China despite her previous success in the nation due to sharing photographs with her and the Dalai Lama on Instagram, and even sharing an interview together. Not only that, but the 2019 Oscars Awards were censored by having her face blurred!
• Breakthrough Hit: "Just Dance", which marked her shift from being Stefani into being Gaga.
• Bury Your Art: In 2019, she stated that she regretted working with R. Kelly for the single "Do What U Want", following the allegations against him, calling it an example of how "explicitly twisted" her mind was at the time, and vowed to have the song removed from iTunes and all other streaming services following the release of Surviving R. Kelly, a documentary detailing Kelly's crimes. The only available version of the song still readily available online is a remix featuring Christina Aguilera, which was released mere months after the original R. Kelly version, but otherwise has nothing to do with him.
• Career Resurrection: Joanne and its more understated, intimate style compared to past albums, along with her first collaboration with Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek, gathered newfound favor for her after the polarizing Artpop was criticized as old hat. Gaga's albums afterwards, such as Chromatica and Love for Sale (the latter being another collaboration with Bennett, and his last before his death) also were huge successes, and she also has branched out into acting beginning with A Star Is Born (2018).
• Content Leak: The first single from the Artpop album "Applause" was released earlier than planned as it had already been leaked multiple times.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Gaga's song "Do What U Want", a duet with R. Kelly, was controversial enough when it came out given both its sexualized lyrics and the rumors that Kelly was a predatory pedophile (prevalent even then, especially after a well-publicized trial in 2008 that ended in an acquittal), but at the time, Gaga dismissed the rumors. Then came the 2019 documentary Surviving R. Kelly, which detailed Kelly's crimes and set off a chain of events that ended with Kelly going to prison. After watching the documentary, Gaga stated that she regretted ever working with Kelly, calling it an example of how "explicitly twisted" her mind was at the time, and had the song removed from digital music services and all new pressings of Artpop, the album it was released on. The only version that Gaga and most of her fans will acknowledge is a remix that replaces Kelly's verses with new ones by Christina Aguilera.
  • Redid her entire stage show after it didn't go where she wanted it to go, and was generally unhappy with it. After already doing the show for about a month. Went from "evolution in a box X top of the pops" to "getting to my own show in New York X Theater".
  • She doesn't like the music video of "Telephone", saying that while she greatly enjoyed working with Beyoncé, the video had simply too many ideas that she wished she had the foresight to trim down.
• Doing It for the Art: She has stated that even if all of her success went away, she would still be happy back where she started, performing her music in bars.
• Dye Hard: She's naturally brunette, but bleached her hair in her early days when people mistook her for Amy Winehouse. Now that Winehouse has passed, she went back to having brunette phases but has since returned to being blonde.
• Fan Community Nicknames: Little Monsters. In a bit of Misaimed Fandom, some have have also started calling themselves Government Hookers.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Gaga had the original R. Kelly version of "Do What U Want" taken completely out of circulation in 2019 due to the sexual abuse allegations against Kelly, being removed from all streaming services, and all physical copies of Artpop pressed after November 2019 don't include the song. The Christina Aguilera remix is still available as Christina's vocals replace Kelly's in that version.
• Promoted Fangirl: She boasts that there is no Madonna fan bigger than her, and she has shared the stage with Madonna a few times. Though she has feuded with her in the past, she's also not put up with interviewers that have tried to deliberately pit her against Madonna. She is also a keen Britney fan, and was going to give Telephone to her. They may do a duet in the future.
• Release Date Change: Chromatica was originally due to be released on April 10, 2020. In late March it was delayed due to logistical issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was released on May 28th.
• Romance on the Set: With Taylor Kinney, who played her love interest in the music video of "Yoü and I", but they have since separated.
• Schedule Slip: In February 2013 she sustained a hip injury that required surgery and was forced to cancel the remainder of her tour as a result.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Subverted. This YouTube video is, to quote the video's title, "Vintage Lady Gaga". This is what Stefani Germanotta was like before she became Lady Gaga. However, if you look closely, you'll notice she essentially looks like a more voluptuous Sara Bareilles and plays like Norah Jones. So, if she didn't become Lady Gaga, then we'd have on our hands a sort of Broken Fanbase calling her a clone of those two artists. Taken from the opposite point of view, "Stefani Germanotta" might have been an example of Clark Kenting. Gaga's contemporaries – including a few of her critics, such as fellow NYU grad Lindsay Ellis – can testify that her weirdness isn't an act. However, on a few rare occasions, Lady Gaga will still give performances like in that YouTube video.
  • Then there's the question of whether she would've been half as successful if she kept going that route instead of doing the crazy stuff she's known for. (The answer to that question is "No, she wouldn't be", by the way.)
  • Sadly, played straight since Michael Jackson really wanted to work with her before he passed away.
  • Also, apparently, "Just Dance" was originally written as a hard rock song.
  • She originally wrote "Telephone" for Britney Spears who recorded a demo version but this was left off her The Singles Collection album. [1].
  • Given the Latin overtones and references in the lyrics, you'd think the video for Alejandro would reflect it at least to some extent.
  • Blowback from the incident at the VMAs lead to the cancellation of the Fame Kills tour with Kanye West.
  • The Edge of Glory's music video. Reportedly, the video was to include a Latin Lover that would kiss Lady Gaga, fashionable medics, a news reporter akin to the one on Telephone and a bunch of military men packing M16s. What we actually got was the result of a dispute between Gaga and Joseph Kahn, one of the video's producers.
  • Island Def Jam was the original label that she was working with, but was let go when (now former) president L.A. Reid wasn't impressed with her first cut demo. Reid now says he wished he gave her another chance.
  • Before she was famous, she was to be part of the Girl Group No Secrets when one of their members left. But the deal fell through and nothing came of it.
  • She recorded a duet with Cher titled "The Greatest Thing" in 2012 for the latter's comeback album Closer to the Truth but neither were satisfied with the result. A demo of the duet was leaked in August 2013.
  • ARTPOP was going to have a follow-up titled ARTPOP (Act II), which was scheduled for a 2014 release and was going songs left over from the album including "Princess Die". It didn't get released due to Gaga releasing Cheek to Cheek, her collaboration with Tony Bennett instead.
  • Early in Calvin Harris' career, Gaga asked him if he wanted to work with her. Unfortunately due to Gaga not being quite as popular as she is now, Calvin declined the offer because he wasn't interested, and her name sounded stupid to him.
  • "Do What U Want" had a video filmed, but it never got released due to mounting backlash against R. Kelly, and being directed by Terry Richardson who also had allegations of sexual abuse against him.
  • SOPHIE was heavily hinted at doing production work on Chromatica from as early as 2018, and while this was confirmed by album producer BloodPop, their collaborations with her didn't make it onto the final album. BloodPop desired to finish those songs and release them down the line, though with SOPHIE's unexpected death in 2021, the future of such plans remain uncertain.
  • "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich" was supposed to be the second single off The Fame, and even had a music video in production, but her label convinced her to release "Poker Face" as the second single instead. Gaga would later finish the video and put it up on her YouTube channel after Fame's promotional run ended.
  • A song called "Nothing On (But The Radio)" was left off of Born This Way (later getting leaked online), which ended up getting recorded by Addison Rae of all people nearly a decade later in 2022… only for her version to also get leaked online, though her version did end up eventually being officially released in 2023.
• Word of God: In an interview with Australian radio, Lady Gaga said most of the placements were gratuitously placed there as a comment on American society. Apparently you are meant to feel sick by the end of the clip; that's authorial intent. On the other hand, given it's Gaga, one cannot rule out mind-altering drugs or Schrodinger's Intent as the real reason for these items being there.
• Working Title: "Dope" was "I Wanna Be With You" and "Aura" was "Burqa".
  • Chromatica was originally going to be titled Free Woman.

---