Lady Gaga in Singapore

Interview conducted at Fairmont Hotel when Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) was in town recently for her concert in Singapore. Transcript, reporting, videos and photos provided by my friend and ex-colleague, Melvin Ryan Tan who interviewed her for Youth.SG.

Melvin actually requested Rachel to doll him up like Lady Gaga, specially for the press conference. He’s quite the Lady Gaga fan boy isn’t he? 🙂

Lady Gaga Press Conference
Fairmont Hotel Singapore
12 August 2009

Lady Gaga came to the press conference at 7.15pm in a dress with spikes, stockings with embroidery and a pair of black crazy heels. After the presentation of her album’s platinum plaque, the press conference properly began.

Q: You’re going on tour with Kanye West later this year, both of you’ve really big personalities, do you think there’ll be a personality clash?

Lady Gaga: No, we’re very good friends and I was so delighted and honoured to join him as a co-headliner. He offered me to share the stage with him which really shows how pioneering he is as an artiste. I adore Kanye; there will be no problems, we’ll be cheering backstage.

Q: Where are you guys going to be touring and what can we expect from the show?

Lady Gaga: All over the United States. I have to say with concerts, as someone who has analysed and been a lover of music and touring, what we’re going to do is change the landscape of what it means to tour.

Q: Your debut album is called “The Fame” and you’re famous all around the world. Is that what you really want when you began in this industry?

Lady Gaga: The album “The Fame” is not about the stereotypical idea of fame that you read about in tabloids or magazines; it’s about the artistic fame, the intrinsic fame, penniless, cameraless, something that you experience with your friends when you go out and you have a drink and you guys feel on top of the world. It’s something that I really want to give to young people. My album, more than anything, is a story about escapism in New York.

Q: How has new media and technology helped you connect with your fans?

Lady Gaga: That’s a very good question! I really embrace new media from the very beginning of my career. I embrace it so heavily that I paid as much attention and detail to my career on the Internet as I did to my career on television or my relationship with newspapers. I did a ton of Internet interviews, lots of Internet videos; I did short films that were only seen on the Internet and never on television. It’s a great way to connect with fans and build a community and subculture. That’s what I love about my fans. You’re a very good example. It’s very rare that you see fans that are so passionate about a pop artiste. My fans are all splitting images of one another. I’m sure you’ll make friends when you go to the show tonight.

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Q: What is the most memorable thing a fan has done for you?

Lady Gaga: It has happened a few times, maybe about fifteen times. My fans make me books. Very detailed, full leather filled with letters, photographs, poetry, sketches, art and they’re very long, and it must be about 200 pages long. It’s decorated with glitter and beads with information they know about me and I get them from all around the world wherever I go.

Q: Given the chance to perform with an artiste dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Lady Gaga: John Lennon. He was the single most influential musician in my life growing up. The Imagine Memorial which is a block away from where he was assassinated at The Dakota, is two blocks away from where I grew up my entire life. I used to walk past The Imagine Memorial everyday on the way home from high school and I listened to tons of The Beatles records and I actually am a very big fan of the John and Yoko era.

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Q: Do you think a good song must have a good chorus?

Lady Gaga: YES!

Q: You write amazing pop songs, you recently went to a karaoke session with The Veronicas and Perez Hilton [in Tokyo], what were the pop songs that you did?

Lady Gaga: The Veronicas weren’t there. But I was embarrassingly thrust onto the bar to do “Just Dance” and “Pokerface” which after a couple of drinks was very exciting.

Q: You’ll compete with Beyoncé at the MTV Video Music Awards 2009. How do you feel?

Lady Gaga: I’m excited! I’m very honoured to be nominated for so many awards; it’s my first MTV Music Awards and I put a lot of effort into my videos and they’re sort of my ‘creative children’ and I’m happy to be recognised for them. With the Haus of Gaga which is my creative team, we’ll surely be drinking whisky on the chairs and cheering for the award show. Very exciting!

Q: You mentioned before that while you’re not a feminist, you appreciate that women should be strong, sexual and allowed to speak their minds, so with the widening disparity in equality between the genders, what are some things that you think women should speak up against?

Lady Gaga: Women should speak up for whatever they like! I don’t think that women should be one way or the other, except for honesty and being true to themselves.

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Q: Your music is really socially and sexually liberated. You’ve a very strong opinion and it really shows that kind of lifestyle that is not common here. Do you find it challenging coming to a city where homosexuality is still illegal?

Lady Gaga: Homosexuality is illegal?

Q: Yeah…

Lady Gaga: WOW!

Q: Do you find it awkward coming here especially since you’ve a huge fan base in the gay community here and the whole world?

Lady Gaga: No it’s not awkward. Now I just can’t wait to get to the show now.

Q: You’re a style icon but would you say that you’ve something in your closet that your friends will find weird that you have?

Lady Gaga: *long pause* Toe shoes.

Q: Talking about clothes, recently at a press conference, you wore this Kermit the frog jacket and that attracted the attention of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and they expressed the interest in having you join the cause – ‘I’d rather go nude than wear fur’. Do you think you would be joining the cause?

Lady Gaga: We’ll see. I’m thinking about it. I truthfully, really love Jean Charles de Castelbajac who designed the jacket and I thought it was a very good comment on wearing or not wearing fur with a kind of morbid feel to the comment. So we’ll see, I don’t know yet and I’m still thinking about it. But I appreciate what PETA stands for.

Q: You’re known for your self-confidence. So do you think you’re famous?

Lady Gaga: I’m delusional. I thought I was much more famous but I never was. And now, the lie is true.

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Q: Would you ever wake up from it?

Lady Gaga: No… what it is, is a projection. It’s not a dream or that I’m asleep. The fame in my album is a very specific philosophy about the lifestyle and about New York City. The woman that you see right now, is not really me. It’s a projection of the woman that I want to be in the future. Everyday of your life you live your life in a way that inspires the image of what you would like to become. You’re never ever in a moment of regression. That’s what ‘The Fame’ is all about. I want to be a truly passionate and devoted artist.

Q: Can you give me five words to describe yourself?

Lady Gaga: New York. Passion. Relentless. B*tch. Artist.

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