“I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t even tell myself for the longest time”
Lady Gaga opened up about a past sexual assault while speaking with Howard Stern in an interview on Tuesday. The singer was talking about her song called “Swine,” and her performance at SXSW when she rode a mechanical bull and then got vomited on by an artist. Gaga said the song was about rape, demoralization and pain.
She said the message she wanted to convey was: “You can never ever degrade me as much as I can degrade myself and look at how beautiful it is when I do.” Stern repeatedly asked her if she had been raped. At first, Gaga tried to move past the question but eventually she responded, saying she has gone through some “horrific things” but has been able to heal over the years after a lot of “mental and physical therapy.”
“I was a shell of my former self at one point,” said the singer, adding that she was “naive” and 19 at the time, and that an older music industry executive took advantage of her. Gaga said that she was very traumatized by the assault, and that it took her multiple years before she could even admit that anything had happened.
“I didn’t tell anybody,” she said, “I didn’t even tell myself for the longest time.”
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Gaga said it’s important to her that she not be defined by the rape. “I’ll be damned if somebody’s gonna say that every creatively intelligent thing I ever did is all boiled down to one dickhead that did that to me.”
Listen to her interview below.
