Lady Gaga reveals she used to ‘get depressed’ from waking up and remembering she was herself

Lady Gaga used to ‘get depressed’ at the thought of being herself while dealing with a deep depression before the making of her new album Chromatica. 

The pop star/actress, 34, shed light on some of her darkest hours in a revealing new profile for Billboard, telling the magazine how her mind would sour the moment she got up in the morning.

‘I used to wake up every day and remember I was Lady Gaga — and then I would get depressed,’ the 5foot2 talent – real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – revealed.

The emotions came from a mix of things, the Rain On Me singer explained, born from the messy place between denial and self-realization.

‘I was peeling all the layers of the onion in therapy,’ she told Billboard’s Nolan Feeney, ‘So as you dig deeper, you get closer to the core, and the core of the onion stinks.’ 

And Gaga wasn’t ready to deal with the pain yet, and instead fought the depression with ‘hours’ of chain-smoking, sobbing and drinking.

‘My existence in and of itself was a threat to me,’ she explained. ‘I thought about really dark sh** every single day.’

When the diva’s inner circle suggested help like self-care or a getaway, Gaga would dismiss the ideas outright.

She made excuses about how she was trapped by fame, unable to do anything normal – pulling what she now calls her Lady Gaga card.

‘It’s the one where you go, “I’m Lady Gaga, you don’t understand what it feels like, I want to dress how I want and be who I am without people noticing, why does everybody have to notice, I’m so sad, I don’t even know why anymore, why are you making me talk about it?”‘

That thought trap is something she’s been able to subdue over time explaining, ‘I gave that up in therapy.’

But it wasn’t until the A Star Is Born ingenue got back into the studio that she started to feel more and more like herself.

While writing songs, Gaga said she ‘would cry and go, “There it is — hi! How’s it going? Why do you got to hide?”

She latched onto those feelings, explaining how she learned to value even the smallest accomplishments.

‘If there’s one glimmer inside you, celebrate it,’ the New Yorker said, also showing her instinct to share that knowledge with the legions of fans she calls her Little Monsters.

‘When you find another one, celebrate it,’ Gaga went on. ‘One more? Call a friend: “I did this today. I’m winning.”‘

While making Chromatica helped pull her out of a fog, getting the dance-homage album to fans was another story. 

Her grand release plans were quickly shelved after life as we know it shuttered as the coronavirus swept through the globe, pushing the album’s April 10th release day to May 29th.

But instead of sinking back into that dark place, Gaga pushed herself to inspire.

‘When I see people struggling like they are right now, My brain goes, “Put on your superhero suit. Let’s go.”‘

For Gaga, that’s meant working around the pandemic and continuing to share her art with the world.

On May 22nd, just days before Chromatica, she released the blockbuster music video for Rain On Me, her collaboration with Ariana Grande. 

The video has since earned 214million views on YouTube and along with the album is all but guaranteed to be a darling of the 2021 Grammy Awards, which are currently set for the end of January.

Gaga’s kept the creative momentum going, revealing that the video for the song 911 – a dark electropop track about her relationship with her antipsychotic meds – was shot back in August.

Creating the video forced the singer to revisit some the demons haunting her while writing 911, something she found more liberating than painful.

‘Freedom for me is when I can go to the darkest part of my heart,’ Gaga said, wrapping the interview, ‘Visit things that are hard and then leave them behind. Give them to the world, and spin all the pain into a puddle of gold.’