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Gaga it's so good to see you how are you my friend how are you I'm doing good we missed you I miss you too I'm like trying to like work technology s sh that's what I'm trying to figure out getting back into the real world Listen
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congratulations um it is happening all this work that that you and and Todd and Wen and and the whole crew and everybody on your team and everybody on this expansive crew to make this film and make this music is now starting to come
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to fruition so much for having me on the show I'm so happy to see you too every time and anytime you know that um but how did it feel last night and and in the last few days gearing up to kind of let go because you've all been working
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so hard on this and now it's time to let go I'm like super ready for people to see the movie I'm so excited that it's going to be out on the 4th and uh I think I'm like even more nervous for Harley Quinn to come out because you
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know it's all the music from the film but it's all my versions and it's like completely original production and I put so much of my like heart and soul into it in so many different genres and like navigating my way also around some jazz
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inspired tunes that like it was my first time doing it without Tony as well and like that was really cool um so I'm just excited for everyone to to hear it you know it's such a cool and and so it's so you to do this to to embark on one
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discipline one exercise of of creativity and then to decide to be you know I'm inspired and and I now want to go and I want to take this deeper and I want to try this a different way and and so I'd love to talk to you a little about how
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you approached Halo Quin from the point of view because it's because the way I think it's being positioned at least to me is it's kind of it's LG 6.5 so it feels like it's like half Gaga and half Lee and sort of what is the balance here
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within the performance and the creative the creative aspect of this album between character and and you you know like I think that for me uh this idea of like identities was always something that was a part of my music making and I
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was always kind of like creating characters uh in my music and when I made leavee for Joker she just really had this profound effect on me and also you know the film so much music in it so much music that I love and I was able to
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discover the character you know through the story through um the the music that we did live every day as well as um dance and the costumes and the makeup so you know I kind of had this like this deep experience with the character and she just didn't really
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leave uh me creatively and I decided I wanted to make a whole album inspired by her she's like a really complex woman and I think particularly as a woman in music and a female producer it was really fun to go you know this album
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will be and I will be what I want when I decide whenever I feel like it if I want it to be Blues it'll be blues if I wanted to be Funk it'll be Funk if I wanted to be Soul it'll be Soul it sounds really free I mean it sounds
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really really fun as well like I can hear you performing on this album like at such a high level and loving every take yeah I I it was um it was really fun it was it was completely freeing because you know calling it LG 6.5 it's
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kind of not the whole into like pop music or maybe pop culture in like the same way that some of my other releases might be and it kind of gave it a freedom in that way um but to me a lot of this music also is what I would call
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like vintage Pop um like you know when all these great singers did these Tunes back in the day this was pop music and in fact you know when Fred is star and Ginger Rogers uh did did the classics as soon as they did them that was what got
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like any music into the Great American song book so there was like a top 40 back then it was just it was just formatted differently it's true and even even finishing with D's life um we now hold a voice like Frank Sinatra or a
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voice like Tony Bennett in this kind of hallowed Hall of Fame in terms of tone and power and passion but back then in the in their moment they were pop stars they definitely were and and but but and since then there has been like all the music in the Lexicon and
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there has been also a total shift vocally for pop and like all the different ways we express our voices in in rock and blues and gospel in church um in like in so much music so you know I think I was just excited that the
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freedom of the vocal on the album came from you know the character and and all the music that came you know after these Classics and kind of Smashing it all together that you know in her mind she would be you know her greatest fantasy
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at any given moment you know listening to you perform on this album I was thinking when we hear you return within your own environment be be it taking on elements of a character in order to present a complete Universe every single
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time but but again slightly different this time because you've got that from the movie you've you've taken the role you've made it your own youve bringing you now into harle Quinn the recording environment did you learn something
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about yourself as a performer or explore new areas because you were kind of inhabiting this character that you loved so much and it wasn't just about searching within yourself uh as Gaga but it was also kind of an extension of the
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role I mean I did a lot of different kinds of work to create her and you know one of the things that I did was change my voice in the film yeah and I I I don't think differently the whole movie but a lot of the movie I sing very
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differently and it's Lee's voice and it's really raw and it's really naked did and it's very like untrained and like not proper breathing or like you know any of the tricks that like would feel natural to me how do you un learn
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that stuff you've been performing at the highest level for so long how do you reverse engineer what you know I you know I think that Wen just like scared the living of me every day until like my voice left my body no actually it was
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like it was just you know it just was it took um like exploration and letting go and noticing you know when I just like sink into my craft or my discipline and then remembering like she wouldn't do that she doesn't have that don't you
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know don't go there and then I would just stay where I was and then and like navigate within I guess like a more narrow playing field sometimes I would even say that Lee to me sounds like like a little girl out of recital you know
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like an 11-year-old in school but but like she's in her 30s so it's super awkward it's kind of unhinged unhinged I actually hear it in uh in on the album there's moments like um smile to me is one of my favorite performances on the album world on a
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World on a String um again that moment where I feel you're you're letting go and allowing the vulnerability at the beginning of that particular performance to kind of find the dynamic shift but in the beginning it feels very vicarious
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you know I was in the studio with the guy and um you know uh I produced this album with Ben rice and um me and me and Michael conceived of this project together so like he was always in the studio and then it was Brian Newman Alex
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Smith Donald Barrett Steve cker Daniel fo it was like it was like a Tim Stewart I can't not mention Tim Tim is playing guitar on this and it's like I came in I was like so what if the cramps made a French song that and it was red on a
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string and we do and it's like a surf Punk record and like and we went went in this like whole other direction and it just brought the song to Life In Her Image in like this totally new and like fresh cool way and actually
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it was really funny so I you know seran actually mixed the album wow and uh you know we know seran as like you know like the like the the pop whisper like the music whisper yeah and I'm like serin what do you know about jazz and he's
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like I study Jazz and he like knows so much about it and I sent him you know all the songs and he's like what did you guys use for the drums and I said these are I it was trash cans we did this record on trash cans on a string was
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done on trash cans you seriously yeah and he wasn't sure what to do with it um but he he did and it it sounds it sounds cool it's really really cool it's really cool I it it makes me think of the incredible relationship and you guy you
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and I had a really lovely lovely moving live conversation about your relationship with Tony um some time ago and I think about him when I listened to this album and I think about about you know you he's on on the back of the on
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the back of the of the artwork and there's a picture of you and and he's playing and um on the television and there's a sense of like him being present right throughout this and it must been really amazing to be able to to continue in the in the legacy of this
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beautiful relationship you had with but do it kind of different and and and do it just your way in a different way you know yeah I mean like we did so much that Tony would never have been cool with that's what I'm saying it's kind of
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on round about way what I'm trying to say I'm like if you'd played a word on a string hey Tony we hit trash cans what's Tony saying right now the reality is that when rock and roll happened like like Tony like he told me he was like
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there was three chords now and he said that it like it just it destroyed uh jazz on the radio I mean to be able to contribute an original to this album as well must have mean an important moment I don't know if it was a a decision you made or it just presented itself and it felt right you and pop again and and um blood pop again and others from the project can we talk a bit about happy mistake and how it happened blood pop and I had written
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this together and then I like kind of took it to the next place um and it all like in the image of the character but also kind of like at the very core core of her soul which is really just me like every character I play is like just it just has me um as
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the gravity and you know I I'm wrestling on that record with a lot of feelings about um just so much that I've been through like as an artist um everything I went through growing up in the public eye in the industry since
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I was like a teenager um you know one of the lyrics is um um I'm tell uh uh I'm acting in this play of comedy with tragic words the audience was smiling cheering on a scene absurd I was thinking about like you know when women play these broken characters in music or in films or theater like the audience loves it and they just cheer us on they cheer on like the image of of like the pain and that's like it's super confusing you know when like the
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audience is going crazy and the the artist is messed up so that song is in a lot of ways about that and um the second verse is um a lonely disposition portraits of a strung out girl and um you know how' I get so addicted to the love of the whole
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world um it's like yeah I mean it's it's like a really private lyric I don't know that I've ever written a lyric that private um about that subject and I think you know it's just you know yeah I mean being being like famous when you're
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young is also a little bit like you know taking heroin every night you know on stage and I think it it can like make you make you a little bit kind of outside of yourself and live in a fantasy and but now like I'm not I don't
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feel that way anymore so I was able to like put that all in this song and kind of reflect on that feeling thank goodness for the distance the distance that you can that you can have um from from that moment because as you said it
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it for a long time it's escapism isn't it yeah it's a it's escapism and it's like this weird feedback loop like I said of like being kind of like cheered for while um you like kind of keep getting high on like the disease of it
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all this is really present for me at the moment this conversation I'm I'm thinking about this a lot I'm getting to a point in my life where I'm talking to a lot of artists and at at a time when we need art more than ever music is
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Magic and we need the frequency to help help us it it fills a lot of what we need in our life um but it comes at a cost it's a courageous objective for artists to share their true selves with people they don't know at a time time
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when people can reach you really easily and I think that more than ever we need to protect that process or at least create a better understanding and a song like this I think really serves that purpose thank you you know I I think
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like creative people are so special artistic people are so special there really should be kind of no you know Authority that's really being wielded about like you know who is good at Art I feel like that is you know I'm sure you
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know I I know it's part of the culture and like we all love it that part too but I hope that artists feel mostly like um being able to live a life where people care what you have to say yeah is like something that we can all be grateful for and like
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help we all can like help create a safe space for each other to be like human and um authentic yeah you know I see so many people like just like living in their authenticity and I you know I hope that I hope that that just gets
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celebrated as much as possible are you back or is there a part of are you still kind of is there a bitly that's still kicking around will she ever fully leave you I mean is this just such a profound experience that that it's kind of going
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to you carry it forever I mean I think I'll always have it in my heart in some kind of way you know um and I wonder if I'll continue to create with her in my mind but like I'm not like she's not like stuck in my body in like a weird
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way I mean I guess I think you know I think it's a fair question to ask though because I've seen the trailer and you and haen I mean you it is it is pretty amazing um you know how deep you obviously both of you went in this film
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I cannot wait to see it thank you so much for saying that you know he's a an amazing amazing actor collaborator he he's an amazing singer in the movie um you know it was like a really really soulful experience and I'm excited I'm
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excited for people to see it you know it's like these these two people find love in this really dark place and it brings them all the light well we appreciate you sharing your light with us again and and it's so great to have
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you back um you know lots happened since we got a chance to talk in in more detail last time and and now there's so much to talk about in the future I hope and this movie is so fantastic and uh it looks so fantastic and I'm sure people
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are going to love it it's so great to see you lady G thank you it's so good to you I've been in the studio a lot so I'll see you soon there you go there it is hello hello lg7 baby okay it's good to see you have a great time see you buddy so much