Even as her jazz album with Tony Bennett becomes increasingly popular, Lady Gaga's applauses might come from elsewhere: in a recent interview, the Monster Queen herself admitted that she was a victim of rape when she was just starting out in the industry.
She's one of the biggest figures in pop music, and altogether in the industry, but it seems that before Lady Gaga's "Applause," the singer was just as prone to sexual assault as millions of other women across the world.
In a recent interview with Howard Stern, the famous radio host talked to the singer (real name Stefani Germanotta) about her song "Swine," saying it sounded as if a music producer had raped her early on in her career.
According to The Independent, the conversation that gathered Lady Gaga's applause came about as she explained to Stern that one of the performances of the song, which included an artist vomiting painting on her, was about "rape and demoralization."
This comment prompted Stern to ask her about whether it was a song based on her own experience, to which she replied that it had been the case.
It seems that, when she was 19 and starting out in the music business, Gaga was raped by a music producer 20 years her senior.
"I was a shell of my former self at one point. I was not myself," Gaga told Stern, according to The Daily Mail. "To be fair, I was about 19. I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened, and I was going, 'Oh, is this just the way adults are?' I was very naive."
The famous singer also stated that she'd be terrified to confront the man who raped her at a young age. Gaga told her interviewer that she'd kept quiet about the whole thing for a very long time, until finally deciding to seek help.
These days, Lady Gaga's "Applause," among many other singles, have made her one of the power houses of pop music in the past few decades.
