Lady Gaga says she "flirted with sobriety" while making 'Chromatica'

Lady Gaga has said she considered the idea of achieving sobriety while making her new album, ‘Chromatica’.

In a new interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music, Gaga revealed how she had planned to go straight-edge after writing a song called ‘911’ – which focuses on her experiences taking an antipsychotic medication.

She said: “I don’t take any pain medication, because it’s not healthy for me. But I’ve flirted with the idea of sobriety.  I’m not there yet, but I flirted with it throughout the album. It’s something that came up as a result of me trying to work through the pain that I was feeling.

“But part of my healing process was going, ‘Well, I can either lash the hell out of myself every day for continuing to drink, or I can just be happy that I’m still alive and keep going,’ and feel good enough. I am good enough. It’s not perfect, but wabi-sabi. I’m perfectly imperfect.”

Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for AT&T

Despite not quitting alcohol, Gaga said she still managed to ditch cigarettes while making the album.

She said: “I quit smoking. I smoked the whole way through making this record. And when we were done, I stopped. It was the most bizarre, beautiful thing that could have happened, that this music actually healed me.”

Opening up on her previous challenges, she said: “I think I forgive myself. I forgive myself for all the ways I’ve punished myself in private. I’ve been open about the fact that I used to cut. And I’ve open about the fact that I have had masochistic tendencies that are not healthy. And they’re ways of expressing shame. They’re ways of expressing feeling not good enough, but actually they’re not effective. They just make you feel worse.”







It comes after Gaga teamed up with Ariana Grande on ‘Rain On Me’, the latest track to emerge from ‘Chromatica’.

Fans had been speculating about a collaboration between the pair after they found a series of clues in a birthday post Grande wrote to Gaga on Instagram, and a collaboration was confirmed last month when Gaga released the ‘Chromatica’ tracklist.