Under the professional makeup and eccentric outfits, it's easy to forget what Lady Gaga looks like — unless you've seen "A Star Is Born," that is.
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00:00Few stars have gone through as many looks as Lady Gaga. If she's invited to an event,
00:05there's no telling whether she'll show up wearing a normal dress or looking like a walking
00:08art installation. From the pumped-up glitz of her sophomore effort, The Fame Monster,
00:12to her celestial art pop sheen, to her girl-next-door Joanne country phase, Gaga has worn countless
00:18unique outfits throughout her career. But outside of a star is born, we haven't seen
00:22a lot of her looking… normal.
00:24Gaga summed up her artistic sensibilities as a rising star in a 2009 interview, stating,
00:28Art is not just truth. If it was just truth, there would be no level of fantasy and no
00:32level of dream. And I think in my music especially, there's sort of an escapist quality, but that
00:37offers something to the audience that's much more than just honesty."
00:40In other words, Gaga believes that fantasy and imagination are integral to the relationship
00:44between art and artist — a relationship that her music touches on often. A 2016 interview
00:50between Gaga and Jamie Lee Curtis and Variety revealed even more.
00:54Gaga referred to herself as a creation, a separate entity, an effused version of her
00:58original self, Stephanie Germanotta, with whatever culture and lifestyle and art that's
01:02influencing her creative process. Many people have wondered over the years where Stephanie
01:06Joanne Angelina Germanotta ends and Lady Gaga begins. Does Lady Gaga disappear when the
01:12costumes come off, or does it go deeper than that?
01:15Gaga was the nickname Germanotta gave herself when she was performing in New York nightclubs
01:18and studying at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. As Gaga put it, as opposed
01:23to her real-life Stephanie persona,
01:25"[Gaga is this stronger, individual part of myself that I discovered being young in New
01:28York — loving music, meeting with young artists, working with musicians, with writers."
01:33She concluded,
01:34"'I'm entirely Stephanie, and I'm entirely Gaga.'"
01:36"'You just read that now?'
01:39"'Yeah.'
01:40"'That's pretty good.'"
01:43It's a lot of words to say that the line between Gaga's everyday persona and stage presence
01:47has become quite blurred, especially in more recent years. Her stripped-down singer-songwriter
01:52Joanne-era work in 2016 made public the Gaga look you'd most likely see walking down the
01:57street.
01:58That era, sporting minimal makeup, costumes, and theatrics, came ahead of a reward-winning
02:01performance in A Star is Born in 2018, and after her maximum pop-art-pop phase around
02:062014. The latter drew the ire of critics at the time, with Vice rather abrasively publishing,
02:12"'No one gives a f— about Lady Gaga anymore.'"
02:14But Gaga rebounded, and she did so by pulling away the mask. Without Joanne, A Star is Born,
02:20and Joker, Fouliadeau, she would probably be far less recognizable in public than she
02:24currently is. Gaga even went full non-makeup in a series of Instagram posts years back,
02:30peeling back the curtain on her persona even further. In fact, Gaga is so recognizable
02:34now that, in a 2020 interview on CBS Sunday Morning, she lamented the very concept that
02:39fueled her first two albums, fame. Gesturing at the piano that she often uses to write
02:43songs, Gaga stated,
02:44"'This ruined my life. Look what you did. You can't go to the grocery store now. Look
02:48what you did. If you go to dinner with your family, somebody comes to the table.'"
02:52She added,
02:53"'I hate being famous. I hated being a star. I felt exhausted and used up.'"
02:58Those sentiments got funneled into 2020's Chromatica, which, like the rest of Gaga's
03:02discography before it, fashioned her another face.