The singer once again talked about the traumatic experience of being raped by someone she knew and recording a song about it.
- Dec 12, 2015
AceShowbiz - Lady GaGa is no stranger to opening up about her personal life including her traumatic past which she kept a secret for 7 years. During NY Times' TimesTalks panel discussion on Thursday, December 10, the singer revisited a painful memory at the age of 19 when she was raped by someone she trusted.
"I didn't know how to think about it," GaGa said. "I didn't know how to accept it. I didn't know how to not blame myself or think it was my fault. It's something that really changed my life. It changed who I was completely. It changed my body, it changed my thoughts."
She explained further, "When you go through a trauma like that, it doesn't just have the immediate physical ramifications on you. For many people it has almost like trauma, where you re-experience it through the years after it, it can trigger patterns in your body of physical distress."
The 29-year-old who had just been nominated for Golden Globe for her role on "American Horror Story: Hotel" recorded the song "Til It Happens to You" with Diane Warren for "The Hunting Ground," a documentary about sexual assault on college campuses.
"Diane will tell you, it was really hard for me when (the song) came out," she said. "I was really stressed out about it. Every time I listen to it, I cry. Every time I get a text about it, I always feel sick. It's like this thing you don't want to face. But because she wanted to face it with me, it reminded me of what the song is for."
GaGa's song "Swine" off her 2013 "ARTPOP" album was also about the rape. Speaking of the incident for the first time on Howard Stern's Sirius XM show last year, she said, "The song is about rape. The song is about demoralization. The song is about and rage and fury and passion. I had a lot of pain I wanted to release."
She did not reveal the rapist but told Stern that he was 20 years older than her. "I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened and I was going, 'Oh is this just the way adults are?' " she said at that time.
