Lady Gaga Reveals Her Biggest Fear: Being Alone

No one wants to be alone, and no job is more isolating than being a pop star. Just ask Lady Gaga.

Her rise to fame in 2009 and 2010 was unlike anything the world had seen before. As one of the first pop stars to harness the full potential of the internet, she became an overwhelming presence in the public eye, constantly featured in TMZ photos and gossip blogs. Her visibility was relentless, and the media's appetite for her was insatiable. Within just a few years, Gaga had cycled through numerous looks and sounds so quickly that one critic famously wrote she was "speed-running Madonna's entire career."

As her fame grew, so did the bizarre and outlandish headlines. Among the rumors and controversies, she was accused of staging a satanic ritual in a London hotel, secretly being a hermaphrodite, and planning to saw off her own leg "for fashion." Perhaps the most iconic moment came at the 2010 MTV Awards when she wore a dress made entirely of meat. Many failed to grasp the joke: Gaga was presenting herself as fodder for the tabloids, a figure there to be consumed and dissected.

On stage, she was adored by her devoted fans, known as the Little Monsters. Yet, as anyone who isn’t a megalomaniac understands, such adulation is a distant illusion. As Gaga herself confided in her 2017 documentary Five Foot Two, "I'm alone, Brandon. Every night. I go from everyone touching me all day and talking at me all day to total silence."

Now, at 38 and happily engaged to tech entrepreneur Michael Polansky, Gaga reflects on those years of solitude with a sense of apprehension. "I think my biggest fear was doing this by myself—doing life on my own," she admits in a recent BBC interview. "And I think the greatest gift has been meeting my partner, Michael, and being in the mayhem with him."

The couple has been together since 2020, and they announced their engagement at the Venice Film Festival in September 2024. Gaga wore a dazzling million-dollar engagement ring, set with a large oval-cut diamond on a pavé band of 18-karat white and rose gold. However, it’s the more understated ring she wears on her other hand that holds a special place in her heart. "Michael actually proposed to me with these blades of grass," Gaga reveals. "A long time ago, we were in the backyard, and he asked me, 'If I ever proposed to you, how do I do that?' I said, 'Just get a blade of grass from the backyard and wrap it around my finger. That will make me so happy.'"

This romantic gesture, though beautiful, was tinged with sorrow. Gaga’s Malibu backyard had previously been the site of her close friend Sonja Durham’s wedding, shortly before Durham passed away from cancer in 2017. "There was so much loss, but this happy thing was happening for me," Gaga reflects on Polansky’s proposal. "To get engaged at 38… I was thinking about what it took to get to this moment."

This poignant experience was not lost on her music. It inspired Blade of Grass, a track from her new album Mayhem. The song, which describes a "lovers’ kiss in a garden made of thorns," expresses love’s promise amidst hardship. "It's a thank you to my partner," Gaga says of the track. Fans might have reason to thank him too, as it was Polansky who nudged her back to her pop roots after a period spent exploring jazz and classic American standards.

Speaking to Vogue last year, Gaga shared that Polansky urged her to return to the music that made her famous. "He was like, 'Babe, I love you. You need to make pop music,'" she recalls. Polansky adds, "On the Chromatica tour, I saw a fire in her. I wanted to help her keep that alive and start making music that made her happy."

With that encouragement, Mayhem marks Gaga’s full-throttle return to pop, bringing back the maximalist, bone-shaking Europop sound of her early hits like Poker Face, Just Dance, and Born This Way. The album’s first single, Abracadabra, even revisits the iconic "roma-ma-ma" gibberish from Bad Romance, albeit with a dark twist as she sings, "morta-ooh-Gaga."

The album’s artwork reflects a more personal battle. Gaga’s face is mirrored in broken glass, and in the accompanying music videos, she confronts earlier versions of herself. The stark image symbolizes her grappling with the public persona she created. On the track Perfect Celebrity, she sings, "I became a notorious being," confronting the way her fame has stripped away her humanity. "That's probably the most angry song about fame I’ve ever written," she admits. "I’d created this public persona that I was truly becoming in every way—and holding the duality of that, knowing where I begin and Lady Gaga ends, was really a challenge. It kind of took me down."

Gaga’s journey through fame and identity has led her to a deeper understanding of herself. "I think what I actually realized is that it’s healthier to not have a dividing line and to integrate those two things into one whole human being," she says. She has come to accept that living an artistic life was her choice, and that Lady Gaga, the artist, was created from her own passion and vision. "I am a lover of songwriting, making music, rehearsing, choreography, stage production, costumes, lighting, putting on a show," she declares. "That is what it means to be Lady Gaga. It’s the artist behind it all."

Gaga also reflects on how, in the past, people around her tried to take credit for her sound and image. "All of my references, all of my imagination of what pop music could be, came from me," she insists. Mayhem represents her reclaiming ownership of her music and her career, a final acknowledgment that it was her invention all along.

Excited to return to her fans, Gaga embraced the spontaneity of her early years. After performing at the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, she took to the streets of Paris, playing early demos of her new music to fans gathered outside her hotel. "This has been something I’ve done for almost 20 years," she shares. "I just wanted to share it with them because I was excited they were there."

In many ways, Mayhem marks a full-circle moment for Gaga. No longer the guarded star who once hid behind outrageous costumes and sunglasses, she has found peace in her identity. At 38, in a loving relationship, and in control of her music, Gaga has reclaimed herself.

"This has been a journey of becoming whole," she concludes. "I wanted Mayhem to have an ending. I wanted the chaos to stop. I stepped away from the icon. It ends with love."