Lady Gaga: People are surprised they haven’t already destroyed me

It’s not easy being Lady Gaga! The mega-star performer admitted to The Guardian that the pressure for her to constantly raise the shock-factor bar is often overwhelming.

“I mean that [my fans] only ever see me at my best. And it really drove me crazy,” Lady Gaga said. “So I’ve really had to make more of an effort to go out more. I mean, can you imagine what it’s like not to feel real wind? Honestly, I hadn’t felt real wind for years!”

Lady Gaga added that the ever-increasing expectations placed on her extend beyond her ability to shock as a performer. She is currently preparing to release ARTPOP, her third studio album — and many critics say its success or failure will determine whether Lady Gaga will remain relevant in the coming years.

“I certainly feel that at this time it’s almost as if people are surprised they haven’t already destroyed me,” she said, explaining that she feels persecuted. “It gives them a sense of pleasure when they believe that they’ve destroyed me or taken me down. It’s almost entertainment for people to poke fun at Lady Gaga, but at the very same time they have no idea the album I’ve made.”

In fact, we have some idea of the album she made: The first single, Applause, was released last month and quickly broke into the Billboard’s Top 10 but then stalled at No. 4.

“It’s literally not even been two weeks since my first single came out and it’s all, ‘She’s over’, or because I’m not No. 1 yet, ‘She’s finished,'” she said. “People focus less on the music and focus more on how the music’s doing; how it’s faring from a numbers perspective, from a financial perspective. If you think I give a damn about money then you don’t know me as an artist at all.”

(Interestingly, Lady Gaga didn’t mention the controversy about her attempting to inflate her music video views.)

Lady Gaga explained she wrote the song after the experience of injuring her hip, undergoing major surgery and having to cancel her Born This Way Ball world tour. Through it all, she still craved applause.

“I want you to feel that way about yourself, that’s why I wrote the song. I want you to wake up in the morning and say: ‘I live for your applause, look at me today, I’m having a great day, I’m going to work and I’m going to have a fantastic lunch with my friends.’ But it’s not to be taken quite as seriously and as literally as people make it to be, which is why in the verses I’m sort of making fun of what people think about fame.”

ARTPOP is scheduled for release on November 11.