Lady Gaga Opens Up About How Her Sexual Assault Informed Her New Song 'Free Woman'

Lady Gaga is opening up about Chromatica, as well as personal trauma.

The 34-year-old “Stupid Love” singer sat down with Zane Lowe for an interview about her upcoming album for Apple Music.

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During their chat, Gaga spoke specifically about the upcoming song, “Free Woman.”

“I think I tend to aspire for things to be genderless, just because I think that it’s significant. But with that song in particular, I felt a need to reference my gender. Because even though I really have a tremendous disdain for people that attribute a gender, or sexual identity to your personality. I hate that. If someone says, ‘Oh, your personality’s masculine.’ I’m, ‘What does that even mean?’ It just doesn’t make sense to me,” she started to explain.

“But it was so important for this to be ‘Free Woman,’ because I was assaulted by a music producer. I was sexually assaulted by a music producer. It’s compounded all of my feelings about life, feelings about the world, feelings about the industry, what I had to compromise and go through to get to where I am. And I had to put it there. And when I was able to finally celebrate it, I said, ‘You know what? I’m not nothing without a steady hand. I’m not nothing unless I know I can. I’m still something if I don’t got a man, I’m a free woman,’” she said.

“It’s me going, ‘I’m free,’ but it’s not just because, ‘I’m a free woman. Look at me. I found gratitude and everything is zen.’ It’s, ‘I no longer am going to define myself as a survivor, or a victim of sexual assault. I just am a person that is free, who went through some f–ed up s–t.’”

“I say, ‘This is the dance floor I fought for. That’s what I’m living for. Light up my body and kiss me too hardly. I walk the downtown, hear my sound,’ this is my way of saying, ‘I’m making a dance record again, and this dance floor, it’s mine, and I earned it. And all that stuff that I went through, I don’t have to feel pain about it anymore. It can just be a part of me and I can keep going,’” she continued.

“And I can’t tell you how healing this was me. I could cry about it, except I’m actually feeling so much more healed now that that laugh away from the tear feeling is not even as much there. When I first started talking about this album, I would cry in-between every interview. And now I go, ‘Well it turns out if you believe in yourself, sometimes you’re good enough.’ And it turns out that’s possible. And I would love for people that listen to this record to feel and hear that.”

Gaga has a big song coming out with this superstar at midnight.

Watch the full interview on Apple Music.