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In a December 2025 interview with Rolling Stone Australia, Lady Gaga described the years behind Mayhem as a period of crisis, healing, and artistic rediscovery. She connected her changed outlook to the care she found in her relationship with Michael Polansky, while making clear that recovery was neither simple nor complete.
What happened to Lady Gaga after the Artpop backlash?
In Brian Hiatt’s profile for Rolling Stone Australia, published December 5, 2025, Gaga looks back on the Artpop-era backlash alongside trauma and a severe personal crisis. She describes that period as frightening and says she once doubted she could get better. Her account is retrospective and personal; it is not a formal diagnosis.
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Gaga also says later creative work could bring difficult feelings back to the surface. In particular, making the video for “Disease” took her into a dark mental place, and she felt she still had healing to do. The profile does not present artistic work as treatment or as a substitute for it.
Looking back, she said, “I feel really lucky to be alive.” The remark captures the gravity of her account without suggesting that the difficult period was resolved all at once.
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- 13-time Grammy-winner, Academy Award-winner, and two-time Golden Globe-winner Lady Gaga returns with MAYHEM
How did Lady Gaga make Mayhem?
A song that opened the process
Gaga began writing “Vanish Into You” with producer Andrew Watt in 2023. It became the first track recorded for Mayhem. The album, as she describes it, was not a simple return to an earlier pop persona: it grew out of the years and musical detours that came before it.
Rediscovery shaped by earlier work
Gaga says she would not have made Mayhem without those intervening experiences, including working as a jazz singer and making Artpop. She described the process as “months and months and months of rediscovering everything that I’d lost.” In the profile, that rediscovery means regaining artistic capacities and finding new ways to shape difficult experiences—not erasing them.
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- Lady Gaga
- Mayhem
Watt’s account of watching her in the studio underscores the scale of her ambitions. He said: “Yes, she’s Lady Fucking Gaga, but they’re the Rolling Fucking Stones, you know?”
Who is Michael Polansky, and how did their relationship affect her?
Michael Polansky is Gaga’s partner. The profile reports that he proposed in 2024. Gaga says being loved by someone who cares about the person behind the public image made a major difference: “Being in love with someone that cares about the real me made a very big difference.”
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Polansky, reflecting on when they first met, said: “The piece that I always noticed was how disempowered she felt.” That is his interpretation of her state at the time, just as Gaga’s account of the relationship’s importance is her own. The profile presents their partnership as meaningful support in her life, not as a single explanation for every change she describes.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does the Mayhem Ball’s story reveal?
The album’s imagery and the Mayhem Ball’s theatrical narrative give form to conflict within the show. Gaga says she can feel panic during its opening and that she has changed her relationship with the rush of performing: “I’m not an adrenaline junkie anymore.” The performance connects with the personal history she discusses in the profile, but it is a stage story—not a general account of what recovery looks like for everyone.
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Where to read the interview
The account comes from Brian Hiatt’s profile, “How Lady Gaga Found Herself Again: ‘I Feel Lucky to Be Alive’,” published by Rolling Stone Australia on December 5, 2025. Read the full interview at Rolling Stone Australia.
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