Request Media Kit

Howard Stern Gets Lady Gaga to Open Up About Being Raped As a Teen

Howard Stern‘s questions to Lady Gaga about a recent incidence at a concert opened up some old wounds for the singer, leading her to reveal that she had been raped as a teenager. The admission o...
Howard Stern Gets Lady Gaga to Open Up About Being Raped As a Teen
Written by Pam Wright
  • Howard Stern‘s questions to Lady Gaga about a recent incidence at a concert opened up some old wounds for the singer, leading her to reveal that she had been raped as a teenager.

    The admission of being raped came up while Gaga visited Stern’s show this week. Stern asked about her song, Swine, and the controversy that arose after Gaga’s performance of the song at SXSW back in March, when performance artist Millie Brown vomited green paint all over Gaga during the show.

    “I wrote a song called Swine. The song is about rape,” she said. “The song is about demoralization. The song is about rage and fury and passion, and I had a lot of pain that I wanted to release.”

    Stern took the opportunity to dig a little more into the details surrounding the alleged rape.

    “Were you raped by a record producer?” he asked.

    Gaga initially tried to avoid the questions altogether, but something eventually led her to reveal more about the incident and how it affected her. She never mentioned any names or specifics about the incident, but she was very candid in expressing the trauma it caused in her life.

    “I went through some horrific things, and I’m able to laugh now, because I’ve gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy and emotional therapy to heal over the years,” she said. “My music’s been wonderful for me. But, you know, I was a shell of my former self at one point. I was not myself. To be fair, I was about 19. I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened, and I was going, ‘Oh, is this just the way adults are?'”

    Gaga did reveal that the man was 20 years older than she and said she kept the rape a secret for a very long time.

    “It didn’t affect me as much right after as it did about four or five years later,” she said. “It hit me so hard. I was so traumatized by it that I was like, ‘Just keep going,’ because I just had to get out of there.”

    Get the WebProNews newsletter delivered to your inbox

    Get the free daily newsletter read by decision makers

    Subscribe
    Advertise with Us

    Ready to get started?

    Get our media kit