For almost twenty years, Lady Gaga has built a career on work that answered to instinct rather than industry. Her catalog grew through fans who understood the force of what she was making. Lady Gaga’s fanbase, named “The Little Monsters,” sustained her momentum, but the pressure to deliver created a fracture she could no longer ignore.
In the latest Rolling Stone cover story for December 2025, where Gaga was named Voice of the Year, she explained undergoing challenges outside of music. The slowdown of her career came as she carried trauma she had been suppressing for years. Gaga spoke about being sexually assaulted by a music producer when she was 19, and she explains how, during the Artpop period, she wasn’t exactly immune to criticism of her music. Yet, she pushed through hit after hit — from the writing of “Poker Face” to the release of “Born This Way” — while, over the decades, the attention around her grew louder.
Even during her largest achievements, including the Super Bowl halftime show in 2017 and the success of A Star Is Born in 2018, her mental health was at the brink of collapsing. “I did A Star Is Born on lithium,” she says in the Rolling Stone interview. Soon after, while on the Joanne world tour, she experienced what she has described as a “psychotic break,” prompting her to cancel her tour and seek out psychiatric care.
“There was one day that my sister said to me, ‘I don’t see my sister anymore,’” Gaga tells Rolling Stone. “There was one day I went to the hospital for psychiatric care. I needed to take a break. I couldn’t do anything … I completely crashed. It was really scary. There was a time where I didn’t think I could get better.… I feel really lucky to be alive. I know that might sound dramatic, but we know how this can go.”
However, on the road to recovery. Gaga credits her fiancé, Michael Polansky, for helping her rebuild steady ground, helping her stay close to a version of herself that she trusts. Her return to music led to Mayhem, released in March, which is now nominated for seven Grammys, including Album of the Year. Gaga describes the project as a difficult excavation. “It was months and months and months of rediscovering everything that I’d lost,” she says. “And I honestly think that’s why it’s called Mayhem. Because what it took to get it back was crazy.”
