Photo of Lady Gaga performing at 2016 Grammys, by Matt Sayles
Just days after she performed a massive tribute to David Bowie at Monday's 58th Grammy Awards, Lady Gaga says the music legend is the inspiration for her entire career thus far.
"I feel like my whole career is a tribute to David Bowie," Gaga said in a new interview with NPR, in which the singer recalled being 19 years old and seeing Bowie's 1973 album Aladdin Sane for the first time. "It just changed my perspective on everything, forever ... I remember I took the vinyl record out of the casing and I put it on my vinyl player ... That was just the beginning of my artistic birth. I started to dress more expressively. I started to go to the library and look through more art books. I took an art history class. I was playing with a band."
Lady Gaga also noted that she's been listening to Bowie's final album Blackstar non-stop, calling it "a truly incredible piece of music," she said. "It's one of the single greatest things an artist has ever done: making a masterpiece album that is their own eulogy. Can you imagine? To go into the studio every day and put your heart in that place, where you are saying goodbye to life? I mean, his art made him strong."