Welcome back home.
I mean you just spent the beginning of the summer down under in Australia running around doing Mayhem Ball, everyone absolutely loving it.
How was that experience?
I mean, what a year for you, but to go down under and have those concerts, huge shows.
Oh my gosh, I've just had the most amazing time on this tour.
I can't even tell you just reconnecting with my fans is so, so cool and extremely meaningful every night.
I just feel like the community really shines and is just so special.
It's cool too, doing this show every night.
I try to find something different in the way that I'm telling the story.
It's through the music, it's through the theatrical nature of the show.
Doing unique renditions at the piano every night too has been really fun.
Bringing up Brooklyn Nights, doing things like that, everyone going crazy.
Thank you.
It's funny how songs really change what they mean to you over time.
Whether you're a songwriter or you're just a music listener, I feel like you can put a song on and it just changes.
I felt really excited to perform it.
Which ones have presented themselves to you different, since you've been playing them live in front of people.
Going back into Born This Way was really an interesting thing.
That music has, for me, such significance in the way it connects me to New York.
And I think I just you know I haven't really lived in New York for a long time, but it really formed me as an artist.
And so I think going back and playing them at the piano and exploring the stories now has just been.
It's just been really interesting.
I find myself kind of learning over and over again about why I started to make music to begin with, and I really feel like it had so much to do with not feeling seen when I was in high school.
Yeah, it's an interesting time in your life when you're trying to form the beginnings of your identity and you're relying on others to help you show the way.
And when they ignore you, when you don't get that validation?
You search so much more for those answers within you.
And I think that's quite common amongst the artistic and creative community that ultimately, you're left to your own feelings and your own answers, rather than seeking them from others.
Yeah.
And, like you know, whatever you're going through with your family, or you're going through with friends or people that are not friends, and whatever kind of is coming your way.
For me, music was always the way that I dealt with it.
I wouldn't say it was therapy.
I don't know why I've always had an aversion to that, to saying that.
I don't know why, because it feels different from that to me.
But yeah, revisiting those songs it kind of made me realize also how much it's still alive in me.
That kind of no matter how far I come, how much music I make, that that is just kind of ever that feeling of yearning for an understanding of self and to find my own place.
That is like it's still very much alive.
I felt that when we were in New York and we spoke at the very beginning of all of this and we went to the bar in New York in the Lower East Side.
And I'll never forget, when you walked in that room and you were just somewhere else like you were instantly transported back to that place.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, that has to be one of the most special interviews that I've ever done.
And doing it with... Yeah.
I mean, man, you, like... Doing that with you was so, so, like, meaningful to me.
And, yeah, it's just one of those spaces.
Even now, as you bring it up, like, I have, like, a body memory.
And I can feel.
I can feel like that, like lump in my throat, of what the Lower East Side meant to me and still does, and that bar in particular.
And yeah, that time.
But you know, like recently I reconnected with Lady Starlight um on the tour, and we were just like reminiscing and talking about it and it's just, it's so important when you are cultivating your artistry, you know, and your life, to find your people and Uh, that's what that really was for me.
And, yeah, and when I tour, I have that same feeling.
I just, I have it with my fans, and it's another artistic community, and I feel like we're having this, like, really long, you know, two-decade-long conversation.
The longest and the greatest.
It's just...
We're going to talk a bit more about the last 12 months and just how amazing this era.
I think when we were spending some time together just before the interview, I was like this is your 30.
Who gets to that point where we're able to be as successful at this point?
But speaking of the lump in the throat, I mean Abel must be sending you into overdrive, because what's that all about?
I mean, that is unbelievable.
Did you see that?
Yeah, that was cool.
It's pretty cool.
What do you think when you see a photo of yourself by a personalized license plate on the back of a Lexus, by the way, which is just so.
It's not even like you've made it to Maybach season.
It's like the back of a Lexus at the very start.
Or a Triumph for something that would have been suitable.
Right.
Totally, totally.
Well, first of all, I love Abel.
So, I mean, that was so cool.
That picture, you know, I just see myself kind of deep.
I'm like deep in it, you know?
And when I saw that online I actually remember you know kind of like the way I would art direct every photo and you know every moment that I wanted my fans to see.
And that was kind of like the iteration of my persona that, came out with Interscope.
I went through all these kind of different iterations of my artistry and that is where I landed for the fame.
So it's really special.
I sort of look at that photo and go, wow, you had no idea.
But you look like you knew exactly what you were doing.
Yeah, I knew exactly what I was doing, but I had no idea what was about to happen.
But that's kind of like the way music is for me.
I'm nothing without my gut instinct.
And you know, whatever I'm hearing or whatever I'm seeing, the way that I want to create it, it's kind of it only comes to me really by the end, in one way.
So you know, I see somebody that very much knows who they are, but also is really about to find out so much more.
And it's pretty cool.
It was really sweet that he posted that.
Yeah, and it got the fans absolutely cooking as well.
I mean, everybody is just going crazy right now, wondering what it means.
But to me, it just felt very simple and pure and just like a very simple thing.
Yeah.
You've just finished the most successful 12 months.
I mean, album number seven, Mayhem, just continues to feed.
It's such a beautiful, beautiful experience to have seen how that album has just been embraced and beloved by fans.
And I mean, going into 2026, you're not done, right?
You've got more shows to be done.
I mean, how is your spirit right now through all of this?
I'm doing good.
I was in the studio yesterday.
I've been making a lot of music.
It's kind of the best making music when you get to see your fans every night because you're energetically just right where you need to be.
I'm really, really happy.
This album, it's just so, so cool the way that it is connected with my fans.
And every night that we play it, it's just a very special thing.
I've made records that have connected with one part of my fan base.
I've made the records that connected more with the general public.
And then you make records that you know, can connect with kind of both at the same time.
And that's really like a very special feeling.
It's a totally different type of show.
When you are, you know you're taking the audience through, you know some of your classics, but then also like uh, they're just going up with a new record and it's just, it's awesome.
It's awesome.
And and it it, it's a.
What I love about this show is for, as heavily choreographed as it is, there's actually a ton of room for me to tell the story differently overnight.
Yeah, to your point.
It must feel like this album is the great understanding of everything you've done before.
It's sort of the great centerpiece at this point because it does tie Chromatica and all these different moments together, right.
I think so.
I think so.
And I think you know, being a woman in music like there's, people are always trying to figure out how you did it.
They're like, you know, who made her, you know, and how to sort of define what makes you good.
It's like, it's a very strange race.
I think that, making this album, I sort of decided i was just going to completely own it for myself.
And, you know, in a way i'm yes, i'm doing it for the my fans and the public, because it's you know, i put it out publicly, the record.
It's not like a private piece of music.
But um, i think i also was telling myself like, this is who you are and it's okay.
It's okay to be sure of yourself, it's okay to um, celebrate you and the way that you create, the way that you see music, the way that you produce, the way that you write.
Yeah.
So it was kind of this I think I really felt like I had nothing to lose to just to own myself in that way.
Did it redefine?
Even looking back on it now, a year on, since it's been so successful, do you think you were better built for it to be misunderstood?
Did it redefine the idea of the possibility of it not connecting the way that you would have wanted it to like when you first came out and wanting that sort of to be to some degree.
You know your identity gets defined by how people perceive your art, right?
And going into being so honest with yourself on this record and accepting who you are, has it kind of redefined what you expect from your music and the audience?
Well, I think you know.
What I know now, without a doubt, is that If you authentically give a piece of work your best and you leave no stone unturned, with every instrument, every melody, every lyric, every vocal, you don't ever have to wonder if you gave it your best.
Because if it's authentically you and you don't look back, there's kind of nothing else that you ever really had to give except some like weird version of the truth, you know.
Like trying to manipulate the truth to um to help people understand you better.
It's so backwards in a way.
Yeah, you're like overthinking something that's so natural and you're like trying to package it in this way.
I mean my favorite music and my favorite artists have always, you know, it's been like It doesn't matter, kind of how much artifice or art direction or style or attitude there is.
There's something that is really who they are.
And so I think what I ultimately walked away from was, like you know, The only trick that you need to do in the studio is the one where you are yourself and you're exactly who you are and you just push yourself further than you've ever gone.
But that I don't have to, I don't have to manipulate it, or
It doesn't have.
You know yeah, so like silly with a song like Abracadabra, but like it doesn't need to be a magic trick in that way.
It's like the trick is being you, I think.
I mean, you know, I finally I asked somebody because I've been very vocal about my Hmm, lack of interest in this new artificially intelligent development in music, this idea that we're going to solve music.
It's really hard to learn instruments, so we're going to solve music.
No one asked anyone to solve music.
So I've been quite vocal about that.
But I wanted to use it because I was like, I need to understand it.
Like, I can't just be like the old man in the rafters who's just screaming, like, get off the stage.
Like, I need to know what I'm talking about.
And I went and I finally used one of these things.
And... man, I just felt nothing.
And then I knew it was fine.
Cause I was like, oh yeah, it's cool, it sounds fine.
But I got nothing out of the experience as a human being, right?
I learned nothing, I achieved nothing, I felt nothing.
And that authenticity, that is the point that I think scale often misunderstands.
They think efficiency is key and they misunderstand the learning and the time it takes and, at times, the pain that it costs is the point.
And I thought, you know what, I think we'll be fine actually.
Well, you know, being a human being, I don't think is going to go out of style anytime soon.
I certainly hope it's not.
That's at the core of, I think, the way we understand each other, the way we communicate.
Even in pop music, where it's kind of can be, it can be if you want it to be.
It can be this kind of like perfectly mathematical, polished thing, but it still has a ton of discipline and it's been so deeply informed.
So, I mean, it's funny.
I think if I can like some this whole last year, two years for myself, in one word, it would be craft.
Like you know, craft is like it's just where it all is for for me, and you know how do you kind of um and enjoy the thing that you love learning about and let your let yourself like, just be endlessly curious and um Yeah, I think the world is a, The world can, in the space of music and otherwise, be a very competitive place.
And it's very, like, more is more.
And what conversation are you having with yourself?
And, like, for me, when I'm... It helps me when I'm talking to myself to keep things simple.
Because when it gets overly complex or I'm trying to win at something, I'm I I always ask myself, like what are you, what are, what are you trying to win?
Like where where where, where are you actually going?
And but if you can win, I think in with you, with yourself, and for me, winning with myself means like that I've learned something new, or I found, I found something new.
Um, So yeah, I think that that's a lot of what Mayhem taught me.
And, you know, not every record teaches you everything, but I do find that music is for me my great teacher.
You've exercised nothing but the deepest curiosity, both in what it is that you're trying to understand about yourself, but also in terms of how you present it and how you share it with us.
There are great artists who sit behind the piano and you do this and sing a song, and I will learn something about myself through the most simple of trades.
And then there are artists who can also go out there in front of two and a half million people on a beach and present the most elaborate, brilliant theatrical interpretation of that experience.
And I think that that's what makes you you, LG, is I think you have such a huge dynamic range.
You can go from the most intimate, amazing performance.
It feels like you're singing directly to one person, to something that can make a speech that makes feel very, very small.
Thank you.
I mean, you know, it's interesting.
I actually find myself struggling with that nowadays because I have I've become like someone that really enjoys both sides.
And I kind of have this like meditation, of like an intimacy and a privacy with music all day long, and then I get on stage.
So, like, it feels intense.
And I didn't used to... have that feeling i mean i i did but it was more like like i would get really pumped up and now i be i become really aware quickly the number of people that are watching and um what's what's in front of me is that a form of presence of being present oh yeah i'm way more present now like and and yeah and grounded i mean uh That amount of applause, like, sends a surge in me.
But it makes for, like, a... I believe a very honest and truthful performance.
Especially with the character I play at the top of the show.
I mean, she's not very nice.
Playing that kind of, like, totally narcissistic, egocentric, part of myself early on in the show it's it's like you know it's not always my favorite thing but once i get into it it's my it's like it's my it's my religion of uh rehearsal that saves me because i i find the dance i find the vocal i find the performance and then i i settle into the character and it's really fun and it's it's a way to you know yeah tell it differently every night but But yeah, for sure.
I mean, I always used to say that you play a stadium like a bar, you know, and you play a bar like a stadium.
I love that.
So good.
That's so good for the people at the bar at the back.
Yeah, exactly.
Thank you for touching base with us at the end of what's been incredible.
I always feel so like very honored that I get to talk to you at the start of these things.
You've always been very, very cool with me about that and welcomed me in, and let me help you tell the story for fans.
And I really loved me being able to catch up with you at this point.
I know there's more touring to be done, but it is the end of the year.
You got the Grammys coming up most nominations you've ever received, which I know that we just talked about the competitive nature of music and the idea of authenticity and everything else.
But I always think that they speak to the team.
It's not just about you, right?
It must be something you feel very proud of to be honored like that even before the ceremony, just on behalf of all the work everybody puts in.
Oh yeah, to be there with you know, my partner Michael, and all the musicians that played on the album, and you know everything.
It's, I'm just excited to be there, man.
You know what I mean?
I know it's a competition, but I'm just really happy to be there.
And I feel really grateful to be celebrated for my musicianship after all these years.
And it's also really fun because we started out last year, you and I, talking about Harlequin, my jazz record, and to be there for both albums is really cool because they are so vastly different.
They do kind of inherently thrive in chaos and misunderstood ladies.
But yeah, and we did a lot of really cool stuff with Harlequin that really kind of got me in the zone for the show that we put on with Mayhem.
Jazz music, it's a totally different animal.
I feel really grateful for all the different genres of music and all the different pockets I get to play in, because it's kind of like you know jumping into different galaxies and you can really kind of like get lost somewhere else completely.
And if you can, why wouldn't you honor that curiosity that we've been talking about?
I mean, to deny yourself the chance to show all sides of yourself through what?
For what?
For fear?
That's the thing I think that is one of the things that...
You know, when all this is said and done and many many many many many, many moons and everyone looks back on whoever's life and whoever left what.
You will go down as one of the great, fearless artists.
I think that I don't.
I know fear plays a role in your life like it does mine and everybody's, but when it comes to the art man, you're fearless.
Thank you.
I, you know, yeah, fear does play a role in my life.
As you see me sitting here rocking back and forth during an interview, just sitting myself.
Yeah, you know, jazz music is like.
You know, what I love about it is it's kind of you're inherently breaking it the whole time.
I mean kind of your ability to love.
It comes from like how much you're gonna, how much you're gonna explore it, how much you're gonna mess it up, break it.
But i, so i i think that that's a music too, that i will kind of forever be a student and i can't wait to do more.
Um, and yeah, harlequin was my first moment without tony, so that was you know, and i don't know what tony would have thought of it.
I mean, i think i think he, you know, he was always so sweet whenever i thought he wasn't gonna like something, he would go what He was kind of like, the most punk rock.
He was like, because he was really into art.
And you know yeah, whenever I thought he was going to kind of think something was too much, he would like really be fascinated by it.
And so, you know, that changes the way I approach jazz music for sure.
So, yeah, I'm excited for the fans to eventually see, you know, more of what we had been cooking up.
We have touring to be done next year after the Grammys, which is great.
You're heading back out until April 2026, which is great.
I sat down with a couple of my friends.
We're all monsters and everybody asked.
Everybody has these questions they want answered.
So I'm going to hit you with quickfire questions.
You can just no comment, yes, no, whatever you want, da, da, da, da, da.
Okay, here we go.
So they want to know is April the end of the tour or will you continue on to add more dates, or is it TBD?
It's the end.
It's the end.
I mean, until it's not.
It's the end.
It's the end.
You very kindly told us before you're making music is the hope to release something new next year.
Is that the plan?
I mean, it really depends on how I keep going with writing, but it's not out of the question.
Amazing.
All of this activity that Abel, by the way, that was only one.
Abel's put like three or four things up right now.
He's definitely got no poker face right now.
Everybody wants to know, is there something coming with you and Abel?
I mean, I love Abel and that's all I'm going to say.
I mean, I'm a huge, huge fan of Abel.
That's beautiful.
That's all we need.
Please pass on our love and certainly my love to Michael and the team.
You know how much I love him.
I will.
I know he loves you too.
We both love you and happy holidays to you and your family.
And we're just sending you the biggest hug.
