Lady Gaga is opening up about a horrifying situation she experienced as a struggling teenage artist.
During an interview with Howard Stern on Tuesday to promote her upcoming "Cheek to Cheek" concert tour with Tony Bennett, the 28-year-old singer was asked about her song "Swine," which she described as a song about rape, "demoralization," "rage, fury and passion."
When Stern asked the singer if she was raped by a record producer, Gaga replied, "I went through some horrific things that I'm able to laugh [at] now, because I've gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy and emotional therapy to heal over the years."
"My music has 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?'...I was very naïve," she said.
The "Do What U Want" singer, who is dating actor Taylor Kinney, said someone being raped happens every day and called the action "scary and sad." However, Gaga admitted that being rapped did not affect her as "much right after as it did about four or five years later."
"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," Gaga shared. "I don't want to be defined by it. I'll be damned if somebody's gonna say that every creatively intelligent thing that I ever did is all boiled down to one d**khead who did that to me. I'm going to take responsibility for all my pain looking beautiful. All the things that I've made out of my strife, I did that."
During the interview, Gaga admitted to Stern and Robin Quivers that she "wasn't even willing to admit that anything had even happened." She has never confronted the man for actions, but admitted that she would not know how to react if she were to see him again.
"I think it would terrify me. It would paralyze me. I saw him one time in a store and I was so paralyzed by fear," she said. "Because it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I went, 'Wow, that was really messed up.'"
Looking back, the singer said, "I don't know what I was thinking. I didn't tell anybody. And I didn't even tell myself for the longest time. And then I was like, 'You know what? All this drinking and all this nonsense, you have to go to the source, otherwise it just won't go away. It will not go away."
