Lady Gaga Explained Why She Didn't Want to Be Ariana Grande's Friend

• Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande (opens in new tab) just released a new single, "Rain On Me."
• Gaga spoke to Zane Lowe of Beats 1 about the single and her friendship with Grande.
• She revealed she hesitated to befriend Grande, afraid she would "project negativity" onto her.

If you haven't yet listened to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande (opens in new tab)'s absolute banger of a single, "Rain On Me," I'd strongly recommend you do so now. Click off my article! I won't even be mad! (Or listen below, and continue reading, because I live for pageviews.)

Lady Gaga spoke to Beats 1 host Zane Lowe about the new single, as E! reports (opens in new tab),discussing her friendship with Grande—and why it took so long to fully develop. Gaga, an icon and a legend, believed she'd be a poor mentor and a bad influence on Grande, because brains can be cruel and convince us of terrible lies! "She was so persistent. She would try over and over again to be friends with me," Gaga said. "And I was too ashamed to hang out with her, because I didn't want to project all of this negativity onto something that was healing and so beautiful."

Thankfully, Grande persisted. "Eventually she called me on my shit. She was, 'You're hiding.' And I was like, 'I am hiding. I'm totally hiding.' And then this friendship blossomed," Gaga said.

Gaga also spoke about addressing her trauma through her music—specifically, her new single "Free Woman." "It's compounded all of my feelings about life, feelings about the world, feelings about the industry, what I had to compromise and go through to get to where I am. And I had to put it there," she said. "And when I was able to finally celebrate it, I said, 'You know what? I'm not nothing without a steady hand. I'm not nothing unless I know I can. I'm still something if I don't got a man, I'm a free woman.'"

She talked, too, about healing and self-forgiveness, discussing self-harm and her past belief that she didn't "deserve good things." Gaga told Lowe, "I stopped and I forgave myself, eventually. But I think I forgave myself, because I decided that I was human and that made me feel better. I was like, "Oh, I'm doing this incredibly human thing, even though I feel a plastic doll. Look at me, I'm so fucking human."

Gaga finished with a powerful message to her fans: "If you're listening to this album and you're suffering in any type of way, just know that that suffering within itself is a sign of your humanity and you are not broken."

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