In Elle’s February cover story, Lady Gaga revealed she’s considering starting a family with her fiancé, venture capitalist Michael Polansky, soon. The idea of Mother Monster becoming an actual mother — and with a civilian husband, at that — may sound alarm bells for fans wedded to the fabulous, man-repelling, pop freakazoid of Gaga’s youth. And it’s true, things have changed. Her life is quieter. She’s not getting wasted; she’s hosting pasta nights now. “Sometimes I worry people will say I’m boring these days, but honestly, thank God I’m boring,” Gaga told writer Lotte Jeffs. “Thank God! Because I was living on the edge. I don’t know what was going to happen to me living that way.”
But if you think Stefani Germanotta is done with being Lady Gaga, she’s here to correct the record. In the story, Gaga is thrown for a loop when Jeffs asks whether she might drop her stage name. “No! I love being Lady Gaga. I love being me,” she proclaims. “I just mean that I became a star when I was 20. Everything gets reflected back to you that this persona is what makes you special.” Two days ago, she announced her seventh studio album, Mayhem, which she said “started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music my earliest fans loved.” (It was Polansky, actually, who convinced her to return to pop.) It just seems as though Gaga’s feeling more confident in the duality between person and alter ego. She tells a story about watching the music video for Mayhem’s lead single, “Disease,” with a friend who saw her in character, thrashing, bloody-eyed, handcuffed to a pole, and said, “You know, this girl — well, she also makes great broccoli.” You know what? Sure.