Lady Gaga Is Unrecognizable In Real Life

Few stars are as chameleonic as Lady Gaga. At times appearing for public events looking much like her un-costumed self, at other times looking like a walking art exhibit, she's gone through numerous phases over her career since her 2008 debut album, "The Fame." From the pumped-up glitz of her sophomore effort, "The Fame Monster" to her celestial "ArtPop" goddess veneer to the girl next door "Joanne" country phase, Gaga has gone through so many looks you may spot her in the street based on her entourage and — as she once sang — paparazzi more than anything else.    

A 2009 interview with Gaga on TikTok during her original "The Fame" era — when she was an upcoming artist in her early 20s — perfectly sums up her ethos regarding art, music, fashion, etc., one which provides clear insight into why she cycles through so many looks. "Art is not just truth," she says, "If it was just truth, there would be no level of fantasy and no level of dream. And I think in my music, especially, there's sort of an escapist quality, but that offers something to the audience that's much more than just honesty." Put differently, Gaga believes that fantasy and imagination are integral to the art/artist relationship, a relationship more in the forefront in her music than in other music.

A 2016 interview between Gaga and Jamie Lee Curtis on Variety reveals more. Gaga says she's a "creation," a "separate entity," and a fused version of her original self, Stefani Germanotta, with whatever "culture and lifestyle and art that's influencing" her creative process.

Many people have wondered over the years who is the real Lady Gaga, where in the Gaga persona, costuming, and makeup is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, where is the difference between the two, and what exactly does Gaga look like without any adornment. On that note, Gaga said in the aforementioned 2016 Variety interview that Stefani is, "a young Italian-American girl from New York who's an actress and a songwriter and a rebel," and that's that. 

"Gaga" was the nickname Stefani gave herself. Referencing her teens when she was performing in New York nightclubs and her time in New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Gaga told Curtis, "Gaga is this stronger individual part of myself that I discovered being young in New York — loving music, meeting with young artists, working with musicians, with writers," concluding, "I'm entirely Stefani and I'm entirely Gaga." Gaga, in other words, is a protean identity existing within the relationship between Stefani and herself, the public, and the interaction between all of them.

This might sound confusing to folks who don't grok Gaga's — or anyone else's — need for artistic indulgence and creative expression. But, folks not need think further than similarly chimeric performance artists like David Bowie to understand where Gaga is coming from. Some public Gaga faces might be closer to the face that Gaga sees in the morning when she wakes up and makes coffee, while others might make her harder to spot — even to herself.

Out of all the phases of Gaga's career, it's her stripped-down, singer-songwriter 2016 "Joanne" era work that revealed to the public the Gaga face you'd most likely see walking down the street. That era — sporting minimal makeup, costumes, and theatrics — came ahead of her award-winning performance in "A Star is Born" in 2018 and after her maximum pomp "Art Pop" phase circa 2014. No matter the quality of the songwriting, the latter drew the ire of critics at the time, with Vice rather abrasively writing, "No one gives a f*** about Lady Gaga anymore." 

But Gaga rebounded, and she did so by pulling away the mask. Without "Joanne," Gaga's simultaneous appearance in "American Horror Story," and recent, au naturel look in "Joker: Folie à Deux," Gaga might be far less recognizable in public than she currently is. Gaga even went full non-makeup in a series of Instagram posts years back that definitely makes her easier to spot. 

In fact, Gaga is so recognizable now that in a 2020 interview on CBS Sunday Morning (via CBS News) she lamented her public recognizability. "This ruined my life," she said, gesturing at the piano that she often uses to write songs. "Look what you did. You can't go to the grocery store now. Look what you did. If you go to dinner with your family, somebody comes to the table." She added, "I hated being famous. I hated being a star. I felt exhausted and used up." Those sentiments got funneled into 2020's Chromatica, which, like the rest of Gaga's oeuvre, fashioned for her another face.