Lady Gaga 'Flirted with the Idea of Sobriety' While Making Chromatica : 'I'm Not There Yet'

The pop star, 34, opened up about the making of her new album Chromatica, due out on May 29, during a candid chat with Zane Lowe on Apple Music on Thursday. While reflecting on a song called "911," which Gaga said is "about an antipsychotic that I take," she revealed that she actually "flirted with the idea of sobriety" while recording the highly anticipated record.

"I don't take any pain medication, because it's not healthy for me. But I've flirted with the idea of sobriety. I'm not there yet, but I flirted with it throughout the album," she shared. "It's something that came up as a result of me trying to work through the pain that I was feeling."

"But part of my healing process was going, 'Well, I can either lash the hell out of myself every day for continuing to drink, or I can just be happy that I'm still alive and keep going,' and feel good enough," Gaga continued. "I am good enough. It's not perfect, but wabi-sabi. I'm perfectly imperfect.'"

Though Gaga did not completely commit to the idea of getting sober, she did quit smoking following Chromatica's recording.

"I quit smoking," she said. "I smoked the whole way through making this record. And when we were done, I stopped. It was the most bizarre, beautiful thing that could have happened, that this music actually healed me."

During the interview, the "Stupid Love" singer also spoke about fighting her inner demons and moving past trauma.

"I think I forgive myself. I forgive myself for all the ways I've punished myself in private," she said, explaining how she hopes to help people by being transparent about her struggles with mental health.

"I've been open about the fact that I used to cut. And I've open about the fact that I have had masochistic tendencies that are not healthy. And they're ways of expressing shame. They're ways of expressing feeling not good enough, but actually they're not effective. They just make you feel worse."

Emphasizing that she doesn't want to "glamorize" self-harm, Gaga said, "The harder thing to do is to ask for help and to tell someone."

"I forgave myself because I decided that I was human and that made me feel better," she added.

In the making of Chromatica, Gaga found a new ally in "Rain on Me" collaborator Ariana Grande, who she said has also experienced "really hard life-testing stuff."

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New Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows coronavirus conspiracy theories spreading on the right may hamper vaccine efforts

According to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll, 44 percent of Republicans believe that Bill Gates is plotting to use a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign as a pretext to implant microchips in billions of people and monitor their movements — a widely debunked conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.

The survey, which was conducted May 20 and 21, found that only 26 percent of Republicans correctly identify the story as false. In contrast, just 19 percent of Democrats believe the same spurious narrative about the Microsoft founder and public-health philanthropist. A majority recognize that it’s not true.

As states relax their lockdown restrictions and responsibility for containing the coronavirus shifts, in part, to the American people, the vast gap between the right and the left over Gates reflects a growing problem: the dangerous, destabilizing tendency to ignore fundamental facts about the deadly pathogen in favor of misinformation peddled by partisans, including President Trump, and spread on social media.

That tendency is more widespread on the right, although liberals also believe some false narratives (including that COVID-19 deaths have already surged in states that were quick to reopen).

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that this “choose your own reality” effect is distorting perceptions of nearly every aspect of the pandemic, from reopening to vaccination to the official death toll. A broad majority of the public is either “very” (56 percent) or “somewhat” concerned (30 percent) about “false or misleading information being communicated about coronavirus.” That sentiment, at least, is not partisan: More than 80 percent of Democrats, Republicans and independents agree.

Yet blame for these concerns varies greatly by political affiliation. When Democrats are asked to select the top source of false or misleading information about the coronavirus, 56 percent pick the Trump administration; that number rises to 69 percent among Hillary Clinton voters. Republicans, however, point to the mainstream media (54 percent) as the primary culprit; 61 percent of Trump voters say likewise.

The result, in many cases, is two different sets of “facts” — only one of which resembles the truth.

Take the Gates example. Half of all Americans (50 percent) who name Fox News as their primary television news source believe the disproven conspiracy theory, and 44 percent of voters who cast ballots for Trump in 2016 do as well — even though neither Fox nor Trump has promoted it. At the same time, just 15 percent of MSNBC viewers and 12 percent of Clinton voters say the story is true.

The spread of such an outlandish charge may seem silly, but it could have catastrophic consequences. Through his namesake foundation, the tech billionaire has long championed vaccines in developing countries. So far, he has committed $300 million to combating the coronavirus. If large portions of the public believe that Gates’s intent is nefarious — and if they go on to convince themselves that any coronavirus vaccine will be dangerous — then many may refuse to get vaccinated. (There is a parallel sentiment among some evangelicals to resist vaccination out of fear it would constitute the “mark of the beast” mentioned in the Book of Revelation.)

The more people refuse to get vaccinated, the harder it becomes to end the pandemic.

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