← DISGRACELAND
DISGRACELAND
Lady Gaga (Pt.1): How She Manipulated the Conspiracy Theorists on Her Way to Becoming The Biggest Pop Star on the Planet
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- [00:05]
Jake Brennan
Double Elvis.
- [00:07]
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Jake Brennan
What do you have to lose?
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- [01:08]
Jake Brennan
Is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. A Grammy winning, chart topping, staggeringly successful musician, an artist who refuses to be easily defined, a shape shifting, influential, five tool, multi hyphenate icon, a singer, a songwriter, an actor, an endlessly compelling superstar with legions of followers from all over the world. She's more than mainstream. She is the mainstream. Yet she's the voice of the marginalized, the alienated, the isolated, of freaks and monsters everywhere. And she inspires more than just fandom and obsession. She's compelled countless conspiracy theorists whose claims about her are as absurd as they are horrifying. She's a man. She's a murderer. Are these claims true? And if not, why won't they go away? What is it about this artist that drives these persistent conspiracies? The artist I'm talking about is of course Lady Gaga. An artist who, yes, makes great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called fishnets on Delancy MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to so what? Buy Pink. And why would I play you that specific slice of dirt bike dating cheese. Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on October 4, 2008. And that was the day Lady Gaga's friend and musical collaborator Lena Morgana died an event that kicked off one of the wildest darkest rumors in modern music history. On this episode, Influencer vs Shapeshifter icon of sex or intersex? Borrowed or stolen identity? Suicide or murder? Illuminati or Catholic schoolgirl gone wrong? The Lady Gaga story you didn't know you needed I'm Jake Brennan and this is disgrace. Most people spend hours perfecting the outfits they're going to wear to gain entrance into exclusive nightclubs. The opposite is true if one seeks admission to Berlin's Lab Oratory, part of the notorious Berg nightclub complex, which opens at 11:59pm Friday evening and closes around 9am Monday morning. Burgain's doormen are as selective as Studio 54's notorious Mark Benneke once was, but twice as cruel. At Burgain, outrageous outfits are not encouraged. It's best to rock your simplest jeans and T shirt combo and act like you don't care. Which, of course, you very much do. The doorman's harsh East German stare betrays nothing. His face is blank as death and bleak, like a Berlin morning. And though your heart is in your throat, you play it cool. You're not drunk. You're not obviously high. You haven't spoken a word while in line, so the doorman has no idea that you don't speak German. He gives you a slow once over with Gestapo like suspicion and steps aside, clearing a free path to the heavy industrial door covered in graffiti. You return to stare with your own blankness and proceed through the door, which somehow opens on its own before you get to it. Inside this mammoth fourth story brick and mortar tribute to Sodom and Gomorrah, you're surrounded by a blackness only penetrated in minuscule moments by brief bursts of strobing white light. The pulsing house music pummels you somehow. It's both muffled and suffocatingly loud. Your eardrums hollow out, then the walls of your stomach vibrate. You wonder if this is what Havana Syndrome feels like. The thought disappears and so does the twinge of nausea as your heart rate quickens with anticipation. While you pass through Burgain's labyrinth of long winding hallways beneath 40 foot ceilings, you walk past secret passageways to even more secret rooms where you and others will partake in acts that decades ago, were they not kept secret, would have resulted in harsh societal condemnation, persecution, jail, violence, even death. You press on up countless staircases, slipping through various entrances into a mazework of club settings. You wonder how you'll describe this the Bergain nightclub complex, to your friends. Imagine if Trent Reznor designed a music and dance mall dedicated to debauchery. That's about the best you can come up with as you rub shoulders with the like minded hedonists from all over the globe. Different countries, different backgrounds, with different looks and different sexual orientations, though mostly gay. And each of them seeking a different version of what you seek. The freedom to be who you truly are and to align your true identity with your most honest sexual desires. The word freak seems pejorative, but that's not how you see it. You view the word the same as the composer of the Stuart Price remix that's blasting across the Bergain dance floor. The same way that that composer views the word freak as a badge of honor. That composer, of course, is not only your favorite pop star, she's your champion, your icon. You're one of her little monsters. And she's your, quote unquote mother monster. One of the biggest stars of the 21st century. Lady Gaga, who was just as you were, born this way. An artist who told the world that she always felt like a freak. An artist who took her awkward feelings of high school alienation and isolation and used them as fuel. Fuel to empower her and her millions of fans, you included. She empowered all of you to embrace your true identities and to reclaim the word freak. And with that reclamation comes liberation. Freedom. And so here you are inside the Bergain nightclub complex, outside the entryway to the Lab Oratory. The club stylizes its name as Lab Oratory, a semi clever take on the word laboratory, thus my kind of strange pronunciation of the club's name. Laboratory isn't just any club. It's a sex club with rules. Lab Oratory is for men only on most nights, and the club's motto is play safe, dress dirty. Before one can enter, one must make a prerequisite stop in the locker room. You know the drill. Laboratory advertisements are clear. There is a strict dress code. Fully naked shoes only under the locker room's fluorescent lights. You strip down, stuff your clothes in a plastic bag and throw the bag into a locker. Eagerly, you make your way into Laboratory again, fully naked except for your sneakers. The club's flyers prohibit not only clothing, but also cologne. And you immediately understand why the smell hits you almost as hard as the music. In a word, the club smells like men. A raunchy, exhilarating mix of pheromones, sex, and the sweet spirit scent of vodka, which famously is odorless until it passes through one's sweat pores. All of it fills the air and your nostrils and with the music, you're already enthralled before your brain even begins to register what your eyes are seeing. Black and white sexual psychedelia. A dom doom dance floor jammed with different body types, all nude, all sharing the same space. Strangers clinging to some type of communication, communal intimacy. And you now know that you'll never be able to explain this. It's something that can only be felt. This is something far too experiential, like love or faith. Something that words too often fail to describe. Gas masks hang from the wall. Men speak to you with gestures, signals, not words. Words are no good here. The music is too loud and the shared frequency that everyone is plugged into means makes speaking unnecessary. You all want the same thing. Not sex. Freedom. And everyone in this club understands what that means. This isn't the 1970s. This isn't new York's meat packing district. Floor shows and spectacle fisting are outre. This is the 21st century. And though lab oratory is primal and though nearly every kink is allowed, this space is also profoundly respectful. To repeat, the so called freak is celebrated. And with this respect comes the type of tenderness that would otherwise be absent from a nightclub full of naked men dancing and fucking to the sounds of Lady Gaga. House Mixes after all, Laboratory is the setting for one of the most notorious chapters in what has become the myth of Lady Gaga. It's the place where one of the most unsettling and controversial conspiracy theories surrounding the pop star would be finally put to bed.
- [11:51]
Evan Ross Katz
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- [13:23]
Jake Brennan
Ever since Lady Gaga burst into mainstream public consciousness in 2008, conflicting information about who she was and where she came from has persisted. To hear Gaga tell it, back then, Anyway, the young 23 year old pop star described herself to interviewers as having grown up as an actress outsider, a quote unquote goth girl with hair dyed black, equally obsessed with David Bowie and Judy Garland. Gaga strategically offered other bits from her past too, like the fact that before she became a global sensation selling out stadiums in countries all over the world, she worked a pole on New York's Lower east side as a burlesque dancer. Or that Gaga, like many feral denizens of the les back in the mid aughts from the Strokes to Ryan Adams, knew exactly what it meant when a fellow bar hop whispered, meet me in the bathroom. These biographical sketches of Lady Gaga's past, doled out in the many interviews she gave as her career began to skyrocket, are not false, but they do color only between the lines of a carefully designed, artist driven creation myth. It's an origin story that leaves out a lot and as it pertains to Gaga's high school years, presents an almost, and I say the word almost very intentionally, an almost false depiction of who she was. Do I think that we should fault Lady Gaga for this? Absolutely not. Most of the best artists, from Bob Dylan to Lou Reed to Jack White, Bowie and too many others to name the best artists, painstakingly fuel their own myths by carefully cultivating their origin stories. Bob Dylan wasn't raised by carnie Barkers and Lou Reed didn't go to Harvard. Jack White wasn't Meg White's brother, David Bowie didn't fall to earth, and Lady Gaga wasn't born with a penis. More on that when we return to Laboratory in a moment. But first, let's quickly look at who Lady Gaga was before she was Lady Gaga. She was Stephanie Germanotta and she grew up rich on New York's Upper west side. You know the Guest Wi fi you use to get onto the Internet with your computer in hotels? The one that's literally called Guest Wi fi? Her dad, Joe Germanotta, invented that. He also invented Stephanie Germanotta AKA Lady Gaga. Joe and his wife raised their daughter Catholic, sending her to a prestigious private school, the exclusive all girls Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan. The school is set in a converted mansion and if you want an idea of what type of exclusivity we're talking about, Convent of the Sacred Hearts past students include Anderson Cooper's mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, heiress to the Vanderbilt fortune Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy in both Paris and Nikki Hilton I didn't attend Catholic school, but I imagine it's a fairly stuffy experience. I can see how someone like Lady Gaga might describe her experience there as that of an outsider being made to feel like a quote unquote freak. But former classmates and photos of Stephanie Germanotta's school days, which one can now find on the Internet, they all paint a different picture of her school days. Classmates describe her as social, involved, even outgoing. Photos reveal a smiling, fresh faced, enthusiastic student wearing her school uniform to code and eagerly participating in Mass and in student plays and musicals. To this day, Lady Gaga remains close with a number of her high school classmates. Her loyalty to her friends is surpassed only by her loyalty to her family. Or Gaga has made no secret about the fact that despite being one of the biggest stars on the planet, she still often returns to her parents 3 stories duplex to surround herself with her love in the familiar comforts of her childhood home. All of this is at odds with how Gaga has described herself. We're all very aware of how 90s and early aughts outsiders and freaks looked and behaved. They were seldom seen smiling in yearbook photos with other students or eagerly attending Catholic mass, ambitiously going for lead roles in school school plays or heading home on weekends to hang with their parents after becoming rock stars. Their histories look quite different. Actually. Late 90s and early aughts outsiders were infrequently if ever pictured in candid moments in their yearbooks, smiling. Real music driven outsiders didn't eagerly attend anything except punk and DIY shows, never mind Catholic mass. And they didn't go out for school plays and God willing, they ever achieved rock star status. The last place they were going to go As a young 20 something was home to mommy and daddy on the weekend. But all of this said I don't think Lady Gaga was lying about feeling like an outsider despite the person we now know that she was pre fame because Lady Gaga had something that 99% of her fellow humans don't have a blinding, almost suffocating ambition to be the biggest star on the planet. From an early age, she was absolutely driven to make it as a performer, specifically as a singer and songwriter. You can see it in those pictures from Sacred Heart and you can see it in those embarrassing videos of Stephanie Germanotta from her NYU days back in the early 2000s on stage at the Bitter End, about as uncool a New York venue as you could find at the time. Fighting her way through Led Zeppelin covers to a near empty room with a half assed hippie band backing her up. And you can see it in later photos of a reinvented Lady Gaga from her Lower east side days working the bars on Ludlow and Delancey for every ounce of credibility she could scrounge and leotards and go go boots. During a time when she was clawing her way toward a major label record deal, Stephanie Germanotta wasn't going to be denied. If you spoke to those who have known Lady Gaga for a long time, they'd all tell you that this ambition was always there. She was always hustling. She worked her way into a development deal with a top notch producer. She was writing, demoing constantly, chasing down live gigs, hanging out at the right places, showing up at the right parties, seeking out the right people to be seen with. And sleeping with the hottest bartender on the Lower east side, a long haired metalhead named Luke, because of course he was. And she was scouring the trendy digital blog pages of last night's party and the Cobra Snake for pictures of herself from the night before. For Lady Gaga, the hustle never stopped. She lived, worked, slept and dreamed hustle. Everything she did, including engaging in her favorite topic of conversation herself, was all about making it. This type of ambulance ambition isn't only blinding, it's isolating. When you orient your life around a goal with the type of drive that causes you to behave differently than anyone else you know and come in contact with, well, you're by definition alienating yourself. So was Lady Gaga an outsider back in her formative years? Yes, absolutely she was. She just invented an origin story her audience could better relate to and that speaks to her genius. But what about her penis, you ask? Oh yeah, right. Back to the lab oratory in Berlin. When Lady Gaga and her entourage entered the Bergien nightclub complex in 2010, Stephanie Germanotta's identity had long since been supplanted by the mother monster, the Gagaloo Gags. Gaga. Lady Gaga. The new Queen of pop. By 2010, Lady Gaga was caught in a hurricane of unprecedented success for a new artist. I could fill the entirety of this podcast giving examples of just how staggeringly successful Gaga had become by 2010, only three years into her professional career. But I'm not going to do that. After releasing her debut album the fame in 2008, the woman didn't just have hit singles, she had the biggest selling singles of the year. She captivated the world with her performance at the 52nd Grammy Awards, drew more than a few comparisons to mid career Madonna, chief among them by pissing off the Catholics with her song Alejandro, which the Catholic League deemed blasphemous. She won three Grammys, countless MTV Video music awards, topped critics lists in Rolling Stone, seemingly everywhere else, and by the end of 2010 was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She also became the first person ever to achieve a billion views on YouTube for her bad Romance video. But it was her Glastonbury performance in 2009 that really stoked the imaginations of the conspiracy theorists. The show was a triumph. It cemented Lady Gaga on the world stage. The audience simply could not get enough of Gaga. Not just her performance, but her personality. They ate, as they say, from the palm of her hand, and in the end, Lady Gaga sent them away by shooting flames out of her nipples. Literally. Well, literally out of her bra anyway. But shortly thereafter, videos and photos from the performance began circulating online. Videos and photos that online sleuths claimed showed a bulge beneath Gaga's skirt, a bulge that supposedly proved that Lady Gaga was intersex. Quotes, fake quotes, that is, from Gaga, supposedly confirmed that she had both male and female genitalia. They went viral instantly. Gaga refused to deny the claims. Her management denied them for her, which, given the fact that her father is part of her management team, you can understand why. But still, Gaga said nothing on the subject. In the corner of the Internet that is concerned with all things, Gaga was flooded with altered imagery exaggerating the bulge in her crotch. Silly, yes, absolutely. But it's astonishing how many people fell for this ridiculousness and how persistent this rumor was. Until Gaga visited Lab Oratory with her entourage. After visiting Lab Oratory, Gaga, her security, a few friends, her makeup artist, and the British journalist Caitlin Moran from the Times of London filled the dance floor of another burgundy complex nightclub, this one with its own set of sex swings, bathtubs and beds. According to Moran, Gaga was unlucky in love this evening, despite her pop star status. The gay clientele were happy to host, but Gaga apparently struck out in her attempts to get laid. That whole not having a penis thing being an issue and all. But that's not the proof that should have finally dispelled the intercession sex rumor. After ditching her McQueen designed cloak and braving the bar by herself wearing just her fishnets, panties and a bra, Gaga invited Caitlin Moran into the Bergain Club's bathroom for what Moran thought would be an opportunity to do blow with her favorite pop star, but which turned out to instead be an extended girl hang, whereupon the reporter witnessed with her own two eyes Lady Garrett Gaga squat on the toilet and relieve herself through her fishnets. And so, irrefutable proof of Lady Gaga's lack of male genitalia was famously published by Caitlin Moran in the Times. But of course the conspiracy theorists wouldn't accept it. A year later, in a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, no less, Gaga wondered aloud why she should, quote, waste my time and give a press release about whether or not I have a penis. My fans don't care and neither do I. The conspiracy theorists went wild with this non denial. Head over to Reddit and you'll find that they still haven't let go of it. And to think the whole quote unquote Lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite thing is only the third most popular conspiracy theory surrounding what this global pop star. We'll be right back after this.
- [26:04]
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- [26:40]
Stassi Schroeder
I am your host Stassi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three?
- [26:48]
Jake Brennan
Steven because he so evil, I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone face consequences.
- [26:54]
Mint Mobile Terms Announcer
It's intoxicating.
- [26:55]
Stassi Schroeder
The writers just know how to trick ya.
- [26:58]
Jake Brennan
There's always a twist in this show. It's nothing you would expect.
- [27:01]
Stassi Schroeder
Tell Me Lies the Official podcast now streaming and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.
- [27:12]
Jake Brennan
Lady Gaga wasn't the least bit phased about anonymous Internet trolls questioning her physiology online, but having her home invaded? That was truly horrifying. Flashback 2006 New York's Lower east side. The shower felt good on her body despite the fact that it, like most of the utilities in Lady Gaga's 176 Stanton street apartment, barely worked half the time. Unlike her, Stephanie Germanotta worked all the time. At least it seemed that way. Even when she wasn't working, she was looking for work, which in itself was its own kind of work. Her friend Lady Starlight danced burlesque at the Slipper Room on Orchard in Stanton, close by Stephanie's apartment. Burlesque dancers are often confused with strippers, but the difference between the two is significant. The point of burlesque is to tease and entertain, to tell a story through the dancing on stage. The removal of clothing typically never gets fully nude. The point of stripping or pole dancing is often sex. Strippers, depending on local laws, remove as much clothing as possible, usually until they're fully nude. And they entice clients into back rooms for paid private shows and often more. But like stripping, burlesque dancing is hard work. More often than not, the the dancers work on stage, in heels. It's a real workout and it's intense. Which is not to suggest that though burlesque is considered more of an art form than stripping, the creeps aren't part of the gig. They are. And the sexual harassment can be just as stressful as the physical fatigue. None of this stops Stephanie Germanotta from pushing Lady Starlight to get her an audition as a burlesque dancer at the Slipper Room. Stephanie needed the money and perhaps the experience as well. These were the days before Stephanie became Lady Gaga. These were the formative years. Stephanie was still defining herself as an artist. She was signed to a development deal with Rob Fusari, a successful producer who'd worked previously with Destiny's Child and Will Smith. This guaranteed Stephanie precisely nothing. However, she had no record deal, not yet. So every bit of her energy was focused on creating a demo with Fusari that would net her one. The fact that she was involved in an on again, off again romantic relationship with her producer only made this time in her life more messy. Stephanie made Lady Starlight proud. She nailed her Slipper Room audition and soon the pair had their own show, the New York Street Revolution, Survival and Trash dance. The lights in the Slipper Room fade to black. The audience, a mix of downtown hipsters and bridge and tunnel herbs. All of them sipping cheap, overpriced beer and wine and watered down cocktails, eagerly awaits the show. And then Queen's radio Gaga explodes from the speakers. There she is, a dancer like they've never seen. Five foot two, but commanding nonetheless. Her hair is black, chopped bangs Teased out over her shoulders, she's in fishnets and panties and grinding to Queen, which transitions effortlessly into a song the audience doesn't recognize, but vibes with nonetheless. It's one of Stephanie originals, Electric Kiss. As the show progresses, Stephanie strips down to just her panties and pasties and the show is trey rock and roll, which is to also say it's dirty and slutty and the audience is enthralled. The club's owner is happy, but he knows what's coming, and that would be jealousy. The other girls aren't going to stand for this much attention being heaped upon one dancer. The discord is going to lead to changes, and he knows he'll soon have to fire Stephanie, whose star is clearly too big for the slipper room, which he does. Traipsing home through the grime of the Lower east side, Stephanie, with her big 80s metal hair and leotard and gogo boots, is gawked at and mocked by some neighborhood boys who mistakenly take her for a sex worker. She takes it in stride, unlocking her Stanton street apartment building door to head in for a much needed shower. The water is hot, the steam is thick. Her body seems to melt with satisfaction under the shower's pressure. And then a noise, a clanging. What the hell is that? Stephanie whips back the shower curtain and she switches where she sees the outline of a body escaping from her bathroom doorway through her tiny apartment. She grabs a towel and gets out of the shower. Motherfuckers. Those neighborhood boys. The shits followed her home and somehow they jimmied her door and worked their pervy asses into her apartment to sneak a peek of her naked in the shower. It was a gross invasion of privacy, one that, like her experience burlesque dancing no doubt helped shape the songs she was currently demoing, songs that would eventually appear on her debut album the Fame, specifically her song Paparazzi, which is both a devotion to and a critique of fame. The influence of Lady Gaga's apprenticeship on the Lower east side on her art is immense. You can still feel the burlesque influence in her music as recently as her latest 2025 Grammy nominated album, Mayhem. Perhaps more significant is the camp influence Gaga pulled out for her iconic arrival at the met in 2019, choosing as one of her four outfits a fishnet and panties number with bangs but minus the teased hair to elevate burlesque into high fashion. Her nostalgic return to her burlesque influence came, mind you, after she obtained true pop icon status by turning in a critical and commercial star performance on the big screen opposite Bradley Cooper in the blockbuster remake of Judy Garland's and then Barbra Streisand's A Star Is Born. But back in the mid aughts on the Les, Stephanie Germanotta was still trying to find herself amid the crime and grime of lower Manhattan. For starters, she needed a stage name. Stephanie Germanotta wasn't going to cut it. Her father had done a lot for her career. He used his connections to secure her early gigs, paid for piano lessons, negotiated her contract with Rob Fusari, even paid for her Stanton street apartment. But he hadn't given her a stage name at birth, as Madonna's father had. Queen's Radio Gaga wasn't just a song Stephanie danced to. It was a song she was obsessed with. So much so that her producer began playfully calling her Radio Gaga. And one day her producer Rob reached out to Stephanie via text radio Gaga, meet you at the studio at noon. But Rob's phone autocorrected his message from Radio Gaga to Lady Gaga, and that was that. Stephanie Germanotta had a new name. That's if you believe her version of her origin story. There's another Lady Gaga origin story from back in those days. A story that doesn't involve cute romcom rated text message anecdotes. A story that instead involves murder. On October 5, 2018, a major motion picture entitled A Star Is Born, co starring the by this time massively successful pop star Lady Gaga, was released on YouTube. A video promoting the film prompted this comment from a user and I quote and then on the 10 year anniversary of her suicide, Lady Gaga releases a movie about an aspiring pop star who benefits from using the look and sound of another star who is driven to kill themselves for the sake of her career. Okay, what the hell is this all about? That's what you might be asking yourself. Or if you're a massive Gaga fan, you might have been asking yourself this back in 20002019 who's suicide? Exactly. Exactly who is this YouTube commentator talking about? The digital conversation swiftly moved over to Reddit, where one commentator added in response to the YouTube comment, yeah, like taking her song, changing one letter and branding it as hers while basically also stealing her music style and fashion style as well. Taken on by Gaga right after she sacrificed her buddy for it all. Another user chimes in with on the other hand, Gaga's adoption of her friend's style after her sudden death might just be how she's coping with losing a close friend. It might be her way of keeping her friend alive in her heart. But this sober reasoning is quickly torpedoed by yet another commenter who says, way I heard it, her friend actually killed Lady Gaga and has been wearing her skin for the last couple of years. So who is this friend who suddenly died, who killed herself? Who is Lady Gaga being accused by conspiracy theorists on the Internet of murdering after stealing both her music and style to obtain fame? That friend of Lady Gaga's would be Lena Morgana. Lina Morgana was more than a friend to Lady Gaga. She was an artistic collaborator. The two of them worked together alongside producer Rob Fusari during Gaga's early demo days. In pictures of the two from that time, they do indeed resemble one another, with a similar sense of fashion and attitude. But only one aspiring artist became a star. The other one, Lina Morgana, will be dead before Lady Gaga released her first album, before her first single made the charts, before her first major music videos were ever released. One of those videos for the song Paparazzi shows Lady Gaga being thrown to her death from a building. The video was released in May 2009. Seven months before that, Lina Morgana was found dead, thrown from the roof of the Staten Island Hotel. I'm Jake Brennan and this episode of Disgraceland is to be continued. Disgraceland was created by Eurus Truly and is produced in partnership with with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter and Facebook disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.