Lady Gaga Tells Howard Stern She Was Raped By Music Producer, Assault Happened At Age 19

Lady Gaga told interviewer Howard Stern that when she was 19-years-old, a music producer raped her, and that her song “Swine” on her latest album, ARTPOP, deals with the incident — though she had never revealed the sexual assault publicly before.

The singer and media personality, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, revealed that her infamous performance of the song at this years SXSW music festival, in which Lady Gaga had a performance artist named Millie Brown vomit on her, was a response to the rape.

“I want this chick to throw up on me in front of the world so that I can tell them, you know what? You could never, ever degrade as much as I could degrade myself,” Lady Gaga told Stern on his Sirius XM Radio program Tuesday. “And look how beautiful it is when I do.”

Brown calls herself a “vomit painter” whose technique consists of ingesting large quantities of soy milk and food coloring, then regurgitating the brightly colored substance at will.

Stern, always known for his blunt questioning regarding the most intimate details of his guests’ personal lives, told Lady Gaga during a discussion of the “Swine” song, “I feel like you’ve been raped by someone.”

With that prompting, the “Paparazzi” singer revealed that she had been through “horrific things,” and that when she was 19 she remained “naive” about human behavior.

“I’m able to laugh now because I’ve gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy, and emotional therapy, to heal over the years,” Gaga told the radio host. “I was a shell of my former self at one point. I was not myself.”

She told Stern that at first she didn’t fully comprehend what had happened to her, but as several years went by, the assault began to trouble her deeply.

“I wasn’t even willing to admit that anything had even happened,” the 28-year-old Lady Gaga told Stern. “I saw him one time in a store, and I was paralyzed by fear.”

She added that, in addition to a large number of therapy sessions, her cultivation of healthy relationships has helped her come to terms with the rape. She cited, specifically, her recent collaboration with iconic, 88-year-old crooner Tony Bennett.

“He wants nothing from me but my talent and my friendship,” Lady Gaga said. “I think we should all be each other’s Tony Bennetts.”

An excerpt from Tuesday’s Howard Stern broadcast in which Lady Gaga discusses her rape experience can be heard below.