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Good picture feat Birthday Girl and @brianroettinger. Selfie by @brianroettinger

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I wonder how Mark's wife feels about him and Gaga. They just seem too close lol.

i wonder too tbh but i hope she’s okay with mark and gaga’s friendship

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[fymarkga]

Mark: Hey, ah, Gaga, let’s do it.

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[fymarkga]

You performed with Lady Gaga on her Dive Bar Tour recently. That was amazing.

Right. Yeah, it was fun.

How did you two first decide to work together? When I think Lady Gaga, I don’t immediately jump to Mark Ronson producing her next record.

I knew her about seven or eight years ago when she first was getting big with “Just Dance.” She sang a hook for this song “Chillin” by this rapper Wale, that was on my label and we met then and I really liked her. I saw a lot of similarities and parallels between us. City kids, music dorks. She’s a little sexier than I am, but it was like… I enjoyed it. Then I love watching from afar her success as she’s blowing up. I remember the first time I drove past Radio City Music Hall and saw her name on the thing there, and that was early on, she was probably playing the Garden two months later, but I just called her and I was like, “That’s so rad. No matter whatever happens, you played Radio City Music Hall in New York where we grew up.” Then I didn’t really see her for about six or seven years. I ran into her sometime last year and she called me in November when she was finishing the Tony Bennett tour and she said, “Do you want to go in the studio and do stuff?”

It’s always terrifying going in with somebody new, even if it’s somebody that you like or that’s a good person, that’s talented, because it’s like this awkward mix of first day of school and a blind date. It’s all these nerves. Every day before, any night before I’m starting a project for the first time I’m always like, “This is going to be the one where I figure out I’m a fucking fraud and that I’ve got no ideas. It really is. We go in and you have to accept the first two days you might just be throwing paint at the wall. It’s a bit of a getting to know you thing. Then on the third day I think, or fourth day, we wrote “Joanne” the title song for the album and I loved it so much. I was like, “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know who will like this or what it’s about but I fucking love this. I love hearing her sing like this.” We just sort of followed that path for the record. It wasn’t this overarching thing to like, “Let’s make this analog record.”

Then, thankfully, once BloodPop, who’s this great producer who co-produced Bieber’s “Sorry” and all this stuff, once he came in and added all his wonderful touches to it and we wrote a few new songs with him, that changed it from being me and her, all 70s, like fucking mellow, up our own asses, to something that was really exciting and progressive. That’s it. I’m incredibly proud of the record. I feel like there’s songs on there, like “Joanne,” that just me and her wrote together that I’m most proud of anything that I’ve ever written and other songs like “Million Reasons” that I was just lucky to be in the room and throw in a few chords while they were writing it. Yeah, it’s exciting.

Once you started down this road, were you guys nervous in the moment creating this album? This was very different for her, and even very different from the stuff you are known most for.

Yeah, I think that if I was a little bit better about monetizing and being able to make 15 “Uptown Funks” after, I would have a much bigger house and it would be good, but I can only just do what excites me at that given moment, you know? That’s what it was. Of course, in the beginning, but I think more than anything, really great artists, you look back at their career, they transcend genre. You don’t love a great artist because they stayed in this one lane, you love them for their songs, their emotional honesty, their rawness, their vocal talent, whatever it is that draws you to that thing. I notice with our fans, of course, in the beginning it’s so different than what she’s done, but I feel like the thing that most of her fans seem to really pull out of their relationship with her is how honest and vulnerable she is. She’s just like raw, open thing, being like, “I feel you, I hear you, I’m singing for all of you.”

I think those songs, regardless of whether they have a four on the floor kick or dance production that goes through it, these songs are as raw as anything she’s written. They’re so honest because they’re so plain language. Obviously, when “Perfect Illusion” came out and there was a little bit of this mixed things to it, I was a little worried. I was like, “Oh shit. Did somebody give me the keys to the Ferrari and I crashed it?” Then when the album came and seeing her fans react to songs like “Diamond Heart” that’s still a rock song and “Dancing In Circles” and “John Wayne” and be so behind it. Having all these people be like, “I guess I’m about to buy my first Lady Gaga album,” guys who you wouldn’t normally think, they wouldn’t think of themselves as Gaga fans. Yeah, it’s a wonderful kind of metamorphosis for her.

So you’re actively watching how the world receives Joanne?

Yeah, because we’re right in it. It’s been out for a week, and I’ve been playing all these shows for her. I don’t live and die by the internet, but I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say that I don’t check the iTunes chart position at least two or three times a day. The internet’s a very dangerous thing to put too much of your hopes and expectations into how people react to it obviously, because for every 10 wonderful glowing things you read, you only remember the one shitty negative one. It’s just how it works. It’s impossible to avoid, but I feel like, from a musical standpoint, we’ve just had, for the most part, amazing feedback on it. I think it’s also such a different thing. It’d probably take a little while for some of it to filter in. When someone takes something that you love and know so well that’s a certain thing, you’re not going to digest this new evolution of it in one day.

Full interview: (x)

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Leaving Joanne Trattoria in NYC

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Leaving Joanne Trattoria in NYC

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Leaving Joanne Trattoria in NYC

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Leaving Joanne Trattoria in NYC

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Leaving Joanne Trattoria in NYC

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Leaving Joanne Trattoria in NYC

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Yves Saint Laurent Fashion Show in Los Angeles, LA

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call me joanne

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every part of my aching heart needs you more than the angels do 🎶