Little Monsters everywhere are loving Lady Gaga‘s latest album Mayhem, but in a new interview, Mother Monster revealed that one of the most talked-about songs on the record almost didn’t make it into the final product.
Appearing on Las Culturistas With Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, Gaga revealed to the pair that she almost removed late-album standout “How Bad Do U Want Me” from the Mayhem tracklist. “Oh my god, I almost didn’t put that on the album,” she told the hosts. “I was not sure that I should put that on the record, and Michael [Polansky, her fiancé] was like, ‘You have to — your fans are going to love that song.’”
When both Rogers and Yang expressed their dismay at the thought of “How Bad” being cut, Gaga revealed that it’s not the only beloved pop song of hers to nearly get the axe. “Sometimes, when things are really super pop, I just get a weird reaction [to them],” she said. “I felt this way about [The Fame‘s] ‘Just Dance,’ so thank God I didn’t listen to myself then.”
In explaining “How Bad,” Gaga broke down how she’s always felt pigeonholed as “the bad girl” throughout her life, and how she wanted to break that cycle in her current relationship. “I’ve always been at war with this feeling that, if I am interested in someone, they’re actually longing for a ‘good girl,’ but they’re stuck with me,” she said. “There is no actual other good girl, the good girl is in their head, and they’re kind of comparing me the whole time.”
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Gaga, Rogers and Yang talked about the importance of Saturday Night Live as an institution for both up-and-coming artists and pop stars. In fact, Gaga revealed that before her hilarious performance of “D–k in a Box” with Andy Samberg at the SNL50 concert, she felt a lot of pressure to get it right.
“It’s so funny, at the SNL50 concert the other night, I was nervous to do ‘D–k in a Box,’” she said. “I feel like, if you’re a comedian, being asked to do ‘Who’s on First?’ is probably really [nerve-wracking], and to me, ‘D–k in a Box’ is a classic. So I was like, ‘Oh my god, why did I do this?’ But as I was walking through [Radio City Music Hall], I remembered the last time I had been there was with Tony [Bennett]. And Tony would have said, ‘If you are nervous, it’s because you care.’”
Check out Gaga’s full episode of Las Culturistas below:
This story originally appeared on Billboard
