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Unlike many of her predecessors, though, Gaga spoke to the LGBTQ community as one of its members. She told interviewers that her 2008 hit Poker Face was about masking her own same-sex desire, and in a 2009 Rolling Stone cover story she identified as bisexual. In clear ways, she set out to destabilize gender too. While other divas shellacked themselves into paragons of feminine glamour, Gagas grotesque fashions seemed to satirize the idea of the socialite, the model, and the doll. A rumor took hold online alleging that Gaga was actually a man in drag, or maybe a woman with a penis. Rather than seem offended by the plainly transphobic and obnoxious speculation, Gaga made sport of it. I do have a really big donkey dick, she told an interviewer when asked about the matter. Her bracing 2010 speech calling for the repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell demonstrated Gaga pairing her aesthetics with activism.

Gagas 2009 EP The Fame Monster added leather-goth angst to her sparkly brew, resulting in smashes such as Bad Romance and Alejandro. But she still needed to tackle the much-feared test of longevity facing new stars: the sophomore full-length album. For this, she would go lighter, brighter, and make all her subtext into text. To record the song Born This Way, Gaga turned to producersFernando Garibay, Jeppe Laursen, DJ White Shadowwho were conversant in both disco history and the new EDM sound that was trending at the time. Lyrically, she sought to make as clear a statement as possible. I want to write my this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, but I dont want it to be hidden in poetic wizardry and metaphors, she told Billboard. I want it to be an attack, an assault on the issue, because I think, especially in todays music, everything gets kind of washy sometimes and the message gets hidden in the lyrical play.

Indeed, outside of Chistina Aguileras Beautiful, scattered Black Eyed Peas tracks, and Kanye Wests provocations, the 21st centurys first decade was not a banner time for social conscientiousness in pop music. But as the always online, famously idealistic Millennial generation came of age, the tides began to change. Barack Obamas first years in office saw Beyonc, Kesha, Katy Perry, and other peers of Gagas make feminist messages a de rigueur subject on Top 40 radio. The emergence of Kendrick Lamarwho spoke to the grievances underlying the nascent Black Lives Matter movementmarked a renewed period of forthright political engagement in commercial hip-hop. MTV created a new award, Best Video With a Message, in 2011, and Born This Way won it.

Really, though, Gagas song reached back in time as much as it looked forward. The track drew from the 1970s Motown song I Was Born This Way, which was popularized by the openly gay singer Carl Bean. Its first lines go: Im walking through life in natures disguise / You laugh at me and you criticize cause Im happy, carefree and gay / Yes, Im gay. Talk about a this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, right? In a 2016 Vice interview, Bean explained how his openness wasmaybe counterintuitively, given how much gay rights have progressed since thenof its era:

At the time, what the disc jockeys coined as message music was pretty big, and thats what I wanted to do. Message music came out in the late 60s, and it caught on with the young folk at the time. We were in the middle of the civil-rights movement, women were staging sit-ins, and there was a huge dislike for the war in Vietnam. You started to hear, little by little, messages that spoke to what people were dealing with everydaywhat people were feeling Whether youre in the club or wherever, you were hearing about the times.

Message music never fully died out; Gaga was also inspired by the early-90s period of TLC and En Vogue singing of empowerment and safe sex. Whats notable is how these obvious predecessors for Born This Way were created by Black people speaking clearly from their own individual experiences.

Excerpt from:
The Lady Gaga Anthem That Previewed a Decade of Culture Wars - The Atlantic