Lady Gaga Opens Up About Troubling Family History As Her Inspiration

Lady Gaga and Diane Warren’s Oscar-nominated song “Til It Happens To You” has helped Gaga find some sort of peace with her history of sexual assault. After initially opening up to Howard Stern in 2014 about being raped as a teenager, she’s spoken publicly about its effect on her multiple times. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year, Gaga said, “The person that I’m singing to [in “Til It Happens To You”] is the person that wants to heal me, and I’m telling them how I can.” She’s performed the song plenty of times, each one overflowing with emotion and strength.

This past weekend, Lady Gaga attended the Producers Guild Awards and explained that part of this song stems from a family history of sexual assault. “A big thank you to everyone who supported this song,” she began. “It's not only an important issue to me, but it's an important issue to my family. When my father's sister was in college, she was sexually assaulted, and then, [it] tormented her so emotionally that it caused the lupus that she had to get so bad, that she died. My father was 16, and it affected my family really tremendously my whole life. It's sort of the centerpiece for everything. So this song means so much to me and so much to my parents.” Before going into the music, she thanked Diane Warren “for writing it with me.” 

Watch Gaga’s performance below.