Lady Gaga was at Billboard’s Women in Music on Friday night where she collected her award for ‘Woman of the Year’. And, during her acceptance speech, she proved once again why she definitely does deserve to be called woman of the year by calling out the music industry as ‘a boy’s club’.
“What I really want to say is that it is really hard sometimes for women in music. It’s like a f—ing boys club that we just can’t get in to” — a fact most female singers in the industry have known forever.
Gaga went on to talk about her rocky start in the industry saying, “I tried for so long, I just really wanted to be taken seriously as a musician for my intelligence more than my body ever in this business. Because you don’t always feel like when you’re working that people believe that you have musical background, that you understand what you’re doing because you’re a female.”
Lady Gaga and the Chink in her Armor: And Now I Think I Love Her
Gaga even told Billboard this week that, as late as 2014, she really did consider quitting the music business. But teaming up with Tony Bennett to create Cheek to Cheek, one of the year’s most critically acclaimed albums really helped, and her music continued to keep her strong.
You can’t really blame her thinking about quitting, however, as it is also a sad fact that, even when you are as big as Lady Gaga, as a female musician you are still accused of not writing your own songs, of living off other (male) composers’ talent and, of course, being ‘a bitch’ while the same behavior from men would just label them ‘ambitious’.