Lady Gaga has released the video for her song “911” from her latest album Chromatica. In the visual, we see the singer wander the desert, where she runs into a cast of peculiarly dressed characters who gather around her.
Gaga released the album in May, which helped her earn a number of awards at the MTV VMAs, including Artist of the Year. Chromatica also landed her a sixth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200.
In a new interview with Billboard, the singer touched on everything from performative activism to her experiences with mental health. “When you’re born in this country, we all drink the poison that is white supremacy,” she said. “I am in the process of learning and unlearning things I’ve been taught my whole life.”
She touched on the black squares that everyone was posting to Instagram in June, which many considered to be performative activism. “Social justice is not just a literacy, it’s a lifestyle,” she continued. “What do I think about [posting] a black square? I think everybody has a different feeling about a black square. Do I think there’s such a thing as performative activism? Yes. Do I think there’s been true activism that’s been very important and needed? Yes.”
Gaga also discussed her struggle with mental health, and how therapy was so impactful for her. “I used to wake up every day and remember I was Lady Gaga—and then I would get depressed,” she told Billboard. “I was peeling all the layers of the onion in therapy, so as you dig deeper, you get closer to the core, and the core of the onion stinks.”
Watch the video for “911” above and catch Billboard's cover story here.
