Q&A: Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga refuses to wear pants. "I feel freer in underwear, and I hate fucking pants," says the New York club diva, 22, whose outrageous fashion sense includes a love for leotards. "Plus, it's easier to dance." Lady Gaga — born Joanne Stefani Germanotta — knows what she's talking about: Her propulsive club cut, "Just Dance" (off her 2008 debut, The Fame), recently hit Number One on the charts, becoming the techno-pop anthem of the season. "I wrote the song in five minutes," she says, checking in from London. "I was quite hung over." The tune has rocketed the singer from open-mike nights to gigs attended by Bruce Springsteen. (The two met at last year's Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden.) "I climbed over the seats and gave him a big hug, and he told me I was sweet," Gaga recalls. "Then I had a massive breakdown — I cried on the man's neck!"

What's the difference between Joanne Stefani Germanotta and Lady Gaga?
The largest misconception is that Lady Gaga is a persona or a character. I'm not — even my mother calls me Gaga. I am 150,000 percent Lady Gaga every day.

You took your name from the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga." What is your all-time favorite Freddie Mercury performance?
When he's in the king's outfit, with the scepter. Equating oneself with royalty is such a female thing to do. We dress up as princesses and queens and we wear crowns, but Freddie created this image of himself as rock royalty. That performance screams, "Watch me! I'm a legend!"

Growing up, what was playing around the house?
My dad's a Jersey-born Italian, so I grew up listening to Springsteen albums that still had sand on them from the Shore. When I was a freshman in high school, I was in a cover band that did Zeppelin and Floyd and Jefferson Airplane — that was his brainwashing coming to fruition.

You used to hang out in front of TRL. Explain.
When I was in middle school, it was the whole Britney-'NSync craze, so after school my girlfriends and I would take the train downtown and stand outside of TRL and cheer and hope that we'd see somebody's fingernail in the window. I look back on it fondly. It doesn't happen anymore, and it's quite sad. It's my intention to revive that lunacy with this album. You can't deny the power of a pop group being able to stop traffic.