Lady Gaga’s SXSW tear-filled keynote touches on vomit, corporate sponsorship and her next album

The popstar – whose SXSW gig was put on by Doritos – says 'record labels don't have any money' during her talk in Austin, Texas

Lady Gaga delivered the keynote talk at the SXSW Music festival earlier today (March 14).

The popstar, who performed the previous night at the festival, discussed the value of corporate sponsorship in music during her talk and also cried when talking about the power of music.

“When your friend plays a bassline that gets inside your heart and your spirit,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek. “That’s what the fuck it’s all about”.

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Gaga took to the stage wearing a giant clear plastic dress and sporting platinum blonde dreadlocks. Earlier in the talk, which took place in the Austin Hilton, Gaga, who is the youngest ever Music keynote speaker and the first female keynote speaker this century, spoke about her show last night, which was sponsored by Doritos. Fuse’s John Norris, who led the talk, asked her what she thought about people who were sniping about the corporate sponsorship of the show. “Whoever is writing and saying all of those things, you don’t know fuck about the state of the music industry,” she commented. “Without sponsorships, without these companies coming together to help us, we won’t have any artists coming to SXSW and we won’t have any festivals, because record labels don’t have any money.”

She added: “Anyone that would say [sighs] Doritios? Lady Gaga? Samsung? Jay Z? Why shouldn’t someone in Austin have the chance to see Jay Z?”

Speaking about her own show, which saw her being spitroasted and vomited upon, Gaga commented: “We really wanted to do something that was in the spirit of what SXSW has always been about which is creating a connection between fans and artists and the musical experience… I really built the set around Austin, I wanted to give as much as I could to the city.” She added that the neon BBQ sign made especially by the show had been requested by her father. “My father has requested that he wants it. Papa G gets first dibs.”

Of the onstage vomiting by London performance artist Millie Brown, Gaga said: “It was exciting to see people talking about performance art on the internet… We believed in the performance and what it meant to the song.” This led to her discussing her love of people with an off-kilter ‘artistic spirit’. She commented: “Martin Luther King thought he could start a revolution without violence and Andy Warhol thought he could make a soup can into art. Sometimes things that are really strange can change the world… I’m not saying vomit’s going to change the world.”

During the talk she also revealed that a second volume of her 2013 album ‘Artpop’ has been recorded and finished, alongside other unreleased albums. “There’s many volumes of work over a long periods of time that have just not been released to the public,” she stated. “Sometimes it’s just fun to have records that me and my friends just listen to… I have a whole second part of ‘Artpop’ and I love it.”

She also spoke about the value of independence and being herself in her music. “I refuse to be compromised and allow my talents to be monetised to the point where I don’t want to be here anymore,” she said. “I will stop. I will quit. I will retire from the commercial market if I have to be something other than myself. I’ll be myself until they close the fucking coffin.”

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Discussing the fact that last year her releases were seemingly pitted against releases by Katy Perry, she said: “I don’t know what fuck all I have to do with Katy Perry, our music is so different, we couldn’t be more different.”

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