Gypsy

Album: ARTPOP (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • Gaga performed this six-minute-long track in its entirety for the first time for guests at an exclusive listening party at Berlin's famed Berghain club. on September 24, 2013. She told the audience: "I wrote this song as I was traveling around the world… they say 'a Gypsy doesn't have a home.' But I do have a home. I have a home with you always."
  • Gaga described this during a Twitter Q&A as "a ballad/electronic song. But there is a lot of hard funky midtempo + a space rock electronica explosion of beats."
  • The song was co-produced by French teenager DJ Madeon and Gaga's frequent collaborator RedOne. During an interview with French station Fun Radio, Gaga said of Madeon: "He is so amazing. He has such an understanding of music at such a young age. He reminds me of myself so much. He's obsessed, so obsessed with music. We worked on some amazing songs together."
  • Gypsies are nomadic people of low-caste Indian origin, who migrated to Persia. They moved onto Europe, reaching Germany and France in the 15th century. In some countries gypsies have gained a romantic veneer through their colorful horse-drawn caravans and their leisurely 'open road.' lifestyle.

    The name gypsy derives from the original mistaken belief that they came from Egypt. They were called Egyptians, which became corrupted to Gyptians and so to the present form.
  • Gypsies are well known for their folk music. The earliest reference to what are believed to be Gypsies as musicians was used in the mid 11th century in Constantinople. When the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in 1918, they persecuted Gypsy musicians, who had long dominated Russian popular music, for having entertained the bourgeoisie. Most Gypsies chose to leave.
  • Gaga had already started working on this song with RedOne, when she played some of it for Madeon. Once the French producer heard it, he helped finish the tune during a session in Paris. "We went back to her hotel room [after a show] and she had a piano and she was signing this chorus," Madeon explained to MTV News, "And I had never heard the original track. I started playing new chords and we started writing a new song based on that song. So it's kind of a nice story on [how] two different takes on the same idea made a new song."

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