Lady Gaga reveals drag persona Jo Calderone helped her explore what she was looking for in men

Lady Gaga famously got in touch with her inner dude as Jo Calderone in 2011.But her drag king persona, who appeared in her “You and I” video and at the 2011 MTV Video Awards, has been retired.“The character is no longer with me,” she told Them.“But I wish Jo all the best.”Still, Gaga — whose eighth studio album, “Mayhem,” drops on Friday — looks back on the era as an important one.“That was actually kind of a big moment for me as a woman to put all the pent-up fear or anger I had about relationships into one character,” she said.“[‘You and I’] was actually, I think, the first video that I ever did where I played multiple me’s, and I brought that back on ‘Mayhem.’ But Jo was an important character for me.

It’s the way I explored what I was looking for in men, and also what I was maybe lacking in myself.”Gaga says that the title “Mayhem” comes from the journey that she’s gone on within herself over her career.“I was always kind of fascinated with some kind of inner torture since the beginning of my career,” she said.“I think I’ve always felt a little bit at war with myself.

Like there was a soft side of me, but then also this really intense side and a desire to be heard.“And my desire to be heard made me really loud and made me go after my dreams in this kind of ferocious way, and that brought a lot of beauty into my life.But it also took me away from myself in a lot of ways and took me away from the things that I care about, like community and love.”And in making “Mayhem” — which includes “Die with a Smile,” her Grammy-winning duet with Bruno Mars — Gaga released some of the pressure and got back to the joy of creating music from her early years.“I felt a lot of pressure since my very first record, and the pressure just increased album after album to live up to the one before it,” she said.

“[There’s] this idea of outdoing yourself as a form of winning, but what does that even really mea...