Lady Gaga almost cut this song from Mayhem – until her fiancé Michael Polansky told her not to

Lady Gaga has revealed that she almost left one of the fan-favourite songs from her new album Mayhem on the cutting room floor, but her fiancé Michael Polansky stopped her.

Speaking to queer comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers on their podcast Las Culturistas, Lady Gaga revealed that track nine, “How Bad Do U Want Me”, was almost left off the album, as she felt it was perhaps too “super pop”.

Mother Monster’s Mayhem has been critically lauded since its release last week, with fans enamoured with the dreamy synth-pop of “How Bad Do U Want Me”.

Some have pointed out that it sounds a little like classic 1989 era Taylor Swift.

Chatting about the song on Las Culturistas, Lady Gaga said: “Oh my God, I almost didn’t put that on the album.”

Lady Gaga’s ‘I Don’t Think So, Honey’ on Las Culturistas 😭 pic.twitter.com/2HpYv800Z1

— Gaga Daily (@gagadaily) March 12, 2025

Explaining how the “total, hyper-pop song” ended up on Mayhem, Gaga continued: “Michael and I started that song at home, but I started it first, and he heard me singing it, and he walks in the kitchen and goes, ‘Is that about me?’ and I was like, ‘No?’ 

“And he came in and [we] started to finish it together, and that song embodies a feeling that I’ve probably had my whole life. I’ve always felt archetyped as the ‘bad girl.’ It’s why the lyric is kind of funny,” she shared.

On the chorus, Gaga belts: “‘Cause you like my hair, my ripped-up jeans. You like the bad girl I got in me, she’s on your mind, like, all the time.”

The “Disease” singer went on to explain that she’s sometimes felt “shame” over being perceived as a “bad girl”.

“I’ve always been at war with this feeling that, if I am interested in someone, that they’re actually longing for a ‘good girl,’ but they’re stuck with me,” she said.

“There is no actual other good girl, the good girl is in their head, and they’re kind of comparing me the whole time.”

After voicing her concerns about putting the song on Mayhem, Polansky stepped in to bring her fans into the equation. 

“…Michael was like, ‘You have to – your fans are going to love that song,’” she shared.

She went on to confess that she gets a “weird reaction” when she makes “really super pop” songs, revealing that she even had hesitancy about her huge debut single, 2008’s “Just Dance”.

“…Thank God I didn’t listen to myself then,” Gaga joked.

Elsewhere in her conversation on Las Culturistas, Lady Gaga reflected on her decision to stand up for transgender rights in the face of Donald Trump’s recent wave of orders targeting the community’s right to gender-affirming healthcare, playing sports, and serving in the military. 

At the Grammys in February, after she won the Best Pop Duo gong with Bruno Mars for “Die With A Smile”, Gaga told the crowd that “trans people deserve love” and are not “invisible”.

“I promised myself that if I won a Grammy that night, I was gonna say something that was in support of something that is so, so important, which is to be protective and loving to a community that is experiencing violence,” she told Yang and Rogers.

“It’s my privilege to be a part of this [LGBTQ+] community, and it’s the language that we speak to each other.”

Addressing her queer and trans fans directly, Gaga added: “Thank you for teaching me so much about the world. I couldn’t be the person that I am without the stories of all of the people that I’ve met – and their authenticity and their realness.”

Mayhem is out now.

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