Lady Gaga says this is what having fibromyalgia feels like: ‘It’s every day waking up not knowing how you’re going to feel’
Five years ago, Lady Gaga revealed that she had fibromyalgia, a chronic illness so intense that it led to “severe pain” and tour cancellations during her music career.
Fibromyalgia is a long-lasting disorder that “causes pain and tenderness throughout the body,” according to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. But while its effects can have severe impacts on those with the disease, some people don’t view it as an actual medical condition — because it cannot currently be diagnosed through medical testing. People are often diagnosed with fibromyalgia because it’s the only explanation left, after doctors have ruled out everything else.
Lady Gaga’s fiancé Michael Polansky apparently worked some abracadabra-style magic on “Friday” singer Rebecca Black.
Ahead of the release of her upcoming album Age of the Exhibitionist (out Sept. 4), Black revealed that Polansky inadvertently inspired a song called “Michael,” which will appear on the LP’s final track list.
Inquiring about the tune, Sang quoted some of the lyrics back to Black, including one that goes: “His name is Michael, and he’s got everything you need.”
Black explained: “We were in the middle of doing something else [and thought] what if we switched it up and tried something?” the 29-year-old viral sensation recalled. “I am unfortunately very chronically online. I love pop culture, and I love pop music. I’m born out of the eras of all of our favorite pop stars. I don’t know why, but we got on this tangent of talking about Lady Gaga’s fiancé, Michael Polansky.”
The star admitted that she and her collaborators were “trying to explain the Reddit threads and the lore about this person and how he’s become a part of her world and everything,” as Gaga has long credited Polansky with reinvigorating her interest in making not only pop music (including her 2025 Grammy-winning album Mayhem) but also her 2024 Joker: Folie à Deux companion album Harlequin, on which he’s formally credited as a collaborator.
Just as a joke, one of us just went, ‘His name is Michael!’ What if we just wrote about this guy?” remembered Black.
She added, “It just fell off the tongue, this very ‘90s, ethereal, lush feeling, let’s just write this song about this guy named Michael. The name Michael lost its meaning [from] talking about it so much.”
While she maintained that the song’s lyrics aren’t “about Michael Polansky” personally, they were still inspired by his impact on Gaga.
There’s this person that maybe feels like the easy thing to be or the thing that maybe would be the obvious choice of a girl to want. What if you’re in a bar with somebody and you really, really feel connected to them,” Black posed of the song’s foundation. “This kind of lustful experience of, I could be what you need, and I could be the thing that actually delivers it to you better than what he could. I’m not talking about Michael Polansky in this song, by the way. He became the moment for what the song could become. It felt like this really fun, lighthearted, intuitive gay experience of seeing a girl that you’re like, ‘God, I’d probably never have a chance with her, or maybe she’d never look at me, but I could do what he could do so much better.’”
She then doubled down on the song not being a direct narrative about Polansky himself: “I promise the song is not about Michael Polansky. He’s perfect for you, Gaga!”
In a 2024 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gaga opened up about her connection to Polansky, to whom she’s been engaged since earlier that year.
I wasn’t finished with this character when I was done making the movie. Creating her had a deeply profound effect on me. The way I prepare for things, Michael also got to know Lee pretty well, and it’s why we conceived of this project together,” Gaga told EW of the inspiration behind Harlequin, a collection of reimagined covers (plus two originals) of classic songs she and Joaquin Phoenix sang in the DC Comics sequel that starred Gaga as Harleen “Lee” Quinzel. “We wanted to make something to celebrate the complexity of a woman who has danger within her and also bore a sense of sweetness and couldn’t be defined. The way you can’t define Lee in the movie, you also can’t define her in this album, through genre.”
In the same interview, Gaga told EW that Polansky has “tremendous creativity,” calling him “closer to me artistically than most people” in her life.
