By Katelyn Fry

Pop music revolutionary Lady Gaga – nee Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta - is blessing the world with her music once again, releasing her new album, "Joanne," on October 21.

Gaga fans have been buzzing over the album title, eager to know more about “Joanne” and why Gaga chose to dedicate the record to her. Savvy Auntie shed light on this mystery in 2010; Lady Gaga is named after her aunt, Joanne Stefani Germanotta, who died at age 19 from Lupus, before Gaga was born.

Gaga believes she inherited her creativity from her late aunt, even calling herself her Aunt Joanne's "unfinished business." In 2010, Gaga told Vanity Fair that when her parents were engaged, "they were staying in [my father's] house, where he grew up, and a light came into the room and touched [my mother's] stomach and went away... [My mother] believes that Joanne came into the room and sort of OK'd her for my dad, and that Joanne transferred her spirit into my mom. So, when I was born, it's almost as if [I was] her unfinished business."

While her aunt died young, Gaga believes Joanne is responsible for saving her life. In her 2010 biography, Just Dance, Gaga admits to having a dangerous drug addiction in her early twenties, one that only ended upon realizing that her “father’s sister had instilled her spirit in [Gaga]…and [she] had a spiritual vision [she] had to finish her business."




Joanne, like her niece, was known as an artist in her own right, particularly as a “poet and a real Renaissance woman.” According to Fuse TV, "Joanne has been a guiding influence for the pop star from the beginning.” In fact, in the credits in Gaga’s debut album "The Fame," she includes a short poem entitled: “A Poem For Joanne,” as well as a poem written by Joanne herself, called “For a Moment,” which had never been previously published.

And in an interview with Beats 1 Radio for Gaga's latest album, she said that  “Joanne's handwriting is featured on the album's back cover, with its packaging containing family mementos."
 
For having been denied the chance of ever meeting one another, Joanne has nonetheless proven to be her niece's muse throughout her career. Gaga proudly says that “[Joanne] is the woman of my past, helping me bring more of my honest-woman self to the future."


Photo of aunt Joanne: Gagapedia
Photo of Lady Gaga Album cover: Wikipedia
Published: October 10, 2016