It’s been a very good year for Lady Gaga. She released Mayhem, her first studio album in five years, to much acclaim from critics and fans alike. And in tandem with the album, Gaga has been touring the world with her equally well-received Mayhem Ball. Plus she had a cameo in season two of Wednesday, and squeezed in filming a cameo for The Devil Wears Prada 2. And then of course there are the seven Grammy nominations she nabbed just last week. So it’s no surprise that Rolling Stone has made the Lady their December cover for the “voices of the year” issue. The interview is substantial, and like her Vogue cover last year, the writer is someone who profiled Gaga way back at the beginning of her career. Also like that Vogue article, Gaga’s fiancé Michael Polansky is quoted a lot throughout. Some excerpts where they talk about their relationship:

An unlikely match: “When her mom first started telling me she wanted to set me up with her daughter,” says Polansky, who grew up in Minnesota, “I thought she had to have been joking, because nobody in my life would’ve thought of me as somebody who wanted to get attention.” A lyric she wrote about him addressed that incongruity: “How does a man like me love a woman like you?” Or as Polansky puts it, “How could somebody who is so shy and wants so much privacy love someone that would cause his life to become the exact opposite of everything he thought he wanted?” To make it all make sense, he too would have to evolve.

Mama Gaga warned ‘Stefani, he’s a very serious guy’: Telling this story now, Gaga can’t quite get the words out. She chokes up, and begins to weep. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s so special to look back on that, because so many people in my life at that time were looking for a good time. People really loved Drunk Lady Gaga.” She knew that with Polansky, “none of my tricks were gonna work on him. We were gonna meet each other and probably have a very sincere adult conversation and see if we liked each other. Michael’s sense of gravity might be the thing that I was attracted to about him the most. He immediately understood how serious things were for me.”

Michael’s early impression of Gaga: “The piece that I always noticed was how disempowered she felt,” he says. “Not in charge of her own life. I’d never met somebody so incredibly talented and gifted feel so disempowered.” He watched her sit down at the piano to write and start crying. “What he saw was, this is somebody that feels very far away from what they’re supposed to be doing,” she says. “He wanted to take care of me. And I’ve never been loved that way. My life was serious to him. It was not a party. He helped me see that my life was precious.”

A wedding mid-Mayhem? They’re planning on getting married soon, either during the tour or just after. “We’re talking about it all the time,” Polansky tells me. “We have these breaks, and they’re tempting. It’s like, ‘OK, can we get married that weekend?’ We don’t want a really big wedding, but we want to enjoy it. In a lot of ways, we already feel married, so it’s not like it’s gonna change much.”

Little monsters soon: They’re clear that parenthood is next, and Polansky is inspired by Elton John and David Furnish, whose kids are Gaga’s godsons. “Their kids have turned out to be very happy. The most important thing is making it feel like this is just our family, this is what we do. Her being Lady Gaga and the art and all of it is not something that she has to compartmentalize away from her relationship with me or when she’s a mother.” “Being a mom is the thing I want the most,” Gaga says. “And he’s gonna be a beautiful father. We’re really excited about that.”

[From Rolling Stone]

These two are both off the deep end, already dived in! The lyric quoted, “How does a man like me love a woman like you?” is from “Blade of Grass,” a truly gorgeous ballad from the album. I wrote after first listening to it that it felt like marriage vows, devastatingly personal. And yet it’s definitely not a euphoric, or solely joyful song. In fact it’s actually rather melancholy, which makes more sense to me now in the context of this interview. The way they both describe where Gaga was emotionally when they met, is pretty grim. Knowing that you’re a party trick to most people is a sad place to be. And whether it’s in friendship or romance, feeling like you’re really being seen by someone can be a transcendent experience. I’d say the thematic link between the album and their relationship is acknowledging things that are broken, and finding a way to move with, not against them.

I’m rooting for these two, and boy do they sound gaga about becoming parents… very soon, it seems!

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