Lady Gaga played Tel Aviv this September despite several other artists backing out of commitments in the region.
A couple weeks ago, she stated, "I felt a beautiful energy when I was there," among other things, and she recently spoke with the Independent to elaborate on the trip.
"Oh it was fantastic!" she said. "Tel Aviv was magnificent. The world view of Israel is just not reality. It's in a beautiful place, the people are in good spirits. I had a very emotional show with those fans. It was wonderful."
She even got a big surprise when collaborator Tony Bennett stopped by to sing with her.
"I knew he was coming in [to Tel Aviv] for a show, but he came a day early and he said: 'hey, you wanna sing 'Anything But Love'at the ArtRave?'" Gaga said. "And I thought: 'Gosh, how magnificent! To bridge the jazz and the pop world at the same time.' And at that show there were 25,000 people singing every word."
As previously reported, the "Poker Face" singer has gone through a lot in the past couple years, but working with Bennett on their duet album, Cheek to Cheek, helped her shift perspective to a more positive light.
"Gosh, it's taught me so much," she said. "And more than teaching me, it's made me myself again. I got really lost for a little while. I felt like I didn't even know who I was any more. And with Tony I found that boxer, that fighter within me who was ready to take on the world."
It's safe to say the Tel Aviv trip was a success. Here are the original comments Gaga made when speaking to Billboard earlier in the month:
"I was very confident based on my relationships with lots of internal, political people," Gaga said. "We're very lucky to have great relationships with the White House. They let us know it would be very safe while we were there, and I hope to share that with the world so that they know it is safe to be in Tel Aviv right now.
"But I have to say, and I don't mean this as a suggestion that anything bad would have happened, but I'm a gypsy and I live around the world, so in my mind when I was staying in Tel Aviv — I say this on my song "Gypsy" on ARTPOP: "Be my home just for the day" — that would have been my home while I was there and it was ... I felt a beautiful energy when I was there."
