Lady GaGa says Tony Bennett always admired the risks she took in her career.

The 38-year-old popstar and the late singer - who died in 2023 at the age of 96 - enjoyed a close friendship and a successful professional partnership in the years before he died and Gaga revealed that Tony was always supportive of her clothes and "theatrical" stage performances.

She told Rolling Stone: "He was somebody who loved how risk-taking and different I am and I always thought that was so cool. He was 60 years older than me, and he would flinch less than young people that I would meet. People that would be like, 'Why is she dressed that way? Why is she singing that way? Why is her stage performance so theatrical?' Tony, he just never even flinched. He was just a really compassionate, inclusive person."

Gaga's 'Joker 2' inspired album 'Harlequin' was the first time she recorded standards without Tony but she insisted it wasn't sad and she felt him with her in the studio.

She said: "This was my first time without Tony and it wasn't emotional probably in the way you're thinking. It wasn't sad. It was actually like he was with us all the time. And also, in a funny way, if I had put rock and roll chords over production in a record that I did with Tony years ago, I don't know how he would've felt about that. Tony didn't love rock and roll. But he would've said 'Wow that's amazing'. He was definitely with us in the studio but he was mostly inside of me.

"As genre defying as the album is, the vocal is too. The vocal's kind of schizophrenic but that makes sense for Harley Quinn. And that was part of the joy of making it - the freedom of it all."