Lady Gaga: 'I like to honour the classics'

Lady Gaga hopes her Super Bowl National Anthem performance proves once and for all she's much more than a provocative pop star.

The 29-year-old stunned fans earlier this month (Feb16) when she performed a faultless rendition of The Star Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl.

Gaga insists that despite her outlandish costumes and catchy pop songs, she takes her performances very seriously.

"I get a thrill out of pushing the envelope, but I also get a true rush by honouring the classics," she told Deadline. "I like to bring a little bit of the past into the future."

While many of her peers have struggled to nail their performances of the National Anthem, operatic Gaga was pitch perfect and admits she drowned out her surroundings at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California to nail the rendition.

“No matter what happens, I don’t care how amazing that crowd sounds, don’t put the sound of them in my ears," she said of her instructions to the Super Bowl technicians. "If they get too loud, I won’t be able to hear the piano or my pitch.”

Gaga is riding on a career high at the moment, having won a Golden Globe for her acting work on TV series American Horror Story: Hotel, and she's also up for an a Best Original Song Oscar on Sunday (28Feb16) for her collaboration with songwriter Diane Warren on Til It Happens to You.

The Bad Romance singer's contribution to the track was initially called into question by the likes of musician Linda Perry, but Gaga is quick to point out how her involvement shaped the finished song.

"I loved the song, but I didn’t relate to it at first," she confessed. "It didn’t feel complicated to me in the melody, like it went to a sour place. It was headed toward being a great pop song. But I wanted it to be something more authentic; a complicated journey with a narrative. I take people down a rabbit hole and wait till it’s done, I wanted the song to be triumphant."