Lady Gaga: 'My whole career is a tribute to David Bowie'

Pop star Lady Gaga's whole career is a tribute to late rocker David Bowie.

The Just Dance performer paid homage to the 69-year-old at last week's Grammy Awards (15Feb16), performing a medley of his biggest hits dressed up as his colorful Aladdin Sane alter-ego, but in a new interview, she admits her admiration for the star runs deep.

"I feel like my whole career is a tribute to David Bowie," she told NPR, before recalling the moment she saw his Aladdin Sane album cover for the first time. "I was 19 years old, and it just changed my perspective on everything, forever. It was an image that changed my life."

The 29-year-old remembers carefully placing the vinyl onto her record player, which was balanced on her stove in the tiny apartment she was living in at the time, and hearing the opening bars of Watch That Man for the first time.

"I mean, that was just the beginning of my artistic birth," she explained. "I started to dress more expressively. I started to go to the library and look through more art books. I took an art history class. I was playing with a band."

Gaga believes David is the reason she totally immersed herself in music, fashion, art and technology and he helped her realize what she wanted to do with her life.

"You meet or see a musician that has something that is of another planet, of another time, and it changes you forever," she continued. "I believe everyone has that, don't you? That one thing you saw as a kid that made you go, "Oh OK. Now I know who I am."

Bowie passed away on 10 January (16), just two days after his 69th birthday and the release of his last album Blackstar, after fighting a secret battle with liver cancer.