'Lady Gaga inspires me as a drag queen - she creates safe space for fans'
RuPaul's Drag Race UK vs the World winner Blu Hydrangea explained why Lady Gaga inspires her
A drag queen who draws inspiration from Lady Gaga has told how the singer empowers fans ahead of her next UK tour dates. Lady Gaga is taking her highly anticipated tour, 'The Mayhem Ball', to Manchester's Co-op Live this week, with thousands expected to attend the shows on Tuesday and Wednesday.
For Blu Hydrangea, the first winner of RuPaul's Drag Race UK vs. the world, who is attending both shows, Lady Gaga offers fans a "safe space" and inspires creativity. The drag artist, 29, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, told The Mirror that she has been a fan since the beginning of the singer's career.
"I remember 'Just Dance' way back in the day and seeing the music video for it in my parents' kitchen and becoming a fan, pretty much instantly," Blu said. "I think initially I just liked the pop music, but, as she got further into her career, she became more of my Queer awakening, you know, someone who wasn't afraid to use their art to express themselves."
The performer explained: "It wasn't just the music, it was the visuals, the costumes, the makeup, even when she was live in concert or doing public appearances, like the VMAs. Everything was such a production. I mean, Lady Gaga is basically everything a drag queen wants to be.
"She just burst out of nowhere and was creating her own kind of world for people like me, it was very inclusive. And I, yeah, felt almost immediately like, you know, like I had found someone that I really relate to and look up to and aspire to be like."
Blu added that she loves being part of Lady Gaga's fanbase. "It's just very inclusive and lots of creative people, interesting people, people who kind of grew up like me probably, out in rural [areas] well, for me, it was rural Ireland, and, you know, you don't get very many inspirational people where you're from, that are Queer or allies, and Lady Gaga was that for me.
"So you meet all these people who have kind of grown up in her world, in her safe space that she created for us, and, yeah, they're super interesting and super Queer and just very open-minded and creative and just all my favourite attributes in people I like to surround myself with."
Blu drew inspiration from Lady Gaga when she became interested in drag as a teenager, taking to the stage for the first time aged 19. "I was always performing Lady Gaga songs. I’d been learning the choreography to it all. Whenever I was in high school, that's what I would do in the evenings, and then whenever I was given a stage to perform on, of course, I'm gonna use all this choreo that I've been learning over the years."
Lady Gaga's visuals also inspire Blu, who has created countless show stopping Gaga-inspired looks in the years since. Some outfits take weeks to make, but Blu loves the challenge. "Lady Gaga is such a big part of my drag career and inspiration that every time I want to create a new outfit, it's always something Lady Gaga-oriented.
"Plus she's having such an amazing year with 'Mayhem'. I was making a 'Telephone' headpiece this year, and I had to get some really close-up images of her in that music video, and what I realised is that she was creating stuff out of nothing, which is exactly what I did whenever I started drag, and why what she was doing was so inspiring.
"You know, she would have a leather jacket, some blue wig, and some, like fish nets, and she would make it iconic because of the way she held herself and the way she styled it together, and for like a drag queen who's up and coming that doesn't have a massive budget, being able to put things together and it's still be effective and fill a room full of people. It's just something I always loved about her."
It's something Blu can't wait to celebrate at 'The Mayhem Ball', which comes over a decade since Lady Gaga's last performance in Manchester. She said: "I'm just so excited to be in a room full of 1000s of Lady Gaga fans screaming at the top of my lungs."