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Lady Gaga Praises Queer Music Pioneer Carl Bean in Docu Clip: ‘Anthems Unify People’

Lady Gaga honors Carl Bean and his 1977 queer anthem 'I Was Born This Way' in a new doc clip with Questlove reflecting on the song's LGBTQ legacy.

The clip opens with the chart success the song, released on Motown, had in the United States, climbing to Number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, and how it became an “immediate anthem for the gay community,” embraced by house DJs worldwide. “There are so many celebrity bio-docs these days, which I don’t disparage — Sam and I have made them — but I think the real joy of documentary is when you are surprised by things you never realized are an important part of our world… hopefully that’s what this film does.” Gaga has long credited Bean — who died in 2021 at age 77 but gave interviews for the film prior to his death — for inspiring Born This Way.

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