How did Lady Gaga express her admiration for David Bowie in a heartfelt handwritten letter?

2025 MTV Video Music Awards - Show - Source: Getty
2025 MTV Video Music Awards - Show - Source: Getty

Lady Gaga's devotion to David Bowie has always been apparent from her songs, fashion, and even during interviews. However, today an intimate aspect of that admiration is emerging full flower. A letter penned by Gaga to Bowie is now displayed at the newly inaugurated David Bowie Centre within the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It gives an unusual insight into what Bowie was to her, both as a source of inspiration and as someone she wanted to identify with.

Writtten in the course of completing her 2013 album ARTPOP, Gaga's letter is personal, reflective, and above all honest-to-goodness starstruck. She does not hold back the impact David Bowie's music had on her and how she felt that her whole career was an in someway way reaching out towards being seen by him. It is this balance of honesty and artist admiration that has struck a chord with fans and media alike.

Lady Gaga's Affection for David Bowie

The letter begins simply: "Dear David Bowie, It was really an honor to receive an advance copy of your record. I cried, actually, listening to every one of the songs. How does he know I am here? " Gaga continues to explain that she lives her entire career essentially like a cry-out for him to notice. She says she'd recently finished working on ARTPOP and was in New York at the time.

She concludes with a desire to meet him, signing off as "Love + Art, GAGA." The letter went viral within hours of photos being posted on social media by a fan account, following the official opening of the David Bowie Centre on September 13, 2025. It was important, not just because it was written by Gaga, but because the words she chose revealed how much Bowie had influenced her not only as an artist, but as a person who looked at her own artistic life.

viewers connected with the sincerity: Lady Gaga was not name-dropping or being gratuitous, she was making a personal confession.

It is fortunate that the screen on which the letter is shown is overlaid with context. The David Bowie Centre holds over 90,000 items from Bowie's professional and private life; some 200 are on display currently. Among them are handwritten notes, personal effects, handwritten lyrics, costumes, and letters making Gaga's letter one thread in a much broader tapestry showing Bowie as star, yes, but also collaborator, influencer, and human. Lady Gaga's letter is more than fan mail it's a confession of artistic bloodline. It illustrates how much she idolizes Bowie and the internal attraction that exceptional art has over other creatives.

That he moved her to tears with the gift of his album, and that she considered half of her career to be a call for his attention, shows how Bowie's music bridged over, touching those already celebrities in their own universe. Finally, this letter is not just about Lady Gaga's admiration; it's a demonstration of the extent to which music from another person can change an artist. For art lovers, Bowie, or Lady Gaga fans alike, it's a priceless, individual document and the Bowie Centre provides the perfect place for something so individual, yet so global.

Edited by Heba Arshad