Music
22 Sep 15

Grace Jones on Lady Gaga: 'I Was Not Inspired'

The iconic Jamaican singer explains why she will not be recording with the American star.

The legendary Grace Jones has been speaking to BBC Radio about her refusal to collaborate with Lady Gaga.

In her recently published autobiography, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, the 67-year-old Jamaican icon – who wowed Electric Picnic audiences earlier this month with a truly memorable set - spills the beans on everything from sex, drugs and club-land to her opinions on contemporary female artists.

Speaking to the BBC’s Sarah Montague, Jones explained that she must find an artist inspiring before she’ll consider any kind of collaboration.

“I say ‘no’ a lot,” she said. “For me, a collaboration has to start like it’s planting a seed. You see if your chemistry works together and then you have an exchange of ideas so if somebody just says come and work with me my initial thing is to say no.

“It doesn’t work like that for me,” she continued. “I have to be… not just like what you do, I have to be inspired by what you do.”

Lady Gaga apparently didn’t pass the Jones Test: “I was not inspired [by her]. From the beginning I met her, I first thought her to be too affected, I thought she was still looking for herself.”

Hot Press’ writer-at-large Olaf Tyaransen – who has previously interviewed both Jones and Lady Gaga - says he isn’t surprised. “Lady Gaga has quite obviously borrowed a lot from Jones’ style, most especially in the fashion department,” he says. “Like footballers of yesteryear, Jones missed out on the really big money. I’d imagine it must stick in her craw to see Gaga creating so much shock, and making so much money, with poor facsimiles of the type of outrageous sartorial stunts Jones was pulling twenty years ago.”

Jones has previously put the stiletto into other female stars including Rihanna and Miley Cyrus on the grounds that “everything’s being done for them. I think it’s different when you get into the details yourself.”

However, she did tell the BBC that she’s a big fan of British star Adele. “She’s genuine. You can feel it. You can’t fake it. I can really size up people.”