Lady Gaga's "911" Video Is a Powerful Statement About Mental Health: "It's the Poetry of Pain"

Lady Gaga debuted her video for "911" on Sept. 18, and it might be one of her most personal to date. The visual starts off with Gaga waking up in the desert surrounded by a bike and pomegranates. She then walks into a town, where a guy is slamming his head on a pillow and she's greeted by a group of various characters, including a shirtless man with an umbrella and a mom cradling what looks like a body wrapped in white cloth. The video features tons of Catholic references, and in the end, it reveals itself to be a hallucination, as Gaga wakes up on a stretcher and realizes she doesn't have her pills.

In an interview with Apple Music, Gaga revealed that the song is about an antipsychotic that she takes, adding, "It's because I can't always control things that my brain does. I know that. And I have to take medication to stop the process that occurs."

Gaga later opened up about the video on Instagram, saying that it's based on her personal "experience with mental health and the way reality and dreams can interconnect to form heroes within us and all around us." She continued, "I'd like to thank my director/filmmaker Tarsem for sharing a 25 year old idea he had with me because my life story spoke so much to him . . . Thank you little monsters. I'm awake now, I can see you, I can feel you, thank you for believing in me when I was very afraid. Something that was once my real life everyday is now a film, a true story that is now the past and not the present. It's the poetry of pain."