The Edge of Glory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Gaga wrote this song:
Background and inspiration
“The song was about how when my grandma was standing over my grandfather while he was dying. There was this moment where I felt like he had sort of looked at her and reckoned that he had won in life. Like, ‘I’m a champion. We won. Our love made us a winner.’ They were married 60 years. I thought about that idea, that the glorious moment of your life is when you decide that it’s okay to go, you don’t have any more words to say, more business, more mountains to climb. You’re on the cliff, you tip your hat to yourself and you go. That’s what it was for me in that moment when I witnessed it.”
“The Edge of Glory” was written by Lady Gaga, Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow, and was produced by Gaga and Garibay.[3] The origins of the song first came about in January 2011, when Gaga released part of the lyrics on her Twitter account.[4] White Shadow revealed that before they returned to Europe for the 2010 dates of The Monster Ball Tour, Gaga had taken leave for few days to be with her ailing grandfather. After he died, Gaga told White Shadow that she wrote a song about her grandfather’s death, detailing the impact the event had on her.[5]
My grandpa died about five months ago, and my dad and I were going to say goodbye to him at the hospice, and I got out a big thing of agave tequila and my dad sat next to me at the piano and we started to doing shots back and forth, and I wrote ‘Edge of Glory’ on the piano and my dad and I cried… [That] song can be played on the piano, but it’s actually set to this giant, huge, techno rock, Springsteen-esque dance beat. I actually had Clarence Clemons from the E Street Band come in and play saxophone on it. It’s fucking beautiful.—Gaga talking to Google about “The Edge of Glory”.[6]
More information in regards to “The Edge of Glory” was revealed by Gaga, in an interview with Google where she explained the song as being about one’s final moments on earth, before a person dies.[6][7] Another inspiration for the song was actor Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 film Rocky, which being Gaga’s favorite film, she felt that the song was about looking at life directly, with the feeling that he or she is a champion—like the emotion displayed by the character Rocky Balboa in the film.[8]
Gaga’s references for the saxophone solo was E Street Band and Bruce Springsteen and for her it represented “the isolation in the music dichotomy, [representing] the whole spectrum of music.”[18] She ultimately decided to ask Clarence Clemons from E Street Band to play the instrument.[23] Clemons told Rolling Stone that in January 2011, he was putting together an exercise machine in his Florida house when his wife told him that Gaga’s people were on the phone, and they wanted him to play on her upcoming album.[23] Since the call was on a Friday, Clemons replied that he could record it on the coming Monday or Tuesday, but Gaga was adamant to have him at the New York recording studio on that day itself. Clemons flew from Florida to New York, and reached the recording studio in Manhattan in midnight.[23] Gaga wanted him to play saxophone on multiple tracks, one of them being “The Edge of Glory”. She simply told Clemons, “We’ll put the tape on and you just play. Play from your heart. Play what you feel.” The recording concluded by three o’clock in the morning after a few takes. Clemons added that he was surprised for “getting paid for this.” He added, “I would have done it for free. I can never believe something that feels so good earns me money.”[5][23]
An hour before kicking off the final leg of The Monster Ball Tour, Gaga sent four tracks to Rolling Stone, including “Scheiße”, “You and I”, and “Hair”, to have an advance preview. Matthew Perpetua wrote a positive review from the song: He complimented the inclusion of Clemons as an “inspired touch that amplifies the song’s eighties stadium rock vibe,” and Clemons’ actual performance was described as amazing and among the best of his career.[7]