Lady Gaga Celebrates Disco Star Carl Bean’s ‘I Was Born This Way’ in New Documentary: ‘Anthems Unfiy People’

For everyone who has ever rocked out to Lady Gaga‘s 2011 smash hit “Born This Way,” the singer would like to make sure you’re just as amped about one of the song’s main inspirations — Carl Bean’s 1977 disco hit “I Was Born This Way.”

Rolling Stone revealed an exclusive clip from the new documentary I Was Born This Way, featuring an in-depth exploration of Bean’s life and activism. In the clip, Gaga and fellow fan Questlove reflect on the impact of Bean’s 1977 hit single, in which he sang, “I’m happy, I’m carefree/ I’m gay, I was born this way.”

“This was so much more than just a hit song,” Gaga says in the clip. “When that song stopped charting, they didn’t stop playing that song in clubs … the movement didn’t stop.”

Upon its release in 1977, “I Was Born This Way” became an immediate hit, landing on the Dance Club Songs chart in January 1978, where it spent eight weeks, eventually reaching a career-peak of No. 15 in February.

“This song is actually the music equivalent of the Giving Tree,” Questlove says in the clip. “This is song is beyond a hit; it’s an anthem. Anthems inspire hope and cause change and revolution … anthems never die.” Gaga added that anthems such as Bean’s “unify people” and “help us to celebrate people coming together to say, ‘This is what we believe in, this is what we care about. We are louder, we are stronger and we can do it together.'”

This isn’t the first time Gaga has spoken about Bean’s hit song. Around the 10th anniversary of Born This Way in May 2021, Gaga shared on her Instagram that both the album and the song were inspired by Bean, and his relentless work as a religious activist for the LGBTQ+ community. “Thank you for decades of relentless love, bravery, and a reason to sing,” she wrote at the time. “So we can all feel joy, because we deserve joy. Because we deserve the right to inspire tolerance, acceptance, and freedom for all.”