Michael Bolton Impressed by Lady Gaga's Talent and Vision

Michael Bolton has earned a lot of press recently for 'Murder My Heart,' the collaboration with Lady Gaga on his new 'One World One Love' album. Surprisingly, Bolton tells PopEater that when the pairing was first proposed to him, he had no idea who Gaga was.

"When I got the phone call that Gaga wanted to write with me, it was three months before her album dropped. I said, 'Why do you want me to work with her?'" he recalls. "'She's a great songwriter, but she's about to become a big artist and she is a fan of yours and wants to write with you,'" he says, relating what his confidants told him.

All it took for Bolton to be convinced was to hear the music. "The MP3s show up and the first thing you click on is 'Just Dance.' I've been in music for a long, long, long time; I would never be an A&R person but I'm sure I could've been," he says. "With 'Just Dance,' I heard the first verse and chorus and it sounded like a smash to me, a giant record."

As impressed as he was with the music, Bolton was far more impressed with Gaga in person. "Gaga and I hit it off instantly and she was a pleasure to write with. She was singing her ass off in front of me," he says. "She was singing different variations and trying different parts, so I got to observe, 'Wow, this girl can sing.'"

Bolton admits to being a little surprised, if only because so many young artists today become reliant on the tricks of the trade. "Sometimes I think that if I'm going to work with a contemporary writer or artist, they're probably going to need our tools, Auto-Tune, Pro Tools, Logic -- everything we can do in the studio," he says. But Gaga was an exception. "It's really refreshing to have somebody who can really sing standing in front of you and hitting notes and variations and, as a songwriter, shaping a song."

Now, Bolton isn't surprised that Gaga is "the biggest thing in the world" because of the determination and vision he saw in her. "I was looking at an artist more committed to her art than the commercial aspect of her career," he says. "All the talk and chatter that comes with the success at that level, a lot of people don't understand that she's creating that by herself. She's creating the vision -- she maps it out and off it goes."

Michael Bolton Feat. Lady Gaga, 'Murder My Heart'