Lady Gaga Honors Late Aunt Who Inspired Her Album Joanne on Anniversary of Her Death

Lady Gaga is paying tribute to a strong female role model in her life.

The singer, 31, honored her late aunt, Joanne Stefani Germanotta, on Twitter Tuesday, which also marked the 43rd year since she died of lupus complications at age 19. “Today is the anniversary of my father’s sister Joanne’s passing. 12-18-1974,” Gaga wrote along with a black and white photo of her and Mark Ronson, who executive produced her fourth studio album, Joanne.

“It also happens to be our last #JoanneWorldTour date playing North America. I’m very sentimental @MarkRonson, who I wrote Joanne with will be here, in the audience and on stage. #Joanne #LupusAwareness,” she tweeted.

Gaga closed out her Joanne World Tour with her second show in Los Angeles at The Forum.

Though the pop star was born nearly 12 years after Joanne’s death, she remains one of Gaga’s biggest influences.

“When Mark and I wrote it, the decision to name the album that was in tribute to my father’s sister who died when she was 19,” she told Beats 1’s Zane Lowe of her poet/painter aunt in September 2016, one month before her album’s release.

“He was younger than her. She was very sick with lupus. The death of her… left a scar that never healed. As I returned to my home life and spending time with my friends and family and getting out of the mainstream limelight for a minute, the experiences of our family and our challenges that make us who we are,” Gaga said.

Adding, “It’s everything about Joanne, which also happens to be my middle name (I was named after her) it’s all the toughness of the pain of losing her that made us all strong and made us who we are. She is the woman of my past who is becoming and helping me bring more of my honest woman self into the future.”

In addition, Gaga has dedicated a lot of her creative projects to her late aunt throughout her career.

For the booklet of her 2008 debut album, The Fame, the Grammy winner included one of Joanne’s poems, titled “For a Moment,” that was never published while she was still alive. In the same album, Gaga also wrote “A Poem for Joanne” to pay tribute.

And in February 2012 Gaga’s parents, Joe and Cynthia Germanotta, opened an Italian restaurant called Joanne’s Trattoria in New York.

More recently, in October 2016, the singer and her father tattooed the date of Joanne’s passing.