When Michael Bolton heard that an up-and-coming young artist named Lady Gaga wanted to work with him, he was curious. “It was before her album came out, I hadn’t heard of her, but she already had buzz in the industry,” the 56-year-old singer told In Touch at a listening session for his May 5 album One World One Love at his Connecticut home. “So I said what I always say — 'Send over some MP3s.’ The first one I clicked on was “Just Dance” — and I thought, ‘Let’s write.’” It didn’t hurt that Gaga was a big fan of Michael’s. “I never expect that, but it was nice,” he says. “She grew up listening to my hits, so she had a good idea of my vocal range. She’d play something and say, ‘I think this in your wheelhouse.’” Michael was also immediately impressed by both Gaga’s artistry (“She has lyrics, she can belt, she was always wearing something provocative”) — and her endurance. “The first night we wrote together in Los Angeles, we were in the studio from 8 at night to 6:30 in the morning,” he says. In fact, Michael was even more confident in Gaga’s direction than the 22-year-old singer’s own mother! “We finished the bridge of the song when we both happened to be in London, so I took her and her mother out to dinner — and her mom still wasn’t sure of her choice of music as a career,” he recalls. “It was classic. Three months later, she was the biggest thing on the planet!” Gaga and Michael's sessions resulted in his bleeding ballad and future single “Murder My Heart” — a killer phrase that she had to sell him on. “I said to her, people are going to be so shocked by us collaborating, we have to do something that will just kill it,” Michael recalls. “And she said, ‘Well how about, ‘Murder My Heart?’ At first I said, ‘I don’t know — murder?’ But then she insisted, ‘Women will love it,’ and I got it. She’s a true artist.”