Gaga spoke to Jon Pareles of The New York Times about the story behind the song: "['The Edge of Glory'] 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.

2008–2010: Breakthrough with The Fame and The Fame Monster. By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles to work extensively with her record label to complete her debut album, The Fame, and to set up her own creative team called the Haus of Gaga, modeled on Andy Warhol's The Factory.

Here, Gaga films a very simplistic and 80's inspired video for The Edge of Glory, where Gaga dances outside a fire escape and Clarence Clemons plays a brilliant sax solo.

Universal Studios Hollywood: Filmed on a Brownstone set just off New York Street on the Metropolitan Sets backlot and a tenement fire escape behind the gas station on Courthouse Square at Universal Studios Hollywood.