Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga
Gaga performing on The Monster Ball Tour in 2010
Background information
Birth name	Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta
Born	March 28, 1986 (age 24) New York, New York,United States
Genres	Pop, dance
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, performance artist, record producer, dancer, businesswoman
Instruments	Vocals, piano, synthesizer, keytar
Years active	2005–present
Labels	Def Jam, Cherrytree, Streamline,Kon Live, Interscope
Website	ladygaga.com

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta

Lady Gaga (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta; March 28, 1986) is an American recording artist. She began performing in the rock music scene of New York City's Lower East Side. She soon signed with Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, upon its establishment in 2007. During her early time at Interscope, she worked as a songwriter for fellow label artists and captured the attention of Akon, who recognized her vocal abilities, and had her also sign to his own label, Kon Live Distribution.

Her debut album, The Fame, was released on August 19, 2008. In addition to receiving generally positive reviews, it reached number one in Canada, Austria, Germany and Ireland, and topped the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart. Its first two singles, "Just Dance" and "Poker Face", co-written and co-produced with RedOne, became international number-one hits, topping the Hot 100 in the United States as well as other countries. The album later earned a total of six Grammy Award nominations and won awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album and Best Dance Recording. In early 2009, after having opened for New Kids on the Block and the Pussycat Dolls, she embarked on her first headlining tour, The Fame Ball Tour. By the fourth quarter of 2009 she had released her second studio album The Fame Monster, with the global chart-topping lead single "Bad Romance", as well as having embarked on her second headlining tour of the year, The Monster Ball Tour.

Lady Gaga is inspired by glam rock musicians such as David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, as well as pop music artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson. She has also stated fashion is a source of inspiration for her songwriting and performances. To date, she has sold over ten million albums and over thirty-five million singles worldwide. In May 2010, Time magazine included Gaga in its annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. She ranked as the #1 entertainer and #5 overall.

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Biography

1986–2004: Early life

Stefani Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, the eldest child of Italian American parents Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta (née Bissett), in New York City. Playing piano by ear from the age of 4, she went on to write her first piano ballad at 13 and began performing at open mic nights by age 14. At age 11, the singer attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private Roman Catholic school. An avid thespian in high school musicals, Germanotta portrayed lead roles as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. She described her academic life in high school as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure" as she told in an interview, "I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down. I didn’t fit in, and I felt like a freak." Acquaintances dispute that she didn't fit in school. "She had a core group of friends; she was a good student. She liked boys a lot, but singing was No. 1", recalled a former high school classmate. "She was always popular," said Julia Lindenthal, Marymount ’04. "I don’t remember her experiencing any social problems or awkwardness."

At age 17, Germanotta gained early admission to the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. There, she studied music and improved her songwriting skills by composing essays and analytical papers focusing on topics such as art, religion, social issues and politics. Germanotta lived in an NYU dorm on 11th Street but quickly felt that she was further along creatively than some of her classmates. "Once you learn how to think about art, you can teach yourself," she says. By the second semester of her sophomore year, she withdrew from the school to focus on her musical career. Her father reportedly agreed to pay her rent for a year on the condition that she reenroll if she was unsuccessful. “I left my entire family, got the cheapest apartment I could find, and ate shit until somebody would listen,” she said.

2005–07: Career beginnings

Germanotta had initially signed with Def Jam Recordings at the age of 19 after Island Def Jam Music Group Chairman and CEO L. A. Reid heard her singing down the hallway from his office. After three months, she was dropped from Def Jam, although at the same time, her former management company introduced her to songwriter and producer RedOne, whom they also managed. The first song she produced together with RedOne was "Boys Boys Boys", a mash-up inspired by Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls" and AC/DC's "T.N.T.". She moved into an apartment on the Lower East Side then from there she started the Stefani Germanotta Band with some friends from NYU, recording an EP of her Fiona Apple–esque ballads at a studio underneath a liquor store in New Jersey, becoming a local fixture performing downtown in the LES club scene. She has admitted to began taking drugs soon after, while performing at burlesque shows. She said her father "just didn't understand it", and that he could not look at her for several months. Music producer Rob Fusari, who helped her write some of her earlier songs, compared her vocal style to that of Freddie Mercury. Fusari helped create the moniker Gaga, after the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga". The singer was in the process of trying to come up with a stage name, when she received a text message from Fusari that read "Lady Gaga".

Every day, when Stef came to the studio, instead of saying hello, I would start singing 'Radio Ga Ga.' That was her entrance song. [Lady Gaga] was actually a glitch; I typed 'Radio Ga Ga' in a text and it did an autocorrect so somehow 'Radio' got changed to 'Lady'. She texted me back, "That's it." After that day, she was Lady Gaga. She’s like, "Don’t ever call me Stefani again."

—Rob Fusari

She was known thereafter as Lady Gaga. Throughout 2007, she collaborated with performance artist Lady Starlight, who helped her create her onstage fashions. The pair began playing gigs at downtown club venues like the Mercury Lounge, The Bitter End, and the Rockwood Music Hall, with their live performance art piece known as "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue". Billed as "The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow", their act was a low-fi tribute to 1970s variety acts. In August 2007, she and Lady Starlight were invited to play at the American Lollapalooza music festival. The show was critically acclaimed, and their performance received highly positive reviews. Having initially focused on avant-garde, and electronic dance music, Lady Gaga found her musical niche when she began to incorporate pop melodies and the vintage glam rock of David Bowie and Queen into the mix.

Gaga performing at a bar in October 2008

Fusari sent songs he produced with Gaga to his friend, producer and record executive Vincent Herbert. Herbert was quick to sign her to his label Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, upon its establishment in 2007. She has credited Herbert as the man who discovered her, while adding that "I really feel like we made pop history, and we're gonna keep going". Having already served as an apprentice songwriter under an internship at Famous Music Publishing, which was later acquired by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Gaga subsequently struck a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV. As a result, she was hired to write songs for Britney Spears, as well as being commissioned by Interscope to write for labelmates New Kids on the Block, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls. While she was writing at Interscope, singer-songwriter Akon recognized her vocal abilities during her singing of a reference vocal for one of his tracks in studio. He then convinced Interscope-Geffen-A&M Chairman and CEO Jimmy Iovine to form a joint deal by having her also sign with his own label, Kon Live Distribution, and later called her his "franchise player." Gaga pursued her collaboration with RedOne by working with him in the studio for a week on her debut album,spawning the debut international hit singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". She also joined the roster of Cherrytree Records, an Interscope imprint established by producer and songwriter Martin Kierszenbaum, after co-writing four songs with Kierszenbaum including the single "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)".

2008–present: The Fame and The Fame Monster

By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles, working closely with her record label to finalize her debut album The Fame. She said that she combined a lot of different genres on the album, "from Def Leppard drums and hand claps to metal drums on urban tracks." The Fame received mostly positive reviews from critics; according to the music review aggregation of Metacritic, it garnered an average score of 71/100. The album peaked at number one in Austria, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland, and the top-five in Australia and the United States. Its lead single, "Just Dance," topped the charts in six countries—Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and later received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Dance Recording. The following single, "Poker Face", saw even greater success, reaching number one in nearly twenty countries, including almost all major music markets in the world such as the United Kingdom and the U.S., and won the award for Best Dance Recording at the 52nd Grammy Awards over nominations for Song of the Year and Record of the Year, while The Fame itself had been nominated for Album of the Year, winning the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. Although her first concert tour happened as an opening act for fellow Interscope pop group, the reformed New Kids on the Block, and later for the girl group Pussycat Dolls, she ultimately headlined her own concert tour, the North American tour The Fame Ball, which began on March 2009.

Gaga at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

The cover of the annual 'Hot 100' issue of Rolling Stone in May 2009 featured a semi-nude Gaga, wearing only strategic placed plastic bubbles. In the issue she discussed that while she was making her beginnings in the New York club scene, she was romantically involved with a heavy metal drummer. She described their relationship and break-up, saying of it, "I was his Sandy, and he was my Danny [of Grease], and I just broke." He later became an inspiration behind some of the songs on her debut album The Fame. She was nominated for a total of nine awards at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards winning the award for "Best New Artist", while her single "Paparazzi" won two awards for "Best Art Direction" and "Best Special Effects." In October 2009, Gaga received Billboard magazine's Rising Star of 2009 award. She attended the Human Rights Campaign's "National Dinner" on October 10, 2009, before marching in the National Equality March in Washington, D.C. In November 2009, Gaga released The Fame Monster, a collection of eight songs that dealt with the darker side of fame as experienced by her over the course of 2008–09 while travelling around the world, and are expressed through a monster metaphor. "Bad Romance" was released as the first single from the album and topped the British, Canadian, Irish, Finnish, Danish and Swedish charts while reaching the top-two in the United States, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. The second single, "Telephone", which features R&B singer Beyoncé, became her fourth British number-one single, while reaching the top five in several countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States. "Speechless", a song also from The Fame Monster, was performed at The 2009 Royal Variety Performance where Gaga met and sang for Queen Elizabeth II. The singer's second concert tour — The Monster Ball Tour — was announced in support of her latest release and began in November 2009.

Gaga performing on The Monster Ball Tour

Gaga was chosen as of one the '10 Most Fascinating People of 2009' by Barbara Walters during Walters' annual ABC News special. When interviewed by the journalist, the singer went to dismiss the claim that she is intersexual as an urban legend, responding to a question on this issue by stating: "At first it was very strange and everyone sorta said, 'That's really quite a story!' But in a sense, I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny." On January 7, 2010, she was named chief creative officer for a line of imaging products for Polaroid, stating that she will create fashion, technology and photography products. On March 19, 2010, Rob Fusari sued Gaga's production company Mermaid Music LLC, claiming that he was entitled to a 20% share of its earnings. Gaga's lawyer Charles Ortner described the agreement with Fusari as "unlawful" and declined to comment. In an interview with MTV United Kingdom, Gaga stated that she had begun work on her new studio album. She said that shes "already written the core of it" and that "it's certainly my best work to date." On April 16, 2010, her music videos gained, in total, over one billion views on YouTube, setting a record for the site. In April 2010, Gaga was named the number one influential entertainer in the world by Time magazine in its annual Time 100 listing of 2010,.

Lady Gaga Musical style and influences,

Lady Gaga "Just Dance"

A 30-second sample of Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" featuring the chorus sung by Lady Gaga and Colby O'Donis in the range of B3 to C♯ backed by a synth marching beat. The song became her first international hit single.

Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Lady Gaga has been influenced by glam rock musicians such as David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, as well as pop music artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson. Lady Gaga claimed the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga" inspired her stage name, though some sources disagree. She commented: "I adored Freddie Mercury and Queen had a hit called Radio Gaga. That's why I love the name... Freddie was unique — one of the biggest personalities in the whole of pop music."Madonna told Rolling Stone that she sees "[her]self in Lady Gaga." In response to the comparisons between herself and Madonna, Lady Gaga stated: "I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I've made it my goal to revolutionise pop music. The last revolution was launched by Madonna 25 years ago."Fashion icon, actress and singer Grace Jones has also been cited as an inspiration. She has often been likened to Blondie singer Debbie Harry.

Lady Gaga's vocals have drawn frequent comparison to Madonna and Gwen Stefani, while the structure of her music is said to be reminiscent of classic 1980s pop and 1990s Europop.In reviewing her debut album The Fame, The Sunday Times asserted "in combining music, fashion, art and technology, Lady GaGa evokes Madonna, Gwen Stefani circa Hollaback Girl, Kylie Minogue 2001 or Grace Jones right now."Similarly, The Boston Globe critic Sarah Rodman commented that she draws "obvious inspirations from Madonna to Gwen Stefani... in [her] girlish but sturdy pipes and bubbly beats." Though her lyrics are said to lack intellectual stimulation, "[she] does manage to get you moving and grooving at an almost effortless pace."Simon Reynolds has written that "Everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just ruthlessly catchy noughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B-ish beats.

Lady Gaga Influences,

Lady Gaga has stated that she is "very into fashion" and that it is "everything" to her.She considers Donatella Versace her muse. Lady Gaga has her own creative production team called the Haus of Gaga, which she handles personally. The team creates many of her clothes, stage props, and hairdos.Her love of fashion came from her mother, who she stated was "always very well kept and beautiful." She said that: "When I'm writing music, I'm thinking about the clothes I want to wear on stage. It's all about everything altogether—performance art, pop performance art, fashion. For me, it's everything coming together and being a real story that will bring back the super-fan. I want to bring that back. I want the imagery to be so strong that fans will want to eat and taste and lick every part of us."The Global Language Monitor named 'Lady Gaga' as the Top Fashion Buzzword with her trademark 'no pants' coming in at No. 3. Entertainment Weekly put her outfits on its end of the decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Whether it's a dress made of Muppets or strategically placed bubbles, Gaga's outré ensembles brought performance art into the mainstream. (We're still not sold on the hair bow, though.)"

Gaga wearing a plastic bubble dress while performing on The Fame Ball Tour.

Contrary to her subsequent outré style, the New York Post described her early look as like "a refugee from Jersey Shore" with "big black hair, heavy eye makeup and tight, revealing clothes." "She was a very suburban, preppy, friendly, social party girl," says a former dorm-mate, who was friends with members of her former jam band. "There was nothing that would tip you off that she had this Warhol-esque, ‘new art’ extremism." Another acquaintance noted that her 'crazy' outfits at the time, "was putting suspenders on her jeans."Lady Gaga is a natural brunette, however she had cited a reason for bleaching her hair blonde was that she was often mistaken for Amy Winehouse.

She often refers to her fans as her 'little monsters' and got a tattoo with that inscription as a tribute. She has another six known tattoos, among them a peace symbol which was inspired by the late John Lennon who The Guardian stated was her "hero,"and a curling German script on her left arm which quotes the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, her "favorite philosopher," commenting that his "philosophy of solitude" spoke to her:

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write,?

—Rainer Maria Rilke,

Lady Gaga Public image,

Gaga delivers a speech at the National Equality March, October 11, 2009.

Toward the end of 2008, comparisons were made between the fashions of Lady Gaga and recording artist Christina Aguilera, noting similarities in their styling, hair, and make-up. Aguilera later said she was "completely unaware of [Gaga]" and "didn't know if it [was] a man or a woman."Lady Gaga released a statement in which she welcomed the comparisons due to the attention providing useful publicity, saying, "She's such a huge star and if anything I should send her flowers, because a lot of people in America didn't know who I was until that whole thing happened. It really put me on the map in a way."

Gaga attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered to be a rising gay icon. Early in her career she had difficulty getting radio airplay, and stated, "The turning point for me was the gay community. I've got so many gay fans and they're so loyal to me and they really lifted me up. They'll always stand by me and I'll always stand by them. It's not an easy thing to create a fanbase." She thanked FlyLife, a Manhattan-based LGBT marketing company with whom her label Interscope works, in the liner notes of her debut studio album, The Fame, saying, "I love you so much. You were the first heartbeat in this project, and your support and brilliance means the world to me. I will always fight for the gay community hand in hand with this incredible team." One of her first televised performances was in May 2008 at the NewNowNext Awards, an awards show aired by the LGBT television network Logo, where she sang her song "Just Dance". In June of the same year, she performed the song again at the San Francisco Pride event. After The Fame was released, she revealed that the song "Poker Face" was about her bisexuality. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she spoke about how her boyfriends tended to react to her bisexuality, saying "The fact that I’m into women, they’re all intimidated by it. It makes them uncomfortable. They’re like, 'I don’t need to have a threesome. I’m happy with just you'." When she appeared as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in May 2009, she praised DeGeneres for being "an inspiration for women and for the gay community". She proclaimed that the October 11, 2009, National Equality March rally on the national mall was "the single most important event of her career." As she exited, she left with an exultant "Bless God and bless the gays," similar to her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech for Best New Artist a month earlier,.

Lady Gaga Philanthropy,

Aside from recording music, Lady Gaga has contributed to a number of charities and causes throughout her career. In the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake there were numerous celebrities working together for the cause of helping restore what had been destroyed, and also helping those left to survive. Gaga donated all of her proceeds from the January 24 show of her current tour, the Monster Ball (ticket sales, merchandise, etc.), and from her online store; the total amount donated was over $500,000. She has also worked to raise awareness among young women about the risk of HIV/AIDS. Along with recording artist Cyndi Lauper, Gaga teamed up with MAC AIDS Fund's VIVA Glam campaign, which raised over $160 million to fight against AIDS and HIV, and bring awareness about the diseases to women around the world. All proceeds from a purchase of a VIVA Glam lipgloss or lipstick go directly towards the fund to aid those infected with the disease. In a statement, Gaga said that, "We want women to feel strong and feel strong enough that they can remember to protect themselves. To have this lipstick as a reminder in your purse, that when your man is laying naked in bed, you go into the bathroom, you put your lipstick on, and you bring a condom out with you...There are no exceptions."

(source:wikipedia)