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Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta
(born March 28, 1986), better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, 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 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 eight million
albums and thirty-five million singles digitally worldwide.
Stefani Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, as the eldest child to
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 mike
nights by age 14. At age 11, the singer was set to join Juilliard School
in Manhattan but instead attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private
Roman Catholic school. She described herself in high school as "very
dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure" as
she told in a 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."
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 and socio-political order. She later withdrew
from the school to focus on her musical career.
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 out of her parents' house and started
performing downtown in the Lower East Side club scene, with bands Mackin
Pulsifer and SGBand. Soon after she began taking drugs and 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."
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.
During this time she was featured on a couple of songs in a two-CD audio
book that was done to go along with the children's book The Portal in the
Park by Cricket Casey. She performed with Melle Mel on the songs "World
Family Tree" and "The Fountain of Truth".
Rob Fusari sent songs he produced with her 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, she 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 would later call her his "franchise player."
She 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)".
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." She began to work with a
collective called the Haus of Gaga, who collaborate with her on her
clothing, stage sets, and sounds. The Fame received mostly positive
reviews from critics; according to the music review aggregation of
Metacritic, it has received an average score of 71/100. Times Online
described the album as "a fantastic mix of Bowie-esque ballads, dramatic,
Queen-inspired midtempo numbers and synth-based dance tracks that poke fun
at celebrity-chasing rich kids." The Fame peaked at number one in Austria,
the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland, and the top-five in Australia and
the United States. The album's lead single, "Just Dance," was released on
April 8, 2008, and has topped the charts in six countries – Australia,
Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United
States. It received a Grammy nomination for the Best Dance Recording, but
lost to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." The second single,
"Poker Face", was released on September 23, 2008, and has reached number
one in nearly twenty countries, including almost all major music markets
in the world. "Poker Face" became her second consecutive number one on the
Billboard Hot 100 in April 2009. Afterward, the Haus of Gaga turned its
focus further upon the American market with Gaga going on her first
concert tour with fellow Interscope pop group, the reformed New Kids on
the Block. She started her stint with them in Los Angeles on October 8,
2008, and continued through the end of November. Her first headlining
North American tour, The Fame Ball Tour, began on March 12, 2009, and has
received critical acclaim. She opened for the Pussycat Dolls on the UK and
Australian leg of their World Domination Tour in May. Her performance
there was well-received, with a reviewer writing that she "upstaged the
Dolls". Around the same time, the music video for her international third
single, "LoveGame," was banned by the Australian channel Network Ten, who
refused to play the video reasoning that it contained sexually explicit
imagery.
Gaga appeared semi-nude, wearing only plastic bubbles, on the cover of the
annual 'Hot 100' issue of Rolling Stone in May 2009. 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
later regretted disclosing her orientation, saying, "I don't like to be
seen as somebody who is using the gay community to look edgy. I'm a free
sexual woman and I like what I like. I don't want people to write that
about me because I feel like it looks like I'm saying it because I'm
trying to be edgy or underground." She had previously told a crowd at one
of her concerts that her song "Poker Face" lyrically discusses fantasizing
about a woman while being in bed with a man. She appeared on rapper Wale's
single "Chillin." Gaga was nominated for a total of nine awards at the
2009 MTV Video Music Awards including Video of the Year, Best New Artist,
Best Female Video and Best Pop Video for "Poker Face" and Best Direction,
Best Editing, Best Special Effects, Best Cinematography and Best Art
Direction for "Paparazzi." She won 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 the music industry there's still a tremendous amount
of accommodation of homophobia. So I'm taking a stand," she commented. She
performed a rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine", changing the lyrics to
refer Matthew Shepard's 1998 murder; the college student's death is a
rallying cry for the gay rights movement. In November 2009 she announced
the release of The Fame Monster, a collection of eight songs that dealt
with the darker side of fame as experienced by her over the course of
2008–2009 while travelling around the world, and are expressed through a
monster metaphor. "Bad Romance" was released as the first single from the
album. It topped the British, Canadian, Irish, Finish, Danish and Swedish
charts while reaching the top-two in the United States, Italy, Australia
and New Zealand. On December 11, 2009, she met and sang the song
"Speechless" for Queen Elizabeth II. She also announced The Monster Ball
Tour associated with the release of her sophomore album. The singer was
named chief creative officer for a line of imaging products for Polaroid
at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 7, 2010 where she commented
that she will create fashion, technology and photography products. "I'm
working on bringing the instant film camera back as part of the future."
On January 14, 2010, Gaga had to cancel the Monster Ball concert in West
Lafayette, Indiana, due to health concerns; she was having trouble
breathing in the hours leading up to the show, and paramedics later stated
that she was suffering from an irregular heartbeat as a result of
dehydration and exhaustion. In an interview with Barbara Walters, she
dismissed an urban legend, the claim that she is intersexual and responded
to a question on the 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." Gaga
received her first Grammy Award at the 52nd Grammy Awards on January 31,
2010. She was nominated for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best
Dance Recording for her single "Poker Face", winning the last of the
three. The Fame itself had been nominated for Album of the Year and Best
Electronic/Dance Album, winning the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance
Album. She has won all three of her Brit Nominations, winning Best
International Breakthrough Artist, Best International Album and Best
International Female Solo Artist.
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. John Dingwall of Daily Record wrote: "Gaga says she has
been inspired by Madonna and the late Michael Jackson, but her number one
inspiration has been Freddie Mercury." The Queen song "Radio Ga Ga"
inspired her stage name. 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 "herself 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/singer Grace Jones has also been cited as
an inspiration. She has often been likened to Blondie singer Debbie Harry.
Alice Cooper called her style "vaudevillian".
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." Baby A. Gil of The Philippine Star asserted that her voice is
"just right for the mix of dance and rock that she does." Alexis Petridis
of The Guardian commented that although, as an artist, she lacks
originality, "pop music doesn't have to be blindingly original or clever
to work: it needs tunes, and Lady GaGa is fantastically good at tunes."
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 has stated that she is "very into fashion" and that it is
"everything" to her. 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." Columnist Trish Crawford of The Star commented,
"Fashion is her calling card, a way to stand out as unique in a very
crowded field." She 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. She has 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:
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
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.)"
Lady Gaga described Rilke as her "favorite philosopher," commenting that
his "philosophy of solitude" spoke to her. In response to Lady Gaga saying
that she considers Donatella Versace her muse, Melissa Magsaysay of Los
Angeles Times commented, "Gaga's aversion to wearing a top and bottom at
the same time swigging champagne and being fanned by oily men in Speedos
is very Donatella-esque." 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." Afterward, Lady Gaga released a statement in which she
welcomed the comparisons due to the attention providing useful publicity.
She said, "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." 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.
Lady 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. |
