Today I want to tell you about Lady Gaga
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (
/ / STE-fə-nee jur-mə-NOT-ə; born March 28, 1986), better known by her stage name
Lady Gaga,
is an American recording artist, activist, record producer,
businesswoman, fashion designer, philanthropist, and actress. She was
born, raised, and lives in
New York City.
[2] Gaga studied at the
Convent of the Sacred Heart before briefly attending
Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21). She withdrew from CAP21 to focus on her musical career. She soon began performing in the rock music scene of
Manhattan's
Lower East Side. By the end of 2007, record executive and producer
Vincent Herbert signed her to his label Streamline Records, an imprint of
Interscope Records. Initially working as a songwriter at Interscope Records, her vocal abilities captured the attention of recording artist
Akon, who also signed her to
Kon Live Distribution, his own label under Interscope.
Gaga rose to prominence with her August 2008 debut album,
The Fame, which was a critical and commercial success. The record included the international number-one tracks "
Just Dance" and "
Poker Face". In November 2009, her
extended play,
The Fame Monster, was released to a similar reception, and produced the hit singles "
Bad Romance", "
Telephone", and "
Alejandro". Its accompanying
Monster Ball Tour became one of the
highest-grossing concert tours of all time. Gaga's second album,
Born This Way, was released in May 2011 and topped albums charts in most major markets. It was preceded by the chart-topping songs "
Born This Way", "
Judas", and "
The Edge of Glory". After taking a sabbatical for a hip injury and the cancellation of the remaining dates of the
Born This Way Ball Tour, Gaga's third album
Artpop was released in November 2013 and became her second number one album in US.
Artpop was preceded by singles "
Applause" and "
Do What U Want".
Influenced by
David Bowie,
Michael Jackson,
Madonna,
Cher, and
Queen,
Gaga is recognized for her flamboyant, diverse, and outré contributions
to the music industry through her fashion, performances, and music
videos. As of November 2013, she had sold an estimated 24 million albums
and 125 million singles worldwide and her singles are some of the
best-selling worldwide.
[3][4] Her achievements include five
Grammy Awards and 13
MTV Video Music Awards.
Gaga has consecutively appeared on
Billboard magazine's Artists of the Year (scoring the definitive title in 2010), ranked fourth in
VH1's list of 100 Greatest Women in Music, is the fourth best selling digital singles artist in US according to
RIAA,
[5] is regularly placed on lists composed by
Forbes magazine, including
The World's 100 Most Powerful Women from 2010 to 2013,
[6] and was named one of the most influential people in the world by
Time magazine.
[7][8] Outside of her musical career, she is a prominent
LGBT activist.
Life and career
1986–2004: Early life
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born in
New York City to a Catholic family on March 28, 1986.
[9] She is the elder daughter of internet entrepreneur Joseph Anthony "Joe" Germanotta, Jr. and Cynthia Louise Bissett.
[10][11] Gaga has Italian and more distant French roots.
[12] Her sister Natali (born c. 1992) is a fashion student.
[13][14] Despite her affluent upbringing on Manhattan's
Upper West Side,
Gaga says that her parents "both came from lower-class families, so
we've worked for everything—my mother worked eight to eight out of the
house, in telecommunications, and so did my father."
[15][16] From age eleven she attended the
Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school on Manhattan's
Upper East Side.
[17][18][19]
She described her academic life in high school as "very dedicated, very
studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure": "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."
[20] Gaga began playing the piano at the age of four, wrote her first piano ballad at thirteen, and started to perform at
open mic nights by the age of fourteen.
[21] She performed lead roles in high school productions, including Adelaide in
Guys and Dolls and Philia in
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
[22] She also appeared in a very small role as a mischievous classmate in the television drama series
The Sopranos in a 2001 episode titled "
The Telltale Moozadell" and auditioned for New York shows without success.
[15][23]
After high school, her mother encouraged her to apply for the
Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21), a musical theater training
conservatory at
New York University's
Tisch School of the Arts.
[15] By age seventeen, after becoming one of twenty students to gain early admission, she lived in an
NYU dorm on 11th Street.
[22]
In addition to sharpening her songwriting skills, she composed essays
and analytical papers on art, religion, social issues, and politics,
including a
thesis on pop artists
Spencer Tunick and
Damien Hirst.
[24][25] She also auditioned for various roles and won the part of an unsuspecting diner customer for MTV's
Boiling Points, a prank reality television show.
[15][26]
2005–07: Career beginnings
Gaga withdrew from CAP21 at 19, in the second semester of her sophomore year, deciding to focus on her musical career.
[27]
Her father agreed to pay her rent for a year, on the condition that she
re-enroll at Tisch if unsuccessful. "I left my entire family, got the
cheapest apartment I could find, and ate shit until somebody would
listen," she remembers.
[22] Settled in a small apartment on
Rivington Street towards the summer of 2005, Gaga recorded a couple of songs with hip-hop singer
Grandmaster Melle Mel, for an audio book accompanying the children's book
The Portal in the Park, by Cricket Casey.
[15][28]
She also began a band called the Stefani Germanotta Band (SGBand) with
some friends from NYU – guitarist Calvin Pia, bassist Eli Silverman,
drummer Alex Beckham and booking manager
Frank Fredericks – in September of that year.
[15][22] The band played a mixture of songs: some self-penned alongside classic rock numbers like
Led Zeppelin's "
D'yer Mak'er".
[15] Playing in bars like the
Greenwich Village's
The Bitter End and the Lower East Side's the
Mercury Lounge, the band developed a small fan base and caught the eye of music producer Joe Vulpis.
[15] Soon after arranging time in Vulpis' studio in the months that followed, SGBand were selling their extended plays
Words and
Red and Blue (both 2005) at gigs around New York while becoming a local fixture of the downtown Lower East Side club scene.
[22] SGBand reached their career peak at the 2006
Songwriters Hall of Fame New Songwriters Showcase at
The Cutting Room in June where
Wendy Starland, a musician, appeared as a talent scout for music producer
Rob Fusari.
Starland informed Fusari – who was searching for a female singer to
front a new band – of Gaga's ability and contacted her. With SGBand
disbanded, Gaga traveled daily to New Jersey to work on songs she had
written and compose new material with the music producer.
[15] While in collaboration, Fusari compared some of her vocal harmonies to those of
Freddie Mercury, lead singer of
Queen.
[29]
Fusari claims to have created the "Lady Gaga" moniker after the Queen song "
Radio Ga Ga".
Gaga 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."
[30]
He explained, "Every day, when Stef came to the studio, instead of
saying hello, I would start singing 'Radio Ga Ga'. That was her entrance
song" and that the text message was the result of a
predictive text glitch that changed "radio" to "lady". She texted back, "That's it," and declared, "Don't ever call me Stefani again."
[30][31]
Although the musical relationship between Fusari and Gaga was
unsuccessful at first, the pair soon set up a company titled Team
Lovechild in which they recorded and produced
electropop tracks and sent them to music industry bosses. Joshua Sarubin, the head of
A&R at
Def Jam Recordings,
responded positively and vied for the record company to take a chance
on her "unusual and provocative" performance. After having his boss
Antonio "L.A." Reid in agreement, Gaga was signed to Def Jam in September 2006 with the intention of having an album ready in nine months.
[15] However, she was dropped by the label after only three months – an unfortunate period of her life that would later inspire her
treatment for the music video for her 2011 single "Marry the Night".
[32]
Devastated, Gaga returned to the solace of the family home for
Christmas and the nightlife culture of the Lower East Side. She became
increasingly experimental: fascinating herself with emerging
neo-burlesque shows,
go-go dancing at bars dressed in little more than a bikini in addition to experimenting with drugs.
[15][18] She was a go-go dancer at St. Jerome’s, a Rivington Street
dive in New York's lower East Side.
[33] Her father Joe, however, did not understand the reason behind her drug intake and could not look at her for several months.
[18][31]
"I was onstage in a thong, with a fringe hanging over my ass thinking
that had covered it, lighting hairsprays on fire, go-go dancing to
Black Sabbath and singing songs about
oral sex.
The kids would scream and cheer and then we'd all go grab a beer. It
represented freedom to me. I went to a Catholic school but it was on the
New York underground that I found myself."
[24] It was then when she became romantically involved with a
heavy metal drummer in a relationship and break-up she likened to the musical film
Grease: "I was his Sandy, and he was my Danny, and I just broke." He later became an inspiration behind some of her later songs.
[34]
Gaga performing in a bar, sporting one of her earlier looks (2007)
During this time, she met performance artist
Lady Starlight, who helped mold her on-stage persona.
[35]
Starlight explained that, upon their first meeting, Gaga wanted to
perform with her to songs she had recorded with Fusari. Like SGBand, the
pair soon began performing at many of the downtown club venues like the
Mercury Lounge, The Bitter End, and the Rockwood Music Hall. Their live
performance art piece was known as "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue"
and, billed as "The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow", was a low-fi
tribute to 1970s variety acts.
[36][37] Soon after, the two were invited to play at the 2007
Lollapalooza music festival in August that year.
[38] The show was critically acclaimed, and their performance received positive reviews.
[36] Having initially focused on
avant-garde electronic dance music, Gaga had found her musical
niche when she began to incorporate pop melodies and the
glam rock of
David Bowie
and Queen into her music. While Gaga and Starlight were busy
performing, producer Rob Fusari continued to work on the songs he had
created with Gaga. Fusari sent these songs to his friend, producer and
record executive Vincent Herbert.
[39] Herbert was quick to sign her to his label Streamline Records, an
imprint of
Interscope Records, upon its establishment in 2007.
[40]
Gaga later credited Herbert as the man who discovered her, adding "I
really feel like we made pop history, and we're gonna keep going."
[39] Having 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 and labelmates
New Kids on the Block,
Fergie, and
The Pussycat Dolls.
[41] At Interscope, singer-songwriter
Akon recognized her vocal abilities when she sang a reference vocal for one of his tracks in studio.
[42] Akon 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, making her his "franchise player."
[32][43]
Towards the end of 2007, her former management company introduced her to songwriter and producer
RedOne, whom they also managed.
[44] The first song she produced with RedOne was "Boys Boys Boys", a
mash-up inspired by
Mötley Crüe's "
Girls, Girls, Girls" and
AC/DC's "
T.N.T.".
[31]
Gaga continued her collaboration with RedOne in the recording studio
for a week on her debut album and 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 singles "
Christmas Tree" and "
Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)".
[41]
Despite her secure record deal, she admitted that there was fear about
her being too "racy", "dance-orientated" and "underground" for the
mainstream market. Her response: "My name is Lady Gaga, I've been on the
music scene for years, and I'm telling you, this is what's next."
[19]
That is all about Lady Gaga)
