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Lady GaGa
-Biography-

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 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.

19862004: Early life

Stefani Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, the eldest child of to Italian American parents Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta (ne Bissett), in New York City.[4][5][6] 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.[7] At age 11, the singer attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private Roman Catholic school.[1][8] 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 didnt fit in, and I felt like a freak."[10][11] Acquaintances dispute that she didn't fit in 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.[12] "She was always popular," said Julia Lindenthal, Marymount 04. "I dont remember her experiencing any social problems or awkwardness."[9] 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.[7][13] 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.[14] 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. Contrary to her subsequent outr 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.

20052007: Career beginnings

GaGa 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.[16] The first song she produced together with RedOne was "Boys Boys Boys", a mash-up inspired by Mtley Cre's "Girls, Girls, Girls" and AC/DC's "T.N.T." She moved into an apartment on the Lower East Side, with a futon for a couch and a Yoko Ono record hung over her bed. From there she started the Stefani Germanotta Band with some friends from NYU, recording an EP of her Fiona Appleesque ballads at a studio underneath a liquor store in New Jersey, becoming a local fixture performing downtown in the LES club scene. 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. Shes like, "Dont 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.[20] 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. She was featured on a couple of songs along with hip-hop artist Melle Mel in an audio book accompanying the children's book The Portal in the Park by Cricket Casey. Rob 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,[15] and would later call 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)".

2008present: The Fame, The Fame Monster and a third studio album
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. It 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. Just Dance was initially only played on the dance formatted radio stations. Airplay on the radio station Pulse 87 in her hometown was instrumental in exposing her music. Just Dance 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. Gaga went 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. She opened for the Pussycat Dolls on the UK and Australian leg of their World Domination Tour in May. Gaga also appeared on rapper Wale's single "Chillin." 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 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 she 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 200809 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, Finnish, Danish and Swedish charts while reaching the top-two in the United States, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. She also quickly announced The Monster Ball Tour, associated with the release of her sophomore album. On December 11, 2009, she met Queen Elizabeth II and sang the song "Speechless" at The 2009 Royal Variety Performance.[58] 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. On January 14, 2010, Gaga had to cancel the Monster Ball concert in West Lafayette, Indiana, due to health concerns. 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 Grammy nominations 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 won the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. The second single from The Fame Monster was "Telephone", which reached number one on Billboard's Pop songs chart, thus becoming Gaga's and Beyonc's sixth number one on the chart, tying them with Mariah Carey. The song also peaked the chart in UK. 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." ContactMusic, along with several other news organizations, has reported that Gaga appeared on one of her fan sites, GaGaDaily, that she already wrote the first single for her third studio album. She said, "I wrote it for you because of you, when I was in Liverpool, I wrote the greatest music I've ever written." She also said she had picked that albums title, and that it was going to be revealed on that fan site.