Gaga came to prominence following the release of her debut studio album The Fame (2008), which was a critical and commercial success and achieved international popularity with the singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". The album reached number one on the record charts of six countries, topped the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart while simultaneously peaking at number two on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States and accomplished positions within the top ten worldwide. Achieving similar worldwide success, The Fame Monster (2009), its follow-up, produced a further three global chart-topping singles "Bad Romance", "Telephone" and "Alejandro" and allowed her to embark on her second global concert tour, The Monster Ball Tour, just months after having finished her first, The Fame Ball Tour. Her second studio album Born This Way (2011) topped the charts in all major musical markets after the arrival of its singles "Born This Way", "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory" – the first-mentioned achieved the number-one spot in countries worldwide and was the fastest-selling single in the history of iTunes, selling one million copies in five days.
Inspired by glam rock singers like David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, as well as dance-pop artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson, Gaga is well-recognized for her outré and ever-changing sense of style in music, in fashion, in performance and in her music videos. Her contributions to the music industry have accrued her numerous achievements including five Grammy Awards, among twelve nominations; two Guinness World Records; and the estimated sale of 13 million albums and 51 million singles, making her one of the best-selling music artists worldwide. Billboard named her the Artist of the Year in 2010, ranking her as the 73rd Artist of the 2000s decade. Gaga has been included in the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world as well as being listed in a number of Forbes' annual lists.
Life and career
Early life
Lady Gaga was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986, in New York City. The first child of Joseph Germanotta, an internet entrepreneur, and Cynthia (née Bissett), Gaga has one sister, Natali, who was born in 1992. She is of Italian and more distant French-Canadian ancestry. Gaga is left-handed and began learning to play piano aged four, went on to write her first piano ballad at 13, and began performing at open mike nights by the age of 14. Raised as a Roman Catholic on Manhattan's Upper West Side after the family moved there in 1993, Gaga attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school on Manhattan's Upper East Side, from the age of 11. Despite the affluence of the Upper West Side, Gaga stressed that she did not come from a wealthy background, stating 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. 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 did not fit in at 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.
An avid actor in high school musicals, Gaga portrayed the lead roles of Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. both at Regis High School. 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". At 16, she began to sing and play in front of live audiences and unsuccessfully auditioned for parts in New York shows. When her time at the Convent of the Sacred Heart came to an end, her mother encouraged her to apply to New York University to study drama and performance – specifically the Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21), which is a faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts.
Career beginnings
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. She also began a band called the Stefani Germanotta Band (SGBand) with some friends from NYU – guitarist Calvin Pia, bassist Eli Silverman and drummer Alex Beckham – in September of that year. The band played a mixture of songs: some self-penned, along with classic rock numbers like Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er". Playing in Lower East Side bars like The Bitter End and the Mercury Lounge, the band developed a small fan base and caught the eye of music producer Joe Vulpis. Soon after arranging time in Vulpis' studio beneath a New Jersey liquor store in the months that followed, SGBand were selling their extended plays Words and Red and Blue at gigs around New York while becoming a local fixture of the downtown Lower East Side club scene.
While at the peak of their career, SGBand performed at the 2006 Songwriters Hall of Fame New Songwriters Showcase at The Cutting Room in June where Wendy Starland, a singing model, appeared as a talent scout for music producer Rob Fusari who was searching for a female singer to front a new band. After Starland had informed Fusari of Gaga's ability, he contacted her. By this time, SGBand had grown apart and Gaga left to work with the music producer in New Jersey where she would travel daily to work on songs she had written and compose new material. While in collaboration, Fusari compared some of her vocal harmonies to those of Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen. It was Fusari who helped created the moniker Gaga 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. 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. [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. The New York Post, however, has reported that this story is incorrect, and that the name resulted from a marketing meeting.
Fame and The Fame Monster
By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles, where she worked extensively with her record label to complete her debut album The Fame (2008). She combined different genres on the album, "from Def Leppard drums and hand claps to metal drums on urban tracks. The Fame received positive reviews from contemporary critics; according to the music review aggregation of Metacritic, it garnered an average score of 71/100.The album peaked at number one in United Kingdom, Canada, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Ireland, and the top-five in Australia, the United States and fifteen other countries. Worldwide, The Fame has sold over fourteen million copies. 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" was an even greater success, reaching number-one in almost all major music markets in the world, including the United Kingdom and the United States. It won the award for Best Dance Recording at the 52nd Grammy Awards, over nominations for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. The Fame was nominated for Album of the Year; it won the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronica Album. Although her first concert tour happened as an opening act for fellow Interscope pop group, the reformed New Kids on the Block, she ultimately embarked on her own worldwide concert tour, The Fame Ball Tour, which was critically appreciated and began in March 2009; ending in September of that year. The cover of the annual "Hot 100" issue of Rolling Stone in May 2009 featured a semi-nude Gaga wearing only strategically placed plastic bubbles.
In the issue she said that while she was beginning her career 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 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 Gaga received Billboard magazine's Rising Star of 2009 award. She attended the Human Rights Campaign's "National Dinner" the same month, before marching in the National Equality March for the equal protection of LGBT people in all matters governed by U.S. civil law in Washington, D.C.
The album's second single "Telephone", which features singer Beyoncé, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals and became Gaga's fourth UK number-one single while its accompanying music video, although controversial, received a more positive reception from contemporary critics: praising her for "the musicality and showmanship of Michael Jackson and the powerful sexuality and provocative instincts of Madonna". Her following single "Alejandro" paired Gaga with fashion photographer Steven Klein for a music video similarly as controversial—critics complimented its idea and dark nature, but the Catholic League attacked Gaga for her alleged use of blasphemy. Despite the controversy surrounding her music videos, they made Gaga the first artist to gain over one billion viral views on video-sharing website YouTube. With the television host, Gaga also revealed that she was among several artists who would have opened for Michael Jackson during his This Is It concert series at London's O2 Arena. "I was actually asked to open for Michael on his tour," she stated. "We were going to open for him at the O2 and we were working on making it happen." She added: "I believe there was some talk about us, lots of the openers, doing duets with Michael on stage. In November 2010, one month after the singer reported assassination fears, a restraining order was issued against Russian Anastasia Obukhova, who had threatened to shoot her in the head.
Born This Way
Gaga's second studio album and third major release Born This Way was released on May 23, 2011. She announced the title of the album during her acceptance speech for Video of the Year at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. Described as "a marriage of electronic music with major metal or rock 'n' roll, pop, anthemic style melodies with really sledge-hammering dance beats" and referred to as an album "about what what keeps us up at night and what makes us afraid", She stated, "It came so quickly. I've been working on [the album] for months, and I feel very strongly that it's finished right now. Some artists take years. I don't. I write music every day. Likening Born This Way to "bad kids going to church" that are "having fun on a high level", Gaga characterized her new music as "something so much deeper than a wig or lipstick or a fucking meat dress" and upon hearing it, Akon remarked that she will take music to the "next level. Its arrival followed the release of its eponymous lead single on February 11, 2011, which was performed live for the first time at the 53rd Grammy Awards two days after its release. The song debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the 19th number-one debut and the 1,000th number-one single in the history of the charts.
Two other singles, "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory", the former being criticized for its references to Biblical characters Judas, Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, were released before the album, both placing in the top ten of the major musical markets. Upon release, Born This Way sold 1.108 million copies in its first week in the United States, debuting atop the Billboard 200, and topping the charts in more than 20 other countries. Lending her vocals elsewhere, Gaga paired with Elton John to record an original duet for the animated feature film Gnomeo & Juliet. The song, titled "Hello, Hello", was released on February 11, 2011, without Gaga's vocals. The duet version is only featured in the film. In February 21 and 22, Gaga's concerts of her then-ongoing tour at Madison Square Garden in New York City were filmed in an HBO special, which was nominated for five awards at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards. Gaga undertook her job as a fashion columnist for V, where she wrote about her creative process, her studying of the world of pop culture, and her ability to tune into the evolution of pop-culture meme. In May 2011, Gaga told Australian radio show The Kyle & Jackie O Show that she would be coming to Sydney to perform a one-off concert in July 2011, to promote Born This Way, which occurred at Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday July 13, 2011.
Artistry
Gaga has been mainly influenced by glam rock singers such as David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, as well as dance-pop artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson. The Queen song "Radio Ga Ga" inspired her stage name, "Lady Gaga". 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. Gaga has also a lot of comparison to Madonna. She stated: "there is really no one that is a more adoring and loving Madonna fan than me. I am the hugest fan personally and professionally. Gaga's other musical inspirations include Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, Grace Jones and Blondie singer Debbie Harry. In an interview with Yahoo! Singapore, when she answered questions for the media, she stated that Cyndi Lauper is someone she admired, and she also stated the reason why her sophomore album, Born This Way, was more rock-supported. She stated that she wanted her album to be for her fans, as they reacted a stronger way for rock songs than pop, which influenced her rock elements in the album.
Gaga has the vocal range of a contralto. Her vocals have drawn frequent comparison to those of Madonna and Gwen Stefani, while the structure of her music is said to echo classic 1980s pop and 1990s Europop. While reviewing her debut album The Fame, The Sunday Times asserted "in combining music, fashion, art and technology, 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. Music critic Simon Reynolds wrote that "Everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just ruthlessly catchy naughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B-ish beats.
Gaga has identified fashion as a major influence. She considers Donatella Versace her muse. 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. "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.
Public image
Critical reception of Gaga's music, fashion sense and persona are mixed. Her status as a role model, trailblazer and fashion icon is by turns affirmed and denied. Gaga's albums have received mostly positive reviews, with critics pointing out her unique place in pop music, the need for new movements in popular culture, the attention Gaga brings to important social issues, and the inherently subjective nature of her art. Her role as a self-esteem booster for her fans is also lauded, as is her role in breathing life into the fashion industry.
Her performances are described as "highly entertaining and innovative"; in particular, the blood-spurting performance of "Paparazzi" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards was described as "eye-popping" by MTV. She continued the "blood soaked" theme in The Monster Ball Tour, in which she wore a revealing leather corset and is "attacked" by a performer dressed in black who gnaws on her throat, causing "blood" to spurt down her chest, after which she lies "dying" in a pool of blood. Her performances of that scene in Manchester, England, triggered protests from family groups and fans in the aftermath of a local tragedy, in which a taxi driver had murdered 12 people. "What happened in Bradford is very fresh in people's minds and given all the violence which happened in Cumbria just hours earlier, it was insensitive," said Lynn Costello of Mothers Against Violence. Chris Rock later defended her flamboyant, provocative behavior. "Well, she's Lady Gaga," he said. "She's not 'Lady Behave Yourself.' Do you want great behavior from a person named Gaga? Is this what you were expecting?"
She later returned to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards wearing a dress supplemented by boots, a purse and a hat—each fabricated from the flesh of a dead animal. The dress, named Time magazine's Fashion Statement of 2010 and more widely known as the "meat dress", was made by Argentinian designer Franc Fernandez and received divided opinions—evoking the attention of worldwide media but invoking the fury of animal rights organization PETA. Gaga, however, later denied any intention of causing disrespect to any person or organization and wished for the dress to be interpreted as a statement of human rights with focus upon those in the LGBT community.
Contrary to her 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." Gaga is a natural brunette; she bleached her hair blonde because she was often mistaken for Amy Winehouse. She often refers to her fans as her "little monsters" and in dedication, she had that inscription tattooed on "the arm that holds her microphone. She has another six known tattoos, among them a peace symbol, which was inspired by John Lennon, who she stated was her hero, and a curling German script on her left arm quoting the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, her favorite philosopher, commenting that his "philosophy of solitude" spoke to her. Towards the end of 2008, comparisons were made between the fashions of Gaga and fellow recording artist Christina Aguilera that noted similarities in their styling, hair, and make-up.
During an interview with Harper's Bazaar magazine published in May 2011, Gaga discussed the recent appearance of horn-like ridges on her cheekbones, temples, and shoulders. When asked about the necessary makeup to attach the prosthetics, she responded, "They're not prosthetics, they're my bones." She also clarified that they were not the result of plastic surgery, believing such surgery to only be the modern byproduct of fame-induced insecurity to which she does not subscribe. Further probing by the interviewer only got her to state that they are an artistic representation of her inner inspirational light, part of the "performance piece" that is her musical persona, an inevitability of her becoming who she now is.
Philanthropy
Besides her career in music, Gaga has enhanced her repertoire as a philanthropist who has contributed to various charities and humanitarian works. Although declining an invitation to record a benefit song, Gaga held a concert of The Monster Ball Tour following the 2010 Haiti earthquake and dedicated it to the country's reconstruction relief fund. This concert, held at the Radio City Music Hall, New York, on January 24, 2010, donated any received revenue to the relief fund while, in addition, all profits from sales of products on Gaga's official online store on that same day were donated. Gaga announced that an estimated total of $500,000 was collected for the fund. Hours after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on March 11, 2011, Gaga tweeted a message and a link to Japan Prayer Bracelets. With the company, she designed a bracelet, with all sales revenue going to Japanese relief efforts. The bracelets raised $1.5 million (as of March 29, 2011). Performing at MTV Japan's charity show on June 25, 2011 in Makuhari Messe, Gaga appeared for the benefit of the Japan Red Cross which aids victims suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. However, attorney Alyson Oliver filed a lawsuit against Gaga in Detroit in June 2011, noting that the bracelet was subject to a sales tax and an extra $3.99 shipping charge was added to the price. She also believed that not all proceeds from the bracelets would go to the relief efforts, demanding a public accounting of the campaign and refunds for people who had bought the bracelet. Gaga's spokesperson called the lawsuit "meritless" and "misleading".
LGBT advocacy
Gaga attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered to be a 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 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. At the Human Rights Campaign Dinner, held the same weekend as the rally, she performed a cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" declaring that "I'm not going to play one of my songs tonight because tonight is not about me, it's about you." She changed the original lyrics of the song to reflect the death of Matthew Shepard, a college student murdered because of his sexuality.
She later released three YouTube videos urging her fans to contact their Senators in an effort to overturn the policy. In late September 2010, she spoke at the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network's "4the14K" Rally in Deering Oaks Park in Portland, Maine. The name of the rally signified the number – an estimated 14,000 – of service members discharged under the DADT policy at the time. During her remarks, she urged members of the U.S. Senate (and in particular, moderate Republican Senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) to vote in favor of legislation that would repeal the DADT policy. Following this event, editors of The Advocate commented that she had become "the real fierce advocate" for gays and lesbians, one that Barack Obama had promised to be.
Gaga appeared at Europride, a pan-European international event dedicated to LGBT pride, held in Rome in June 2011. In a nearly twenty-minute speech, she criticized the intolerant state of gay rights in many European countries and described homosexuals as "revolutionaries of love" before performing acoustic renderings of "Born This Way" and "The Edge of Glory" in front of thousands at the Circus Maximus. She stated that "Today and every day we fight for freedom. We fight for justice. We beckon for compassion, understanding and above all we want full equality now". Gaga revealed that she is often questioned why she dedicates herself to "gayspeak" and "how gay" she is, to which, she told the audience: "Why is this question, why is this issue so important? My answer is: I am a child of diversity, I am one with my generation, I feel a moral obligation as a woman, or a man, to exercise my revolutionary potential and make the world a better place." She then joked: "On a gay scale from 1 to 10, I'm a Judy Garland fucking 42.
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