Lady Gaga
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American recording artist. She began playing in clubs in the New York City area while also working at Interscope Records as a songwriter for several established acts, including Akon, who signed her to a joint deal with his own label, Kon Live Distribution after hearing Gaga sing. She then started to work on new material for her first studio album.
She began working with a collective called the Haus of Gaga in 2008, and released her debut album The Fame. The album peaked in countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, and topped the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart in the United States. To date, the album has spawned the international number one singles “Just Dance” (nominated for Best Dance Recording at the 51st Grammy Awards) and “Poker Face.” After opening for New Kids On The Block and the Pussycat Dolls, Gaga headlined her first tour, The Fame Ball Tour.
Gaga has been influenced by fashion and has been appreciated for her provocative sense of style and her influence on other celebrities. Musically, she is inspired by glam rockers such as David Bowie and Queen, as well as pop singers such as Michael Jackson and Madonna.
Biography
1986-2004: Early life and education
Gaga was born in Yonkers, New York, the eldest child to Italian American parents.[1] Her father, Joseph Germanotta, is an internet entrepreneur, and her mother, Cynthia, works as a telecommunications assistant.[1][2][3] By the time she was eleven, Gaga was set to join Juilliard School in Manhattan,[4] but instead attended the private Catholic school Convent of the Sacred Heart.[5] Having learned piano at the age of four, Gaga went on to write her first piano ballad at thirteen and began performing at open mic nights by the age of fourteen.[6] At the age of seventeen, she gained early admission to the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied music.[6] She improved her songwriting skills by composing essays and analytical papers focusing on topics such as art, religion and socio-political order.[7] Gaga later withdrew from the school.[8]
2005-2007: Career beginnings
Grayscale image of two young women standing side-by-side. The woman on the right is blond and wears a leotard while tilting her head back. She keeps her body straight and holds her waist with her left hand. The other woman is a brunette. She stands facing the blond woman. Her hands are raised up to her head with her fingers spread. She wears a silk robe that comes up to her knees. Her face has a hint of smile.
Lady Gaga (left) and Lady Starlight at their weekly party New York Street Revival and Trash Dance.
Gaga first signed with Def Jam Records when she was nineteen years old; it happened after record executive L. A. Reid heard her singing down the hallway from his office. However, she claims Reid never met with her. After three months, she was dropped from the label.[10] She moved out of her parents’ house and started performing downtown, in the Lower East Side club scene with bands Mackin Pulsifer and SGBand.[11] Wanting to differentiate herself from the prevalent rock and roll scene, she chose to focus on pop music and started taking drugs and performing at burlesque shows.[12] Gaga said her father could not look at her for several months and “just didn’t understand” her drug use and performance in the shows.[5] One day music producer Rob Fusari compared her vocal style to that of Freddie Mercury. He nicknamed her Gaga after the 1984 Queen single “Radio Ga Ga.” She started using it as her stage name and was known thereafter as Lady Gaga. It was Fusari who helped her to write some of her earlier songs, including “Disco Heaven,” “Dirty Ice Cream,” and “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich.”
Throughout 2007, Gaga collaborated with the similarly named Lower East Side rock DJ, go-go dancer and performance artist Lady Starlight, who helped Gaga create her onstage fashions.[13] The pair began playing gigs at downtown club venues like Mercury Lounge, The Bitter End, and Rockwood Music Hall,[9] with their live performance art piece known as “Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue.”[14] Billed as “The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow,”[15] their act was a low-fi tribute to 1970′s variety acts.[16] In August 2007, “Lady Gaga and The Starlight Revue” were invited to play at American music festival Lollapalooza, where they awed the crowd with their performance.[17] The show was critically acclaimed and their performance received rave reviews.[6][9] Having initially focused on avant-garde, electronic dance music, 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.[18]
During this time, she was noticed by music executive Vincent Herbert and was signed to Interscope in January 2008. She began writing for artists signed to Akon’s Konvict label, as well as Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears, and New Kids on the Block after her songwriting abilities left an impression.[5] Around the same time, Akon, hearing her sing a reference vocal for one of his tracks, formed the opinion that she was also a good singer.[19] He ultimately convinced Interscope’s chairman Jimmy Iovine to sign her for a joint deal with his own label, Kon Live Distribution,[10] and would later call Gaga his “franchise player.”[20] Through her affiliation with Akon, Gaga started to work on her own new material for her debut album with producer RedOne. Already having a solid selection of electro-glam, David Bowie-esque, and Queen-inspired songs, Gaga wanted to mix her retro dance beats with urban melodies, a pop chorus and still retain a rock and roll edge. The first song they produced was a mash-up of Mötley Crüe’s single “Girls, Girls, Girls” (1987) and AC/DC’s single “T.N.T.” (1976)[12]
2008-present: The Fame
A distnat image of a blond woman performing onstage. She is clad in a white leotard. She is singing onto a microphone in her left hand. Her right hand is held by somebody whose appearance is not clear. On her left, two African dancers imitate a pose where they appear to be looking at the woman throuogh a camera.
Gaga performing at the New Kids on the Block: Live tour
By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles, working closely with her record label to finalize her debut album The Fame.[12] For the album, Gaga stated she combined a lot of different genres, “from Def Leppard drums and handclaps to metal drums on urban tracks.”[10] She started to work with a collective called the Haus of Gaga, who collaborate with their muse on clothing, stage sets and sounds.[5]
The Fame received mostly positive reviews from critics; according to the music review aggregation of Metacritic, it has received an average score of seventy-one out of hundred.[21] 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.”[5] 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.[22] It received a Grammy nomination for the Best Dance Recording, but lost to Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”[23] The second single, “Poker Face”, was released on September 29, 2008, and has reached number one in nearly twenty countries, including almost all major music markets in the world. “Poker Face” became Gaga’s second consecutive number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 2009.[24] The Fame peaked at number one in Austria, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland, and number four in Australia and the United States.[25][26] Worldwide sales stand at 2.3 million copies.[27]
A blond woman in a bob-cut, sitting cross-legged on a transparent platform which is full of bubbles and lit from inside in pink. The woman is wearing a dress made of transparent bubbles of varying sizes. She is holding a microphone in her left hand and appears to be smiling.
Gaga wearing a plastic bubble dress while performing a concert on The Fame Ball Tour.
Afterward, the Haus of Gaga turned its focus further upon the American market with Gaga going on her first ever concert tour with fellow Interscope pop group, the reformed New Kids on the Block. Gaga started her stint with them in Los Angeles on October 8, 2008, and continued through the end of November.[28] She appeared as a guest artist on the song “Big Girl Now” from their new album, The Block.[29] Gaga’s first North American tour, The Fame Ball Tour, began on March 12, 2009. It was critically appreciated.[30][31] Gaga’s opening for the Pussycat Dolls in Australia in May was well-received, with a reviewer claiming that she upstaged the Dolls with her performance.[32][33] The music video for her third single, “LoveGame,” was banned by the Australian channel Network Ten, who refused to play the video reasoning that it contained sexually explicit imagery.[34]
Gaga appeared semi-nude, wearing only plastic bubbles on the cover of the annual ‘Hot 100′ issue of Rolling Stone in May 2009.[27][35] In the issue she discussed that while she was making her beginnings in the New York club scene, Gaga was romantically involved with a heavy metal drummer. Gaga described their relationship and their 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.[36] Gaga also stated that she is bisexual and is inspired by beautiful women. According to her, it’s an aspect of her sexuality that makes her boyfriends “uncomfortable.”[36] A month before, she had told a crowd at one of her concerts that her song “Poker Face” deals with fantasizing about a woman while being in bed with a man.[37] In June 2009, she revealed plans of touring with Kanye West.
Musical style and image
Lady Gaga “Just Dance”
Play sound
A 30-second sample of Gaga’s “Just Dance” featuring the chorus sung by Gaga and Colby O’Donis in the range of B3 to C♯ backed by a synth marching beat. The song became Gaga’s first international hit single.
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Gaga has been primarily influenced by glam rockers such as David Bowie and Queen, singers Michael Jackson and Madonna, artist Andy Warhol, poet Rainer Maria Rilke, fashion icon and entertainer Grace Jones, and fashion as a whole.[34][10][39] 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.[40] Gaga is said to have “a husky voice kept mostly in reserve” with the “gumption of vintage Madonna” and the “unlikely pop persistence of Taylor Swift.”[41] Author Baby A. Gil of The Philippine Star asserts that her voice is “just right for the mix of dance and rock that she does.”[42] As an artist, Alexis Petridis of The Boston Globe commented that although Gaga lacks originality, “[p]op music doesn’t have to be blindingly original or clever to work: it needs tunes, and Lady [Gaga] is fantastically good at tunes.”[40]
Gaga has stated that she is “very into fashion” and that it is “everything” to her.[5][43] Her love of fashion came from her mother, who was “always very well kept and beautiful.”[3] Gaga stated:
“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.”[43]
Gaga has said she channels Versace in everything she does, and considers Donatella Versace as her muse in many ways.[5] 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.”[44] 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.[45] Gaga is a natural brunette, but her hair is dyed blonde because she was often mistaken for fellow musician Amy Winehouse.[3]
Towards the end of 2008, comparisons were made between the fashion sense of Gaga and American recording artist Christina Aguilera, noting similarities in their styling, hair, and make-up.[5] Aguilera later claimed she was “completely unaware of [Gaga]” and “didn’t know if it [was] a man or a woman.”[5] Afterward, Gaga released a statement in which she welcomed the comparisons due to the attention providing useful publicity.[46] Gaga 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.”