lady gaga early life biography

Lady Gaga at an event for The 67th Primetime Emmy Awards (2015)

Born March 28 , 1986 · Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
Birth name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta
Mother Monster
Fame Monster
Height 5′ 0¾″ (1.54 m)
Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is an American songwriter, singer, actress, philanthropist, dancer and fashion designer. Gaga was born on March 28, 1986 in Manhattan, New York City, to Cynthia Louise (Bissett), a philanthropist and business executive, and Joseph Anthony Germanotta, Jr., an internet entrepreneur. Her father is of Italian descent; and her mother, who is from West Virginia, is of half Italian and half French, English, German, and Scottish ancestry. Gaga was able to sing and play the piano from a young age. She attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart from age 11 where was bullied for her appearance (she was small and plumper than other girls with large front teeth) and eccentric habits. By the age of 14, Gaga was performing at open mike nights in clubs and bars. By age 17, she had gained early admission to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. In addition to sharpening her songwriting skills, she composed essays and analytical papers on art, religion, social issues and politics. At the age of 19 Gaga withdrew from her studies and moved out of her parents' home in order to pursue a musical career. During this time she started a band which began to gain local attention. After a brief partnership with talent scout Rob Fusari, which resulted in the creation of her stage name, Gaga was signed to Def Jam Records in 2006; however she was dropped from the label after just three months. Devastated, Gaga returned home, and 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. Gaga met performance artist Lady Starlight during this time; after a performance at Lollapalooza Festival in 2007 Gaga was signed by Vince Herbert to Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records. 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. At Interscope, singer-songwriter Akon recognized her vocal abilities when she sang a reference vocal for one of his tracks in studio; 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." In 2008 Gaga released her first album 'The Fame' to lukewarm radio play; Gaga toured around Europe and in gay clubs in the US to promote the album - however it was not until her first hit 'Just Dance' came to mainstream attention in 2009 that Gaga exploded onto the music scene. Since then Gaga has gained numerous awards and nominations for a string of hits; her first album spawned several more smash hits 'Paparazzi', 'Loveame' and 'Poker Face'); while touring the album Gaga wrote 'The Fame Monster', an EP examining the darker side to her new-found fame. The Fame Monster was released in 2009 and won multiple awards, spawning her most iconic single 'Bad Romance' as well as 'Telephone' and 'Alejandro'. During this time Gaga came under increased public and critical scrutiny for her eccentric and often bizarre style choices. Gaga embarked on her second tour, The Monster Ball; upon finishing in May 2011, the critically acclaimed and commercially accomplished tour ran for over one and a half years and grossed $227.4 million, making it one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time and the highest-grossing for a debut headlining artist. Concerts performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City were filmed for an HBO television special. The special accrued one of its five Emmy Award nominations and has since been released on DVD and Blu-ray. In 2011 Gaga released her second full-length album 'Born this Way'; the album was received vastly more critically than her previous two for touching on themes of politics, sexuality, and religion. Despite this, the album's songs were praised critically, and Born This Way sold 1.108 million copies in its first week in the US, debuting atop the Billboard 200, and topping the charts in more than 20 other countries. In addition to exceeding 8 million copies in worldwide sales, Born This Way received 3 Grammy Award nominations, including her third consecutive for Album of the Year. In March 2012, Gaga was ranked fourth on Billboard's list of top moneymakers of 2011, grossing $25,353,039 dollars, which included sales from Born This Way and her Monster Ball Tour. At the end of April 2012, Gaga's Born This Way kicked off in Korea - the tour would last 2 years and take the singer to every continent of the globe. However in February 2012 the tour was abruptly canceled; Gaga had a labral tear in her right hip which she had been nursing secretly for several weeks in the hopes that she would be able to continue the tour. After a performance in Toronto left her unable to walk and in considerable pain, she was taken to hospital for surgery and the tour was canceled. Through to Jan. 17, the tour had grossed $168.2 million and moved 1.6 million tickets to 85 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore, with the Asian, European, and South American legs already completed in 2012. The North American leg, which was to wrap the tour and was almost completely sold out, would have likely put the tour at more than $200 million gross, easily in the top 20 tours of all time and probably in the top 15, according to Billboard. As it stands, Gaga finished sixth among all touring artists in 2012, with a gross of $125 million and attendance of more than 1.1 million, according to Boxscore. Gaga wrote her third album, ARTPOP, released in 2013. Gaga made her acting debut in Robert Rodriguez's Machete Kills (2013) , the sequel to his 2010 film Machete, and also appeared in Rodriguez's sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) . In 2018, she starred with Bradley Cooper , who also directed, in A Star Is Born (2018) . Gaga received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the role. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Georgina Bradbury
Children No Children
Parents Cynthia Germanotta Joe Germanotta
Relatives Natali Germanotta (Sibling)
Often gives empowering speeches during shows to her fans about the importance of self-confidence and 'being whoever you want to be'.
Constant reinvention of her appearance
Futuristic, highly fashionable/controversial outfits
She carries a glow-in-the-dark disco stick during performances
Refers to all her fans as Little Monsters
Gaga's manager, without consulting her, denied permission to "Weird Al" Yankovic, when he asked for permission to parody her song "Born This Way". Gaga only discovered this when one of her close friends showed her the YouTube video of the parody Yankovic had just uploaded to his account, called "Perform This Way", after having gone viral via Twitter. Her manager forced Yankovic to go through (at his own expense) the process of writing, recording, mixing and mastering the song, all while Yankovic was on tour in Australia, prior to denying permission to him. Yankovic felt that if he had to jump through all those hoops, it should still be heard, if not on his album, then online. When Gaga finished watching the video, she personally called Yankovic, and emphatically overruled her manager. Gaga stated that she was never told he had even reached out to her, and would have given him permission on the spot. She also said she was a huge fan of his, she loved what she had heard in the video he had uploaded and felt it was "very empowering" and "a rite of passage" to be parodied by Yankovic, and to release the song on his album as he originally planned. This came just in time, since pulling the parody would have meant delaying Yankovic's album by several weeks or months. Both Gaga and Yankovic agreed to donate proceeds and royalties from the parody to the Human Rights Campaign.
At seventeen, she was one of twenty people in the world to have gained early admission to the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
She learned how to play the piano at the age of four, wrote her first piano ballad at 13, and began performing at open mic nights by the age of 14.
Her stage name, Lady Gaga, is a reference to the song "Radio Ga-Ga" by Queen .
Bleached her hair blonde in light of the fact that she was being mistaken for Amy Winehouse by interviewers while trying to make it big.
[on Donatella Versace ] She's iconic and powerful, yet people throw darts at her. She's definitely provocative.
Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show.
I was the arty girl, the theatre chick. I dressed differently and I came from a different social class from the other girls. I was more of an average schoolgirl with a cork.
[on her style] My grandmother is basically blind, but she can make out the lighter parts, like my skin and hair. She says, "I can see you, because you have no pants on." So I'll continue to wear no pants so that my grandma can see me.
You must never ever let a guy know how much you like him, because then he'll run in the other direction ... Well, I just sign that when you don't play hard to get, if you're too easy or you come off too eager, they run away so you gotta keep your pokerface on.
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) - $12,000,000

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Lady Gaga/Early Years

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1986–2004: Early life

Stefani Germanotta (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ), who performs under the stage name Lady Gaga , was born on March 28, 1986 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, New York, the eldest child of Joseph and Cynthia (née Bissett) Germanotta. She is mostly of Italian heritage with some French ancestry on her mother's side. She has a younger sister of six years, Natali . Around the age of four, Stefani started to learn piano by ear and after a while, wrote her first song called " Dollar Bills ".

She received a classical training later to complete her knowledge of the piano. By the time she was eleven she was set to join Julliard School in Manhattan, though she decided it wasn't for her. Instead she went to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private Roman Catholic school. She was, she says, "focused, determined. I was always in a band, or in a musical. I didn't really fit in but I had friends because I'm a nice girl and fun to party with." Gaga described herself 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."

She sang in a classic-rock cover band (Mackin Pulsifer?) during her freshman year of high school. The band did covers of Led Zeppelin's songs along with Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane. At thirteen, she wrote her first piano ballad " To Love Again ". At fourteen, Stefani started to work with voice teacher Don Lawrence. She recalls the person who suggested her to meet him :

Around the same time, Stefani began performing in open mic nights. She was too young that her mother had to go with her -- knowing that Stefani would sneak out anyway. " These were jazz bars, not sex clubs ," she explains. " They would have open mic nights so my mother would take me along and say, 'My daughter's very young but she's very talented. I'll sit with her as she plays.' "

Her parents were both very supportive of her passion for music. Stefani learned for some years with Lawrence and started writing music as an outlet and less of a hobby.

2004-2005: Collaborative Arts Project 21

At the age of seventeen, Gaga was one of twenty people in the world to have gained early admission to the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied music and theater at the Undergraduate Department of Drama. She moved to an NYU dorm on 11th Street. Each fall, the New York University's hall councils host an UltraViolet Live Preliminary, a contest hold to benefit cancer. Stefani competed and won for her hall. At the same time, she honed her writing skills by composing essays and analytical papers focusing on topics such as art, religion and socio-policital order.

2005-2006: Career beginnings

On February 3, Stefani won the third place at the final with a medley of her two original compositions: Captivated and Electric Kiss on a piano. After her eighteen years old birthday, Stefani decided to quit university and move out of her parent's house to pursue a career in music. They gave her one year to be signed to a record label or she would have to return to the university. She went to live in the Lower East Side of New York without any financial support from her parents.

Frankie Fredericks, a friend from NYU who became her first 'manager' even if he was not paid for his help, booked Stefani her first paid gig, helped to put together the SGBand and also to get her first real demo with Joe Vulpis later that year. During that summer, Stefani and Frankie began shopping and booking at several music venues in downtown New York City. The live performance were constituted of Stefani playing her piano-heavy solo songs. The Bitter End became one of her frequent place to perform so it became her home base as she called it. By September, she decided to put her focus on making a glammy band, the SGBand (Stefani Germanotta Band) composed of guys who really believed in her talent. Around that time, "I met Stefani at the Bitter End Cafe and was awestruck at her abilities. I immediately invited her to feature on a few songs with Melle Mel on this project that we were developing." said Maura Casey who was working on a children’s book album called "' Scott and The Secret Dimension ". They began working in September on the project. Stefani wrote and arranged a song ' The Fountain of Truth ' and was featured on ' World Family Tree ' with Melle. Before the project was finally released November 13 of 2006 with a new title, " The Portal in the Park " , Stefani called Maura to change her credits to 'Lady GaGa'. October 1 was the first time they performed as a band at The Bitter End. For the 60th Annual Colombus Day Parade, Stefani was asked to play ' No Floods ' on the streets. The event was broadcasted live on NBC, one of the hosts, Maria Bartirono said of her performance : "She's only nineteen and... what a voice." A month later, the band began recording a five tracks demo with producer Joe Vulpis .

2006-2007: Artistic development

176 Stanton Street, where she lived for three years.

On January 20, 2006, the SGBand played at The Bitter End and sells out the five songs demo, Words . They continued to do concerts and writing music and by March, sold out her first EP, Red and Blue at her home base, The Bitter End. The underground sensation was chosen by Bob Leone, National Projects Director of the renowned and celebrated Songwriters Hall of Fame, to be one of nine performers in the 2006 New Songwriters Showcase at the Cutting Room. She played Hollywood and caught the attention of Wendy Starland, one of Robert Fusari collaborator. He mentioned to Starland that he was interested in locating a female singer under 25 to front a band like the Strokes—she didn’t have to be good-looking, or even a great singer, but she had to have something about her you couldn’t take your eyes off.

Gaga erupted in giggles when Starland ran up to her after the performance and told her, “I’m about to change your life.” They rushed outside the club together, and Starland called Fusari on her cell phone. “Rob said, ‘Why are you waking me up?’ I said I found the girl. ‘What? It’s really one in a million. What’s her name?’ Stefani Germanotta. ‘Um, you gotta be kidding me. What does she look like?’ Don’t worry about that. ‘Does she have any good songs?’ No. ‘How is her band?’ Awful.” Starland laughs. “I wasn’t pitching a product. I was pitching the girl.” Fusari agreed to meet the girl. He was, to put it mildly, underwhelmed. “While I was talking to her, I was near the computer so I went to her page on PureVolume and had the music on real low in the background,” Fusari says. “Quite frankly, it sounded wedding band-ish, but I could tell that this person had more to offer creatively so I invited her to the studio.” She took the bus to Parsippany from the Port Authority and Fusari waited for her at the stop with Tom Kafafian . She hiked a quarter-mile down New Road to reach Rob Fusari’s recording studio, 150 Studios. “We’re in the car and we see a girl through the window of this pizzeria,” Fusari says. “My buddy goes, ‘I think that’s her.’ I was hoping that wasn’t her. I had a clear vision of what she should look like and that wasn’t it. I was hoping to find someone who looked a little grungy, like they just rolled out of bed. She was more like a guidette, for lack of a better term. ” He continues, “Still, there was something quirky about her. She was mixing the decades in terms of fashion. There was something very ’60s about her but also something sort of ’90s. My friend comes out with her and it’s a short ride back to the studio and I was thinking, ‘This ain’t gonna work.’ ” Although he was skeptical, Fusari asked her to sample one of her songs on the piano, she played Hollywood . He says, “Within 15 seconds, I’m like, ‘This is it. My life is about to change.’ While she’s playing, I’m on my phone e-mailing my attorney like, ‘I need a contract tomorrow.’ I totally saw superstar potential. I just didn’t know in what form or what genre it was going to be." Almost overnight, Stefani was ready to sign a production deal but her dad decided to create a company, Team Love Child LLC instead. Stefani became friend with Thomas Kafafian and wrote songs with him along with Fusari.

Stefani to Lady Gaga

After a while, Stefani agreed that her name was not going to help her to break in the industry. One day, Stefani was singing Again Again on the piano for Rob and he said to her "You are just so freakin' Freddie Mercury, you are so dramatic." He explained to her that the 'girl inside' , the theatrical aspect of her, was the most interesting part. Radio Ga Ga is one of Fusari’s favorites from Queen. “Every day, when Stef came to the studio, instead of saying hello, I would start singing ‘Radio Ga Ga,’ ” Fusari explains. “ That was her entrance song. ” Stefani was in the midst of brainstorming a stage moniker, when she received a text from Fusari that read “Lady Gaga.” “It was actually a glitch, ” says Fusari. “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 thought her new nickname was cool and even her friends started to call her Gaga. She kept 'Lady', to feminize her nickname.

Over the course of four months, Gaga commuted from New York to Jersey seven days a week, radically reshaping her approach. They put their focus on writing rock songs as this was her favorite genre. She stopped doing live show and restarted only to perform as either Lady Ga Ga or Lady Gaga in late spring/early summer that year. A new PureVolume account was created in order to promote her music and her MySpace name changed to Lady Gaga. The songs posted on her personal pages were in the same continuity of her previous work. The new material were more polished but still between bittersweet rock ballads to power-pop rock with songs like Brown Eyes and Wonderful . The reaction among their colleagues was negative about the sound they picked. They tried to use her as songwriter but that didn't work so well. “With those kinds of records, people are looking at the source of that music, who it’s coming from,” says Starland. As a writers Gaga wrote with two artists produced by Fusari, Lina Morgana and Leila Broussard. In July, Wonderful gained web radio airplay on iWebRadio and peaked at number two. During that time, she did one live performance by month until August.

Pop music beginnings

They took a break at Chili’s, their regular lunch spot, and Fusari convinced Gaga to test his idea. By day’s end, the two completed the tune, “ Beautiful, Dirty, Rich ” and “We never went back to the rock stuff." Later in interview, Gaga said "I was like, 'If it wasn't me, I wouldn't listen to this. I would be bored at this show". Finding herself surrounded by singers who all wrote the same style of music, Rob's idea was something fresh and provocative in the rock 'n roll underground: pop 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. "Queen and David Bowie were the key for me...I didn't know what to do until I discovered Bowie and Queen", Gaga says. They also began an affair, which made their artistic collaboration tumultuous. When Fusari didn’t like her hooks, she would get teary-eyed and rant about feeling worthless. But he was rough on her, too. Gaga wasn’t into fashion at this point: She liked leggings and sweatshirts, maybe with a shoulder out. “A couple times, she came to the studio in sweatpants, and I said, ‘Really, Stef?’ ” says Fusari. “ ‘What if I had Clive Davis in here today? I should call the session right now. Prince doesn’t pick up ice cream at the 7-Eleven looking like Chris Rock. You’re an artist now. You can’t turn this on and off.’ ”

Fusari was focused on the sound while Gaga began an interest in making a fashion statement. “She kept this scrapbook of all these different things she would see in magazines,” Fusari says. “It wasn’t always clothes. It might just be like a neon sign. It might be somebody’s hand with a ring on it. She would show it to me and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, that’s great, Stef.’ I wasn’t interested.”

Island Def Jam

The new sound increased her popularity with early song like 'Beautiful, Dirty, Rich' and ' Shake Your Kitty '. Gaga began to do her live performance with her keyboard and her MacBook playing her synthetic beats. Even with a new kind of music, getting recognition by the music industry was not easy for her. "When I was playing the New York rock clubs, a lot of record labels thought I was too theatrical. Then, when I auditioned for stage musicals, the producers said I was too pop". Until one day, Fusari recalled : "I played it for Joshua Sarubin, who was [Vice-President of A&R] at Island Def Jam and he’s like, ‘I gotta get this girl in here next week.'" “There was something unusual about her,” says Sarubin. “She sat down at the piano in a showcase room and the way she played and the lyrics and the way she acted and sang was just so different and in your face, and you couldn’t turn away. She was wearing these crazy white thigh-high boots and a black minidress and she had this presence like, ‘I’m sexy and I don’t care what anybody has to say about it.’ During that meeting, charmain Antonio "L.A." Reid stopped in and said to her "I can hear you from my office, you're very loud!" . He saw a born star inside that young women and signed her on the spot. On September 6 of 2006, Lady Gaga said ' I Do ' to an artist development deal with and a first album scheduled for May 2007. "But after he signed me, he never met with me. I used to wait outside his office for hours, hoping he'd take meetings with me about my songs, but it never happened. He eventually dropped me after three months." "I was pretty devastated. I know what it's like being on a label when they don't quite get it," says Gaga of her original major label deal.That confidence was shaken when she got dropped from Island Def Jam after just a few months. The reason the company booted her remains a mystery, but word came down from Reid’s office that they were severing the contract.

After Def Jam dropped their contract, instead of dropping her as well, Laurent Besencon from New Heights Entertainment believed in the artist but identified that she needed a different sound for to be signed. Gaga was wondering if she should ditch music entirely but Fusari encouraged her to rest for awhile and spend time with her family. After a dispiriting few months, their mutual management brought Lady Gaga and RedOne together. After RedOne's preliminary hesitation, Besencon strongly urged the collaboration. She then decided to keep making music as she truly believe it's her destiny and decided to work harder.

Around that time, Lady Gaga dated the owner of the St. Jerome's in New York in 2006. In December, Lady Gaga met for the first date Lady Starlight who was go-go dancing on her birthday in the bar. They instantly clicked, "We were both ladies," Lady Starlight said, "She put a dollar bill in my panties and the rest is history." They started to work together because Gaga loved her whole aesthetic and said to her: "What do you think about what you're doing with what I'm doing?" She had already most of the songs (from The Fame) written and I really liked her personally, even if I'm not really into pop music."

2007–2008: Performance art

Lady Starlight helped Lady GaGa create her on stage fashions while creating burlesque shows at dive bars with drag queens and go-go dancers. During that time, she did also go-go dance to her songs played. When Gaga's father saw her performance art, " He couldn't look at me for a few months, " she admits of her early experimentation. " I was in leather thongs, so it was hard for him — he just didn't understand. " Eventually, he restarted to support his child and now they are proud of her. The pair collaborated on many projects such as “ Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue ”- a low-fi tribute to 1970’s variety acts which featured Lady Gaga on synth, Lady Starlight spinning beats, choreographed go-go moves, shiny disco balls, and hairspray, lit on fire and sprayed into the audience. They did also " New York Street Revival and Trash Dance " together for a month each week doing a show.

Streamline & Interscope Records

Somewhere in 2007, Rob Fusari sent some songs to his friends, Vincent Herbert of Streamline Records. After, Vincent went to one of Lady Gaga with Lady Starlight burlesque show and he said to her: "I got you" and signed her on his label. Gaga also sparked the interest of Interscope's Chairman Jimmy Iovine in 2007. He offered her a label deal via Streamline/Interscope shortly after her performance at Lollapalooza with Lady Starlight in August. At that time, she learned a lot about songwriting and worked with a number of producers and trying to build a name for herself. Jody Gerson signed Gaga’s publishing deal with Sony/ATV. She said to Billboard Magazine, that she had faith Gaga would break out and become an in-demand writer and star. “ She blew me away from the moment I met her, ” Gerson says. “ She was already signed to Interscope, and we are so lucky to all be on the same page and have a great working relationship. ” During the fall, RedOne played Boys Boys Boys to Akon with whom he have a production company called RedOneKonvict. Akon was so excited that he wanted her as writer for artists on Universal (Nicole Scherzinger’s solo project, New Kids on the Block). They met in November 2007 and started writing together and she learned a lot about songwriting during that time.

1986-2008: Early Years
2008-2009: The Fame era
2009-2010: The Fame Monster era
2011-2013: Born This Way era
2013-2014: ARTPOP era
2014-2015: Cheek to Cheek era
2016-2020: Joanne era
2020-present: Chromatica era

Photoshoots

On location photography

These pictures were taken before/during/after an event where Gaga performed in early years. Technically, they are not "photoshoots".

1 Inez and Vinoodh
2 Terry Richardson
3 Photography

Growing Up Gaga

O ne year ago this month, Lady Gaga arrived for an interview in the dark, oak-paneled lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, a massive Spanish-style place in the tourist district of Hollywood that was supposed to make the area chic but has largely failed. “Just Dance,” the lead single off her first album, The Fame, had reached No. 1 in Australia, Sweden, and Canada in early 2008, but in March 2009, she was still an up-and-coming artist in America: a few thousand MySpace plays, a generic website, and a short tour as the opening act for New Kids on the Block. Gaga had a video, though. “My colleagues at radio in those three countries agreed to support her if I made a video,” says Martin Kierszenbaum, the president of A&R at her label, Interscope. The “Just Dance” video, shot a few miles from the Roosevelt, features Gaga shimmying with a disco ball in her hands while her friends drape themselves on a couch nearby—though most of those people were extras, not real friends. She didn’t know many people on the West Coast. “I don’t like Los Angeles,” she told me. “The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.”

Before the meeting, I assumed that someone with a stage name like “Lady” (her given name is Stefani Joanne Germanotta) was going to be a bit standoffish—that’s the strategy employed by most nervous young musicians on the occasion of their first real interview, in any case. But I never thought she was going to actually be Lady Gaga. These days, very few artists play the media like Bob Dylan, or stay in character as Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh did in his early career. In the age of VH1’s Behind the Music, tabloid culture, and reality television, musicians are aware that they should show themselves to journalists in as much mundane detail as they can muster. “But Lady Gaga is my name,” she said, amazed that I would have thought otherwise. “If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.”

Gaga eased into a brown leather couch with as much grace as possible given her outfit, a stiff white jumpsuit with a jacket cut from a Martin Margiela pattern, the enormous shoulder pads stuffed underneath the fabric extending toward her ears. At five-two and 100 pounds, with her hair styled into a mod blonde bob, she looked flush from a strict diet of starvation: “Pop stars should not eat,” she pronounced. She was young, skinny, and blonde, but she had a prominent Italian nose, the kind of nose that rarely survives on a starlet. (This was during Gaga’s “hair-bow” phase—that would be pre-hair-hat and pre-hair-telephone—and when I asked about the bow’s whereabouts, she rested her head on a pillow of her hands and said, “She’s sleeping.”) In the hallway near her table, families of tourists took pictures of one another with cameras, unaware of her presence, and she recoiled dramatically at every flash. “Oh, cameras,” she said, shielding her eyes. “I cannot bear the cameras.”

As we began the conversation, Gaga spoke carefully in a very odd accent—some combination of Madonna as Madge and a robot, an affect enhanced by the fact that she refused to remove her lightly tinted sunglasses over the course of two hours. “What I’ve discovered,” said robo-Gaga, with a photo-ready tilt of her head, “is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth—and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.”

Gaga was very taken with her new “bubble dress” at this point, and we talked about its unreality, the beauty of the imaginary. Everyone wanted that dress, but it wasn’t a dress at all—it was a bunch of plastic balls. “On my tour,” she declared, “I’m going to be in my bubble dress on a piano made of bubbles, singing about love and art and the future. I should like to make one person believe in that moment, and it would be worth every salt of a No. 1 record.” She dropped the accent for a moment now—the real girl, unartificed, was right underneath—and leaned in. “I can have hit records all day, but who fucking cares?” she explained. “A year from now, I could go away, and people might say, ‘Gosh, what ever happened to that girl who never wore pants?’ But how wonderfully memorable 30 years from now, when they say, ‘Do you remember Gaga and her bubbles?’ Because, for a minute, everybody in that room will forget every sad, painful thing in their lives, and they’ll just live in my bubble world.”

One year later, the transformation is complete: With six No. 1 hits in the last year, Lady Gaga is the biggest pop star in the world. By definition, a pop star is manufactured—rock stars weren’t, at least not until well into the seventies, and that may be part of why rock became pop—and in some ways she has benefited from a very traditional star-making model, one of the last purviews of corporate music labels. But success can have a thousand authors. Several different people have claimed credit for discovering Gaga, 24, shaping her, naming her, making her who she is: Rob Fusari, who co-wrote and produced her early songs, sued her two weeks ago for $30 million, claiming among other grievances that he had a contract for 15 percent of her merchandising. And Gaga, of course, takes the credit herself. “I went through a great deal of creative and artistic revelation, learning, and marination to become who I am,” she explains. “Tiny little lie? I wanted to become the artist I am today, and it took years.”

All of them are partly right. But in another sense, she was an accident, a phenomenon that happened in New York in the first decade of a new century.

And what a happening. At a time when you wouldn’t recognize the faces of the people who make most of the music we listen to (who are those guys in Vampire Weekend, again?), Gaga is visually iconic; in an age of Twitter, the remoteness she has cultivated since her first moment in the spotlight has made her an even bigger star. She completely turns the page on the last decade’s era of bimbodom, taking back the limelight from women who made their careers by admitting that they had nothing to say, like Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson. She also closes a strange era in female pop stardom, with rising talents unable to push through to superstardom (Katy Perry, Rihanna), American Idol contestants (Kelly Clarkson), older stars (Gwen, Fergie), tween stars (Miley and posse), and hugely popular musicians who aren’t pop in their hearts, like Taylor Swift (country crossover) and Beyoncé (urban crossover). She’s riveting in any language, with lyrics that compose their own Esperanto—she’s effortlessly global.

Gaga’s presence also introduces the formerly unthinkable idea that Madonna, another voracious Italian girl, may really, truly, finally be on her way out. Her new look is an appropriation of Madonna’s circa “The Girlie Show” and “Blonde Ambition” (the darkened brows, the platinum-blonde hair, the red lips), and her music-video director, Jonas Åkerlund, is a major latter-day collaborator of Madonna’s. But the two are very different: Madonna hasn’t had a sense of humor about herself since the nineties, where Gaga is all fun and play. At her core, she’s a young art-school student, full of optimism and kindness, childlike wonder at the bubble world. Though she may not be bisexual herself—of the many friends of hers interviewed for this article, not one of them recalls her ever having a girlfriend or being sexually interested in any woman offstage—her politics are inclusive, and she wants to promote images of as many sexual combinations as are possible on this Earth. Gaga says she’s a girl who likes boys who look like girls, but she’s also a girl who likes to look like a boy herself—or, rather, a drag queen, a boy pretending to be a girl. There’s little that gives her more pleasure than the persistent rumor that she is a hermaphrodite, an Internet rumor based on scrutinizing a grainy video. That’s not Madonna. Madonna wouldn’t pretend she has a penis.

But that’s the genius of Gaga: her willingness to be a mutant, a cartoon. She’s got an awesome sense of humor, beaming tiny surreal moments across the world for our pleasure every day—like the gigantic bow made of hair she popped on her head last year. “One day, I said to my creative team, ‘Gaultier did bows, let’s do it in a new way,’ ” she says. “We were going back and forth with ideas, and then I said”—snaps finger—“hair-bow.” She giggles. “We all fucking died, we died . It never cost a penny, and it looked so brilliant. It’s just one of those things. I’m very arrogant about it.” Her videos are global epiphenomena, like the Tarantino-flavored “Telephone,” with its lesbian prison themes and Beyoncé guest appearance. “Gaga doesn’t care so much about the technical part, but she’s involved in every creative aspect,” says Åkerlund. “We just allow ourselves to be very stupid with each other, and then you get ideas like sunglasses made of cigarettes.”

Gaga also throws in our face something we’ve known all along but numbly decided to ignore: American celebrities have become very, very boring. (The fact that she has done this at the same time that much of the actual music she makes herself is somewhat boring is another feat.) One of her essential points is that celebrity should be the province of weirdos, like Grace Jones circa Jean-Paul Goude and her pet idol, eighties opera–meets–New Wave cult figure Klaus Nomi, who died of AIDS at 39. To Gaga, our video-game-playing, social-networking, cell-phone-obsessed culture has made all of us smaller, more normal, less interesting—and, except for odd lightning strikes like the Jersey Shore cast and Conan O’Brien’s anointment of one Twitter fan—famous to no one, after all. “Kudos on MySpace? What is that?” she says, spitting out the words. “That’s not emblematic about what I’m talking about. I’m talking about creating a genuine, memorable space for yourself in the world.”

The story of Gaga is a story of being young in New York City. Stefani Germanotta grew up in a duplex on the Upper West Side, on one of the eclectic blocks between Columbus and Amsterdam in the West Seventies that are a mix of prewar brownstones, tenements, and modern condos. Her father ran a company that installed Wi-Fi in hotels, and her mother worked for a time as a V.P. at Verizon. They sent Gaga and her younger sister, Natali, 18, to Sacred Heart, a small Catholic girls’ school up the street from the Guggenheim. “Sacred Heart may have been prestigious, but there were lots of different kinds of girls,” says Gaga. “Some had extreme wealth, others were on welfare and scholarship, and some were in the middle, which was my family. All our money went into education and the house.” Her classmates say that her family was tight-knit. “When John Kerry was running for president, Stefani supported him and her father didn’t, so she joked about that,” says Daniela Abatelli, Sacred Heart ’05. Gaga was one of the only students with a job after school, as a waitress at a diner on the Upper West Side. With her early paychecks, she bought a Gucci purse. “I was so excited because all the girls at Sacred Heart always had their fancy purses, and I always had whatever,” she says. “My mom and dad were not buying me a $600 purse.”

Because her parents told her that they had sacrificed for her education, Gaga took school seriously from a young age. One of her favorite childhood memories is playing a piano concert at Sacred Heart at 8. “There was a line of twenty girls sitting in a row in our pretty dresses, and we each got up to play,” she says happily. “I did a really good job. I was quite good.” At 11, she began attending a full day of acting classes on Saturdays. “I remember the first time that I drank out of an imaginary coffee cup,” she says, closing her eyes. “That’s the very first thing they teach you. I can feel the rain, too, when it’s not raining.” Her lids pop open. “I don’t know if this is too much for your magazine, but I can actually mentally give myself an orgasm.” She hisses a little, like one of the deviant vampires in True Blood. “You know, sense memory is quite powerful.”

“Andy Warhol’s books became her bible,” says a friend. “She would highlight them with a pen.”

By eighth grade, she had also realized that acting was a way to meet boys and began auditioning for plays with Sacred Heart’s brother school, Regis High School, on 84th Street, near Park Avenue. She always landed the lead: Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Jealous older girls stuck in the chorus began calling her “the Germ.” “They always talked behind her back, like, ‘Gross, she’s the Germ! She’s dirty!’ ” says a classmate. Gaga has often mentioned that she was an outcast in high school, but other than adolescent shenanigans like these, her friends from this Pudding-like crowd do not share this recollection. “She was always popular,” says Julia Lindenthal, Marymount ’04. “I don’t remember her experiencing any social problems or awkwardness.”

At the time, she had a certain incipient Gaganess: She could be a little overdramatic, spoiled, brassy, but she was also a nice girl (not to say a good girl), recalled by many as kind and generous—a theater chick who was starting to express her own feelings through songwriting. A fan of Pink Floyd and the Beatles, she started a classic-rock cover band and began entering open-mike nights at the Songwriters Hall of Fame on the Upper West Side. She even cut a demo of her love ballads, and her parents gave out copies as favors at her large Sweet 16 party, at the Columbus Club. “Everyone was playing her demo, like, ‘Whoa, she’s going to be a star,’ ” says Justin Rodriguez, Regis ’03. “She was by far the most talented person in high school, but she’d do so many random acts of kindness, like saying, ‘Your singing has gotten so much better, you’re working hard and I’ve noticed.’ She wasn’t a diva at all.”

Like many private-school girls, by 15, Gaga had a fake Delaware I.D. purchased on Macdougal Street. She also started dating a 26-year-old Greek waiter from the restaurant. “That’s part of why I needed a job after school, too,” she says. “My dad wouldn’t give me money to go out on the weekends because he knew I was going downtown and being bad.” Soon, she had her first tattoo: a G clef on her lower back. (“Before I made my first big music video, I decided to turn that tattoo into a huge side piece,” she says. “I just couldn’t face the world with a tramp stamp.”) She was still a good girl at school, even if she got in trouble with the teachers once in a while: not for short kilts but inappropriate shirts. “I was fifteen to twenty pounds heavier than I am now,” says Gaga. “I would wear shirts that were low-cut, and the teachers would tell me I couldn’t wear them, and I’d point to another girl who was wearing the same thing. ‘Well, it looks different on her.’ It wasn’t fair.” She shimmies her shoulders a bit. “At that time, my breasts were much bigger, and firm, and delicious.” (Another high-school nickname: Big Boobs McGee.)

After the World Trade Center was attacked, Gaga cried for days and wore black, in mourning. “As she came down the aisle to get Communion at the special Mass for 9/11, her steps were in this serious cadence,” says a friend. “She used to wear a lot of makeup, but she didn’t have any on. I remember thinking, Wow, she is so over-the-top. ” Gaga also had an odd habit of refusing to let cast members in plays call her by her real name backstage. “If you tried to say ‘Hey, Stefani’ to her, she’d put on the voice of her character, and say, ‘No, I’m Ginger!’ ” says a friend. “It was so bizarre, because we were kids.”

After high school, Gaga moved to an NYU dorm on 11th Street and enrolled in Tisch, 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 told her parents that she wasn’t going back to school—she was going to be a rock star. 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 says.

Gaga moved into an apartment on the Lower East Side, with a futon for a couch and a Yoko Ono record hung over her bed. In high school, she had blonde highlights and let her curls run wild, but now she dyed her hair black and began to straighten it. She started the Stefani Germanotta Band with some friends from NYU, recording an EP of her Fiona Apple–type ballads at a studio underneath a liquor store in New Jersey. “Stefani had a following of about fifteen to twenty people at each show,” says the guitarist, Calvin Pia. Says her manager at the time, Frankie Fredericks, “We’d kick it, jam, get drunk. She said she wanted to have a record deal by the time she was 21.”

It was a lofty goal. What was missing, almost entirely, was any idea of how to get there. Like Madonna, she had a powerful sexual charisma. But whereas Madonna had seemed to calculate every step, every coupling, every stylistic turn in her quest for stardom, Gaga’s story is partly one of youthful drift, waiting for lightning to strike, for the brilliant accident to happen. Gaga, though, had something Madonna didn’t have: a truly great voice.

Gaga’s year off from school was set to end in March 2006—her father had set a cutoff date of her birthday. A week before, the Stefani Germanotta Band performed at the Cutting Room on the same bill as Wendy Starland, a young singer-songwriter in the mold of Peter Gabriel. Starland had been working on tracks with Rob Fusari, a 38-year-old producer in Parsippany, New Jersey, who was known for his success with R&B hits for Destiny’s Child and Will Smith. He mentioned to Starland that he was interested in locating a female singer to front a band like the Strokes—she didn’t have to be good-looking, or even a great singer, but she had to have something about her you couldn’t take your eyes off. “Stefani’s confidence filled the room,” says Starland. “Her presence is enormous. And fearless. I listened for the pitch, the tone, and timbre of her voice. Was she able to have a huge dynamic range? Was she able to get soft and then belt? And I felt that she was able to do all that while giving out this very powerful energy.”

When Fusari first met Gaga, he didn’t see the private-school thing and thought she looked like “a Guidette, totally Jersey Shore .” Then she jumped on his piano. “She didn’t have that kind of undersinging character voice of Julian Casablancas, so I dropped the Strokes thing right away,” says Fusari. “I thought she was a female John Lennon, to be totally honest. She was the oddest talent.” Gaga began taking the bus from Port Authority to meet him at his New Jersey studio at 10 a.m., writing grungy songs with Zeppelin or Nirvana riffs on the piano and singing her quirky Jefferson Airplane lyrics over them. “I’m a hippie at heart, and Rob and I got tattoos one day,” she says. “I wanted a tattoo of a peace sign, in memory of John and Yoko. I love that they traveled the world and said ‘Give peace a chance,’ and when asked to elaborate, they replied, ‘No, just give peace a chance.’ They thought the simplicity of that phrasing would change the world. It’s so beautiful.”

The two of them worked on rock songs for four months, but the reaction among their colleagues was negative; they also tried the singer-songwriter route, like Michelle Branch or Avril Lavigne, but those didn’t gel either. “With those kinds of records, people are looking at the source of that music, who it’s coming from,” says Starland. “Those artists are usually classically beautiful, very steady, and more tranquil, in a way.” Stefani agreed that her name was not going to fly: Fusari liked to sing Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga” when she arrived at the studio, and she says that she came up with Lady Gaga off that joke. (Success indeed has many authors: Fusari says that he made it up inadvertently in a text message; Starland says it was the product of brainstorming.)

Then, one day, Fusari read an article in the New York Times about folk-pop artist Nelly Furtado, whose career had stalled since her 2000 hit “I’m Like a Bird”: Timbaland, the hot producer of the moment, had remade her as a slinky dance artist. “We weren’t going to get past A&R with a female rock record, and dance is so much easier,” says Fusari. Gaga freaked out—you don’t believe in me, she told him—but, from that day onward, they started working with a drum machine. They also began an affair, which made their artistic collaboration tumultuous. When Fusari didn’t like her hooks, she would get teary-eyed and rant about feeling worthless. But he was rough on her, too. Gaga wasn’t into fashion at this point: She liked leggings and sweatshirts, maybe with a shoulder out. “A couple times, she came to the studio in sweatpants, and I said, ‘Really, Stef?’ ” says Fusari. “ ‘What if I had Clive Davis in here today? I should call the session right now. Prince doesn’t pick up ice cream at the 7-Eleven looking like Chris Rock. You’re an artist now. You can’t turn this on and off.’ ”

The problem was that she didn’t know how to turn it on: Though she wanted to be a star, she didn’t have a clear idea of what a star was, or where the main currents in pop culture were flowing. It was at this point that she began her serious study. Gaga picked up a biography of Prince, started shopping at American Apparel, and became entranced by aughties New Age bible The Secret, according to friends. As a Catholic-school girl, she interpreted Fusari’s remarks as a signal to cut her skirts shorter and make them tighter, until one day they totally disappeared: All that was left were undies, sometimes with tights underneath.

Starland was still part of the picture: She lived near Gaga’s parents’ house, and Gaga would come over, crunching Doritos on the couch while watching Sex and the City. But when she tried to formalize her role in Gaga’s life with a lawyer, she ran aground. “I got a call from my lawyer, who said that Stefani was going to give me a very generous Christmas gift,” she says. One evening, she went over to the Germanottas’ duplex, where Gaga’s family, including her sister and grandmother, were celebrating, alongside a new little dog that Gaga liked to put booties on for fun. In the living room, Gaga presented her with an enormous Chanel box, revealing a black quilted purse with a gold chain. This might be a Mean Girls moment, where Gaga sticks it to an early collaborator, but in her naïve way, Gaga thought she was giving Starland something of great worth: the kind of purse she wanted so badly when she was young.

Bursting with confidence, Gaga was ready to be transformed. The dance-music scene that she’d fallen into turned out to be a perfect fit for her highly sexualized Catholic-school energy—she was a performer, rather than purely a singer. But the business into which she was launching herself was more difficult than ever. There are only four major labels these days; EMI is teetering on the edge, and if it misses its debt payments in June, Citigroup will own a record label. By 2006, labels were asking artists for a “360 deal”: Instead of financing an artist’s recording and then owning the masters, they wanted to share in the rights that traditionally belonged to the artist, like merchandise, live revenue, and endorsement fees. They were wary of any artist without a proven Internet following—the bet was on MySpace stars like Paramore or Panic at the Disco!—and there was Gaga, trying to go through the front door.

But she had a good track. “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich,” a song about her friends from NYU asking their dads for money, drew prospective managers to a showcase downtown—everyone had to see her live because otherwise they didn’t get it. She was also invited to Island Def Jam, near Times Square. L. A. Reid walked into the room while she was playing piano and started drumming to the beat on a table. “L.A. told me I was a star,” says Gaga. She signed a deal with Island Def Jam for $850,000, according to a member of her camp, but after she produced the tracks, the line went dead. Three dinners were scheduled with Reid, but he canceled on each. Finally, Gaga got a call from her A&R rep at Island Def Jam: He had played a track in a meeting, and after a couple minutes Reid made a slitting motion across his throat. (Island Def Jam did not respond to requests for comment). She was off the label.

Gaga was devastated. “She couldn’t even talk when she told me because she was crying so hard,” says Fusari. Unlike most struggling musicians, she chose to decline part of her advance so that she could walk with her masters (two of her six hits are on this original record). This was the first moment Gaga had experienced real hardship—the first moment in her life she really thought she might fail. “I went back to my apartment on the Lower East Side, and I was so depressed,” she says. “That’s when I started the real devotion to my music and art.”

In contrast to Madonna, who gravitated to the forward edge of downtown and took herself with the utmost seriousness, Gaga, following her own instinct, headed toward a scene that was inclusive and fun but not particularly hip. In 2007, hipsters were listening to creative folk-rock bands out of Brooklyn like Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective; Gaga went for hard rock and downtown art trash. She fell desperately in love with Luc Carl, a 29-year-old drummer and manager of the rock bar St. Jerome’s on Rivington Street. That’s where she met Lady Starlight, an L.E.S. fixture in her thirties—M.A.C makeup artist, D.J., performance artist—who still plays shows for $60 but has a vast knowledge of rock music and style history. Starlight had gone through many incarnations, from mod meets Cabaret to Angela Bowie to leather-studded member of Judas Priest, which is what she was rocking at that moment.

“Starlight and I bonded instantly over her love of heavy metal and my love of boys that listen to heavy metal,” says Gaga. “In those days, I’d wake up at noon in my apartment with my boyfriend and his loud Nikki Sixx hair, jeans on the floor, his stinky sneakers. He’d have his T-shirt on, no boxers. Then he would go do the books at St. Jerome’s. I’d spin vinyl of David Bowie and New York Dolls in my kitchen, then write music with Lady Starlight. Eventually, I’d hear a honk outside my window: his old green Camino with a black hood. I’d run down the stairs yelling, ‘Baby, baby, rev the engine,’ and we’d drive over the Brooklyn Bridge, dress up, meet friends, play more music.” She leans forward. “The Lower East Side has an arrogance, a stench. We walk and talk and live and breathe who we are with such an incredible stench that eventually the stench becomes a reality. Our vanity is a positive thing. It’s made me the woman I am today.”

“I’m out of here. I’m going to get a new nose, I’m moving to L.A., and I’m going to be huge.”

Gaga started performing her songs with Starlight at small venues, and go-go dancing under a red lightbulb at Pianos—she’d wear a bikini and Luc Carl’s fingerless black gloves, too big for her small hands. Dancing, diet pills, and one real meal a day was the way she finally lost weight, according to a friend. “I was naked on a bar with money hanging out of my tits and ass,” she says. (Gaga has been very open about having taken cocaine during this period, but none of her friends from this time recalls any drug use; they say that she told them she only used cocaine when she was alone.) She and Starlight began opening for the glam-rockers Semi Precious Weapons; they looked like hair-metal groupies, running around the stage spraying Aqua Net on fire. “Gaga and I used to go shopping together, too,” says Justin Tranter, lead singer of SPW. “Any sex store where 99 percent of the store was made up of DVDs and sex toys and 1 percent was actual clothing was our favorite place to shop. Her mom came to my loft once to pick up one Lucite pump that she left at the show the night before.”

Gaga was enjoying herself, and, as usual, she spread her positive energy around. “She tried to make everyone feel good,” says Brendan Sullivan, a.k.a. DJ VH1, who worked with her on some early shows. “I’d go to her apartment with my unpublished novel, and she would tell me that I was the most brilliant writer of my generation, the poet laureate of the Lower East Side. No one else was doing that for me.” She wasn’t talking much to Fusari—the romance was over—but he caught a show with Starlight and was appalled. “It was Rocky Horror meets eighties band, and I didn’t get it at all,” he says. “I told Stefani that I could get her another D.J., but she was like, ‘I’m good.’ ”

But Fusari inserted himself back into the picture, in the spring of 2007, when he heard that his friend Vincent Herbert, a “hustler with a capital H, ” had landed a deal with Interscope to sign new artists. Within a couple days, Herbert had them on a plane to Los Angeles to meet Jimmy Iovine, the head of Interscope. Gaga came to the meeting in short shorts, go-go boots, and a cutoff T-shirt, but Iovine didn’t show up; they flew back to New York, then were summoned back two weeks later. Iovine, an executive from Brooklyn who made his name on gangster rap with Dr. Dre and later rode the wave of nineties soft metal, is known for his good ears, and after listening to a few tracks in his office, he stood up and said, “Let’s try this.”

Gaga was worried that the label didn’t think she was pretty enough to be a performer—she was recording tracks with RedOne, a Moroccan-Swedish producer, but they set her up as a songwriter for the Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears (Spears was running around Los Angeles with a shaved head, so this wasn’t a plum assignment). Herbert even spent his own money to send her to Lollapalooza over the summer, and he started to think that her look was wrong—someone in the audience shouted out “Amy Winehouse,” and that made him nervous. “I told her that she needed to dye her hair blonde, and she did it right away,” says Herbert. “God bless that girl, she really does listen.”

On vacation in the Cayman Islands with Luc Carl, Gaga picked a fight, and he told her that he wasn’t sure she was going to make it. “One day, you’re not going to go into a deli without hearing me,” she spat back. Back in New York, she sat down at a table at Beauty Bar with Sullivan, despondent. “I’m getting a nose job,” she said. “I’m going to get a new nose, and I’m moving to L.A., and I’m going to be huge.” He pleaded with her to be reasonable; like a true city kid, Gaga doesn’t even know how to drive. “Whatever,” she said. “I have the money. I just want to start fresh.”

Sullivan told her about Warhol’s Before and After I painting of two noses, before and after rhinoplasty, with a word that looks like RAPED at the top. She went up to the Met one afternoon and stood in front of it. She bought books about Warhol, which helped her make sense of her journey while providing a new vocabulary to talk about her creations. “Andy’s books became her bible,” says Darian Darling, a friend. “She would highlight them with a pen.”

For Warhol, stardom was its own art form, empty imagistic vividness one of the most important forces. The person behind the mask could be as seemingly sweet and ordinary as Stefani Germanotta—and still be huge. Before Warhol, however unusual, she’d been in the general category of rock chick. He freed her to invent herself, like so many before her, expand herself, make herself a spectacle. While writing a club song called “Just Dance” with RedOne, Gaga tried to broaden her surface, remaking her style as a blonde space-age queen, a fabulous chick from the Factory era. The music was global-dance-party music—faster beats, synth sounds, with an ethos that made sense to her hippie heart. “Gaga and I believe that the world needs this music, that it is a way to unite,” says RedOne. It wasn’t the kind of music America was listening to at the moment, but she could be broken overseas and America might follow.

Suddenly, the clouds parted. One of Interscope’s big artists, Akon, an R&B singer from Senegal with a massive global following, heard the track and lost his mind about it. Iovine pushed the button. She started working seriously with a choreographer: “I heard that this was the new Madonna, so I was like, ‘Okay, let’s hit it, pumpkin,’ ” says Laurie Ann Gibson. She recorded at the home studio of Kierszenbaum, the company’s A&R head, as well. “I liked that she was talking about Prince’s arrangements, styling, and presentation,” he says. “Interest in Prince ebbs and flows, and two years ago, it was very, very maverick. Artists were saying ‘Here’s my record and album cover,’ not talking about putting screens on the stage.” She began wearing her crazy disco outfits everywhere. “She was never out of uniform, if you will,” says Kierszenbaum. She also took a personal plunge: The day that she shot the video for “Just Dance” was the same day that she finally left Carl. Her heart may have been broken, but this was her new life. (Friends say that she has not been in love since, and the ritualistic killing of male lovers in her last three videos is related to this breakup.)

The newly liberated Gaga didn’t feel like she needed to express her sexuality in a typically feminine way, either, and she became obsessed with androgyny, with the look of Liza Minnelli. She loved the free expression of drag queens—she wanted to wear the same clothes as those guys, cover herself with glitter, wear a wig. Though she wasn’t from gay club culture, management began sending her to small clubs around the country. She even performed at a party at the Madison nightclub in the West Twenties hosted by Kenny Kenny, for $150. “When I went backstage to say hello, she said, ‘Don’t look at me! I don’t have my makeup on yet.’ ” He laughs. “I was like, ‘Uh, okay.’ I’ve seen Amanda Lepore without her makeup.”

Now, Gaga thought of herself not only as a superstar—she channeled Andy himself. She adopted his round black glasses and his wigs and spouted his wisdom. “It’s as if I’ve been shouting at everyone, and now I’m whispering and everybody’s leaning in to hear me,” she says. “I’ve had to shout for so long because I was only given five minutes, but now I’ve got fifteen. Andy said you only needed fifteen minutes.” She even started her own Factory, or the “Haus of Gaga,” as she likes to call her entourage. There’s Åkerlund; Gibson; her manager, Troy Carter; and the core team of stylist Nicola Formichetti and her primary collaborator Matt Williams, an art-school graduate whom she calls “Dada” (they have dated on and off during the past couple years). In May 2009, after she released “Paparazzi,” a seven-minute video—thrown off the top of her mansion by her boyfriend, she’s reborn as the robot from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis —she became the haute-fashion world’s pet. “Gaga had some archival pieces from Thierry Mugler, but after ‘Paparazzi,’ everything changed,” says a former member of the Haus. “It happened in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, every fashion designer in the world was e-mailing her images.”

Like Warhol at the Factory, when Gaga likes someone, he works; when she’s done with him creatively, the door is closed. When Fusari sued her for $30 million in mid-March, over recording and merchandise fees, she immediately responded through her lawyers, saying that he acted as an unlicensed employment agent in his introduction to Herbert. “I developed an artist to grow with that artist,” says Fusari, his voice pained. She’s changed her cell number, and most of her old friends can’t reach her anymore. “You know, she used to send texts out in New York inviting everyone on the Lower East Side to her shows, and not too many people would come,” says Sullivan. “And after the vocal coach, dieting, exercising, and all the rest, now everyone wants to go. She has gotten annoyed by that: ‘Why didn’t they come before?’ ” He pauses. “You know, once she blew up, and everyone wanted a piece of her, we stopped calling her Gaga. We started calling her Stef again.”

This summer, Gaga will come to the United States with her arena tour, one of the only pop stars who can fill a venue that large today. She spent a lot to get here—her tour has been losing about $3 million, according to music-industry sources, because she refuses to compromise on any aspect of the stage show. “I spent my entire publishing advance on my first tour,” she told me. “I’ve had grand pianos that are more expensive than, like, a year’s worth of rent.” But profits are on their way soon. “Gaga’s camp knows the exact date this summer that she will turn it around and get way into the black,” says a source. With her 360 deal, Lady Gaga doesn’t own as much of Lady Gaga as one would think. Essentially, this is a joint venture among Iovine, Universal Music CEO Doug Morris, and Sony/ATV publishing head Marty Bandier. It’s a good formula for the business: Hot looks and hot singles are the new monster albums.

These days, Gaga doesn’t talk about Warhol much anymore—she’s fully inhabiting the role she created. “She wants to be crazy, to make statements, make art, channel the past, experiment with performance art, try everything,” says David LaChapelle, a collaborator and friend. “In Paris, she took four hours out of four days to visit museums. That’s just not done by a pop star at the beginning of a career—not when you’re in the bubble, when it’s all about you.” She’s still overly dramatic—talking about monsters, or archly trying to presage her fall by covering herself in blood and hanging from a noose at the VMAs. “I feel that if I can show my demise artistically to the public, I can somehow cure my own legend,” she explained recently. She turns down most interview requests, uninterested in combating misperceptions about her work. “Andy said that the critics were right,” she says, with a shrug.

It’s an unlikely rise, and an unlikely name, and a totally unreal image. But what’s reality? “I believe that everyone can do what I’m doing,” says Gaga, spreading her arms wide. “Everyone can access the parts of themselves that are great. I’m just a girl from New York City who decided to do this, after all. Rule the world! What’s life worth living if you don’t rule it?”

101 of Her Most Outrageous Outfits

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Biographies

Lady Gaga: Biography, Success Story, Life Facts

Lady Gaga’s biography is a remarkable success story, filled with numerous achievements ranging from Grammy Awards to Golden Globes, which have established her as an icon in the music industry and beyond. Her chart-topping albums, The Fame and Born This Way , and her groundbreaking contributions to the movie “A Star Is Born” have dominated the charts and earned her numerous prestigious awards. She received the coveted Tricon Award at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards. Enjoy reading captivating Lady Gaga’s life story.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, born on March 28, 1986, is known as Lady Gaga. The American singer, songwriter, and actress is celebrated for her remarkable image transformations and versatility in the entertainment industry.

During her teenage years, Lady Gaga began her journey in the entertainment industry by performing at open mic nights and participating in school plays. She honed her skills at Collaborative Arts Project 21, a part of the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. However, Gaga dropped out of the institution to pursue her dream of becoming a musician. Although Def Jam Recordings canceled her contract, she persevered and succeeded as a songwriter at Sony/ATV Music Publishing. In 2007, Lady Gaga landed a joint deal with KonLive Distribution and Interscope Records.

In 2008, she achieved a remarkable breakthrough with her debut studio album, The Fame . The album featured chart-topping singles like “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” that helped her gain immense popularity and recognition. The album was later reissued to include the extended play The Fame Monster in 2009, which produced some of her most popular hits to date, such as “Bad Romance,” “Telephone,” and “Alejandro.” The Fame Monster added a new dimension to her music and showcased her incredible talent as a musician, singer, and songwriter. The EP’s success cemented her position as one of her time’s most influential and innovative artists.

Lady Gaga’s subsequent five albums debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200. Born This Way (2011), her second full-length album, explored electronic rock and techno-pop, selling over one million copies in its first week. The title track set records as the fastest-selling song on the iTunes Store. Following her third album, Artpop (2013), Gaga released the jazz album Cheek to Cheek (2014) with Tony Bennett and the soft rock album Joanne (2016). She achieved critical acclaim for her roles in American Horror Story: Hotel (2015–2016) and A Star Is Born (2018).

Her contributions to the soundtrack of A Star Is Born , especially the chart-topping single “Shallow,” made Gaga the first woman to win an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Grammy Award in a single year. In 2020, she returned to dance-pop with her sixth studio album, Chromatica , featuring the number-one single “Rain on Me.” Gaga’s diverse career includes her second collaborative album with Bennett, Love for Sale , and her role in the biopic House of Gucci in 2021.

Lady Gaga has sold an astonishing 170 million records globally. She has a unique record of having four singles selling over 10 million copies each. Lady Gaga has won numerous accolades, including 18 MTV Video Music Awards, 13 Grammy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. She has been recognized as Billboard ‘s Artist of the Year (2010) and Woman of the Year (2015) and has been listed in Forbes’ power rankings and VH1’s Greatest Women in Music (2012). Time magazine has also acknowledged her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010 and 2019 and included her in their All-Time 100 Fashion Icons list.

In addition to her musical accomplishments, Lady Gaga is dedicated to philanthropy and activism, focusing on mental health awareness and LGBT rights. She established the Born This Way Foundation , a non-profit organization supporting the well-being of young people. Gaga’s entrepreneurial ventures include Haus Labs , a vegan cosmetics brand launched in 2019.

1986–2004: Early Years

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, renowned as Lady Gaga , was born on March 28, 1986, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City. Hailing from an upper-middle-class Catholic family, Gaga’s parents proudly took Italian ancestry. Her mother, Cynthia Louise (née Bissett), is recognized as a philanthropist and business executive, while her father is the Internet entrepreneur Joseph Germanotta. In addition to her parents, Gaga has a younger sister named Natali.

Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Lady Gaga shared in an interview that her parents, despite their current status, originated from lower-class backgrounds and diligently worked for their achievements. At 11, she began her education at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an esteemed private all-girls Roman Catholic school. Reflecting on her high-school years, Gaga described herself as “very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined,” yet admitted to feeling a bit insecure. As a self-acknowledged misfit, she faced ridicule for being perceived as “too provocative or too eccentric.”

Lady Gaga’s musical journey began early, with her mother’s insistence that she become a “cultured young woman,” leading her to play the piano at the tender age of four. Piano lessons and a commitment to practice marked her childhood. Gaga developed an ability to create music by ear, a skill she favored over reading sheet music. Encouraged by her parents, she joined the Creative Arts Camp, further nurturing her musical talents.

During her teenage years, Lady Gaga ventured into the realm of open mic nights, honing her skills and setting the stage for her future musical endeavors. Her theatrical prowess was showcased when she played lead roles in school productions such as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Regis High School. Gaga’s commitment to her craft extended to ten years of studying method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.

Despite facing initial setbacks, including unsuccessful auditions for New York shows, Lady Gaga made a brief appearance in a 2001 episode of The Sopranos , titled “The Telltale Moozadell,” portraying a minor background role as a high-school student.

In 2003, at 17, Lady Gaga embarked on her journey into the world of music. She secured early admission to Collaborative Arts Project 21, a renowned music school at New York University’s (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts, where she resided in an NYU dormitory. Gaga’s time at NYU was dedicated to studying music, and she honed her songwriting skills through essays exploring art, religion, social issues, and politics. Her academic pursuits included a thesis on pop artists Spencer Tunick and Damien Hirst.

However, in 2005, during the second semester of her second year, Gaga made a pivotal decision. She withdrew from school, redirecting her focus entirely toward her burgeoning music career. This transformative year also saw Gaga making a surprising appearance as an unwitting diner customer on MTV’s Boiling Points , a reality television prank show.

In a candid 2014 interview, Lady Gaga revealed a deeply personal and traumatic experience. At the age of 19, she disclosed that she had been a victim of sexual assault. Subsequently, Gaga underwent both mental and physical therapy to cope with the aftermath of this harrowing event. The incident left her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition she openly attributes to the assault. Gaga acknowledged the crucial role of support from doctors, family, and friends in her healing journey.

Providing additional details about the assault, Gaga disclosed that the assailant had left her pregnant on a street corner near her parent’s house after the attack. This distressing episode unfolded because of the abuse she had endured, recounting a period of being secluded in a studio for months.

2005–2007: Early Career

In the pivotal years of 2005 to 2007, Lady Gaga’s musical odyssey commenced, laying the foundation for her extraordinary career. In 2005, Gaga contributed her vocals to two songs alongside hip-hop artist Melle Mel for an audio book accompanying Cricket Casey’s children’s novel, The Portal in the Park . Concurrently, she collaborated with friends from NYU to form the SGBand, making waves by playing gigs around New York and becoming a fixture in the vibrant downtown Lower East Side club scene.

Following the 2006 Songwriters Hall of Fame New Songwriters Showcase at the Cutting Room in June, Gaga’s talent caught the eye of talent scout Wendy Starland. Starland’s recommendation led Gaga to the doorstep of music producer Rob Fusari. The collaboration unfolded with Gaga making daily trips to New Jersey, working on developing her songs, and crafting new material. Their creative journey also saw the emergence of a personal connection, with Fusari claiming to be the first to christen her “Lady Gaga” in May 2006, drawing inspiration from Queen’s iconic song, “Radio Ga Ga.” Their romantic entanglement persisted until January 2007.

Fusari and Gaga co-founded “Team Lovechild, LLC,” a venture to propel her career forward. Together, they recorded and produced electropop tracks, sending their creations to industry executives. Joshua Sarubin, the head of Artists and Repertoire (A&R) at Def Jam Recordings, responded positively, leading to Gaga’s signing with Def Jam in September 2006. However, the association was short-lived, as Gaga was dropped from the label three months later. Undeterred, she returned to her family home for Christmas and redirected her focus.

Gaga immersed herself in the world of neo-burlesque shows during this period, considering it a representation of freedom. During these performances, she crossed paths with performance artist Lady Starlight, a crucial influence in molding Gaga’s onstage persona. The duo, known as “Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue,” presented “The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow,” a live performance art piece paying homage to 1970s variety acts. Their artistic collaboration extended to the 2007 Lollapalooza music festival.

Lady Gaga is a famous singer who started her music career in the electronic dance music genre. Over time, she began incorporating pop melodies and was influenced by the glam rock style of David Bowie and Queen. Gaga was discovered by a producer named Vincent Herbert, who signed her to a record label called Streamline Records. She also secured a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV, which helped her write songs for famous artists like Britney Spears , Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls. Later, she signed a joint deal with musician Akon ‘s label, KonLive, which made her his “franchise player.”

In 2007, Lady Gaga collaborated with a music producer named RedOne for a week to create her debut album. She signed a contract with a record label named Cherrytree Records, a subsidiary of the larger company called Interscope. However, some radio stations were reluctant to play Gaga’s music, as they thought it was too daring, too dance-focused, and not mainstream enough. In response, Gaga boldly declared , “My name is Lady Gaga, I’ve been on the music scene for years, and I’m telling you, this is what’s next.”

2011–2014: Born This Way , Artpop , and Cheek to Cheek

The period spanning 2011 to 2014 marked a dynamic phase in Lady Gaga’s career, defined by the release of albums Born This Way , Artpop , and the collaborative jazz venture with Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek .

In February 2011, Gaga unleashed the empowering anthem “Born This Way,” the lead single from her eponymous studio album. The track rapidly achieved the Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling single on iTunes, selling over a million copies in just five days. Debuting atop the Billboard Hot 100, “Born This Way” became the 1,000th number-one single in the history of the charts. The subsequent singles, “Judas” and “The Edge of Glory,” secured top 10 positions in the US and the UK.

Born This Way , released on May 23, 2011, triumphed by debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales exceeding 1.1 million copies. The album’s success extended globally, selling eight million copies worldwide. Acknowledged by Rolling Stone as one of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” in 2020, Born This Way produced additional hits with “You and I” and “Marry the Night.” Notably, “Bloody Mary” experienced a resurgence and was released as a single in 2022.

Gaga’s multifaceted talents expanded into various collaborations in 2011, including partnerships with Tony Bennett, Elton John , The Lonely Island, and Justin Timberlake. In 2012, she embarked on the Born This Way Ball tour, amassing a global tour gross of $183.9 million despite its premature conclusion due to a hip injury requiring surgery.

Simultaneously, Gaga delved into acting, featuring as an animated version of herself in a 2012 episode of The Simpsons titled “Lisa Goes Gaga.” In the fragrance industry, she introduced Lady Gaga Fame in 2012 and Eau de Gaga in 2014.

Gaga’s artistic evolution continued with her third studio album, Artpop , released on November 6, 2013. Though met with mixed reviews, Artpop secured its position atop the Billboard 200 chart and sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide by July 2014. The album’s singles “Applause” and “Do What U Want” featuring R. Kelly added to Gaga’s chart successes.

In 2013 and 2014, Gaga’s ventures extended to diverse realms, from hosting Saturday Night Live and her Thanksgiving Day television special to a seven-day concert residency at New York’s Roseland Ballroom. She embarked on the ArtRave: The Artpop Ball tour, earning $83 million.

The transition to the jazz genre unfolded in September 2014 with the release of Cheek to Cheek , a collaborative jazz album with Tony Bennett. Rooted in their friendship, the album produced hits like “Anything Goes” and “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love.” Garnering favorable reviews, Cheek to Cheek secured Gaga’s third consecutive number-one album on the Billboard 200 and clinched a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. The collaboration extended to a concert special, Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek Live! , and a subsequent tour from December 2014 to August 2015, signaling yet another facet of Gaga’s eclectic artistic journey.

2015–2017: American Horror Story , Joanne , and Super Bowl Performances

From 2015 to 2017, Lady Gaga navigated a compelling journey that unfolded through her engagement, a metamorphic shift in her music career, a captivating stint in television, and unforgettable performances at prestigious events.

In February 2015, Gaga announced her engagement to Taylor Kinney. Following the lukewarm reception of Artpop , Gaga embraced a transformative phase, evidenced by her acclaimed performance at the 87th Academy Awards. Her rendition of a medley from The Sound of Music in tribute to Julie Andrews garnered over 214,000 interactions per minute on Facebook, marking a pivotal moment. Gaga and Diane Warren co-wrote “Til It Happens to You” for the documentary The Hunting Ground , earning them a Satellite Award for Best Original Song and an Academy Award nomination. In 2015, she was honored as Billboard Woman of the Year and received the Contemporary Icon Award at the Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards.

Her venture into acting materialized in American Horror Story: Hotel (2015–2016), where she portrayed hotel owner Elizabeth. This earned her the Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film award at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards. Gaga’s multifaceted talents extended to the fashion world with collaborations and accolades at the Fashion Los Angeles Awards.

In February 2016, Gaga delivered a trifecta of noteworthy performances—singing the US national anthem at Super Bowl 50, paying tribute to David Bowie at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, and performing “Til It Happens to You” at the 88th Academy Awards. Her Super Bowl halftime show in 2017, featuring a mesmerizing display of lighted drones, attracted 117.5 million viewers in the United States, becoming the third most-watched halftime show in Super Bowl history.

Amidst personal developments, Gaga’s engagement to Taylor Kinney ended in July 2016 due to career-related challenges. She furthered her acting career with a role as Scathach in American Horror Story: Roanoke (2016). Concurrently, Gaga released her fifth album, Joanne , in October 2016. Named after her late aunt, the album secured Gaga’s fourth number one on the Billboard 200. Hits like “Perfect Illusion” and “Million Reasons” showcased her musical versatility.

The pinnacle of Gaga’s performances during this period included headlining the Super Bowl LI halftime show, drawing acclaim, and setting records. She continued with the Joanne World Tour, documented in the Netflix film Gaga: Five Foot Two , revealing her struggles with chronic pain. Despite canceling the tour’s last ten shows in 2018 due to fibromyalgia, the Joanne World Tour grossed an impressive $95 million from 842,000 tickets sold.

2018–2019: A Star Is Born and Las Vegas residency

In a spectacular turn of events from 2018 to 2019, Lady Gaga proved her artistic prowess in music on the big screen and the Las Vegas stage. In March 2018, Gaga took a stand for gun control by supporting the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, DC. Her versatility was evident as she covered Elton John’s “Your Song” for his tribute album, Revamp .

However, the year’s highlight was her lead role as Ally in Bradley Cooper’s remake of the 1937 classic A Star Is Born . The film, released worldwide in October 2018, received critical acclaim for its compelling narrative and Gaga’s outstanding performance. Her portrayal of Ally earned her several awards, including the National Board of Review and Critics’ Choice awards for Best Actress.

The musical magic continued as Gaga and Cooper co-wrote and produced most of the songs on the film’s soundtrack. The lead single, “Shallow,” released on September 27, 2018, topped the charts globally and became an instant classic. The soundtrack, comprising 17 original songs, received praise from critics and debuted at number one in multiple countries. Gaga’s extraordinary achievement of five US number-one albums in the 2010s set her apart, securing her place in music history.

“Shallow” not only won Gaga four Grammy Awards but also earned her an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Critics’ Choice Award, and Satellite Award for Best Original Song. Gaga’s live performances of the song at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards and the 91st Academy Awards were iconic moments.

Amidst personal developments, Gaga announced her engagement to talent agent Christian Carino in October but unfortunately ended the engagement in February 2019. Undeterred, she embraced new ventures, signing up for a concert residency in Las Vegas called Lady Gaga Enigma + Jazz & Piano at the MGM Park Theater. The residency showcased two distinct shows: Enigma , featuring theatricality and Gaga’s greatest hits, and Jazz & Piano , highlighting tracks from the Great American Songbook and stripped-down versions of her songs.

Not limited to music and acting, Gaga ventured into the makeup world with her vegan makeup line, Haus Laboratories , which launched in September 2019 exclusively on Amazon . The lineup of 40 products, including liquid eyeliners, lip glosses, and face mask stickers, quickly soared to number one on Amazon’s best-selling lipsticks list, showcasing Gaga’s influence across diverse creative domains.

2020–present years: Chromatica , Love for Sale , and Other Film Projects

In the ever-evolving saga of Lady Gaga’s career, the period from 2020 to the present has been marked by chart-topping music, film accomplishments, and myriad ventures.

In February 2020, Gaga embarked on a new personal journey, entering a relationship with entrepreneur Michael Polansky. This romantic chapter coincided with the release of her sixth studio album, Chromatica , on May 29, 2020. The album, met with positive reviews, swiftly claimed the number-one spot on the US charts. It marked Gaga’s sixth consecutive chart-topper in the country and reached similar heights in numerous other territories globally, including Australia, Canada, France, Italy, and the UK. Anticipation for Chromatica was teased with two singles, “Stupid Love” on February 28, 2020, and the collaboration “Rain on Me” with Ariana Grande on May 22, which won the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Gaga’s undeniable talent and influence were further recognized at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, where she secured five awards, including the inaugural Tricon Award. The following September, she lent her voice to Valentino’s Voce Viva fragrance campaign, featuring a stripped-down version of “Sine from Above,” a track from Chromatica .

The year 2021 saw Gaga making history as she performed the US national anthem during Joe Biden ‘s presidential inauguration on January 20. However, personal challenges arose when her dog walker, Ryan Fischer, was shot in Hollywood, and two of her French Bulldogs were taken. Gaga’s resilience shone through as she offered a substantial reward for their return. Although the dogs were later returned unharmed, legal proceedings followed, resulting in a 21-year prison sentence for the assailant, James Howard Jackson.

In 2021, Gaga delved into collaborations and new releases as a woman of many talents. In April, she partnered with Champagne brand Dom Pérignon and released her third remix album, Dawn of Chromatica , in September. Following this, her second collaborative album with Tony Bennett, Love for Sale , dropped on September 30. The album received positive reviews and won the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album award at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.

Gaga’s film journey continued with her portrayal of Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci , released on November 24, 2021. Her immersive performance, including the New York Film Critics Circle Award, earned acclaim. Beyond acting, Gaga showcased her musical prowess by co-writing the song “Hold My Hand” for the film Top Gun: Maverick , which she performed live at the 95th Academy Awards.

In July 2022, Gaga kicked off The Chromatica Ball stadium tour, which spanned twenty dates and grossed an impressive $112.4 million. The tour established her as the highest-grossing female artist of 2022.

As of April 2023, Gaga added another feather to her cap by being appointed as the co-chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities by President Joe Biden. Further, she collaborated with the Rolling Stones on the song “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” which was featured in their album Hackney Diamonds (2023). Looking ahead, Gaga’s star continues to rise as she is set to star alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux , slated for release in 2024.

From an early age, Lady Gaga, with her distinctive plaited hair and vibrant style, found inspiration in an eclectic mix of musical legends. The pop prowess of Madonna and the groundbreaking charisma of David Bowie played crucial roles in shaping Gaga’s artistic vision. Growing up, her musical landscape was painted with the sounds of Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Queen, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Whitney Houston, Elton John, Prince, En Vogue, TLC, Christina Aguilera, Janet Jackson, and Blondie, each contributing to the mosaic of her musical identity.

Gaga’s diverse musical palette spans dance-pop sensations like Madonna and Michael Jackson to the flamboyant glam rock of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury . The influence of pop artist Andy Warhol and her roots in musical theater further add layers to her creative expression. Drawing comparisons to Madonna, Gaga aspires to revolutionize pop music just as her idol did. Heavy metal also finds a place in her musical lexicon, with bands like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and Marilyn Manson leaving an indelible mark.

Gaga’s inspiration is not limited to music and fashion. Her fashion style combines innovation and boldness, and she draws inspiration from various sources, such as Leigh Bowery, Isabella Blow, Cher, and Alexander McQueen. She is known for her towering armadillo shoes, which became famous through her collaboration with McQueen. Donatella Versace is another fashion icon who inspires Gaga, and they share a mutual admiration beyond style. Princess Diana has been one of her role models since childhood and has significantly shaped Gaga’s fashion style.

Gaga’s inspiration is not limited to music and fashion; she also finds it in the spiritual realm. She admires Deepak Chopra, an Indian alternative medicine advocate, and considers him a “true inspiration.” Gaga also quotes Indian leader Osho’s book “Creativity” on Twitter, reflecting her appreciation for creativity, rebellion, and equality. Lady Gaga’s diverse sources of inspiration highlight her commitment to pushing boundaries and embracing creativity in all forms.

Censorship in China

It’s not a commonly known fact, but Lady Gaga encountered censorship challenges that shaped the trajectory of her presence in the People’s Republic of China, and her biography sheds light on how it happened.

In 2011, the Ministry of Culture, acting on behalf of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, banned Lady Gaga, citing her as “vulgar.” This prohibition, however, was lifted in 2014. Despite the resumption, conditions were set for the legal sale of Artpop in China. The album’s artwork, featuring Gaga in a nearly nude state, underwent modifications to align with regulatory requirements. Notably, the track “Sexxx Dreams” underwent a title change to “X Dreams” to meet the stipulated criteria.

The year 2016 saw a resurgence of the ban in China after Lady Gaga engaged in a public discussion with the Dalai Lama. This led to her inclusion on a list of perceived hostile foreign forces by the Chinese government. A directive was issued to cease the distribution of her songs on Chinese websites and media outlets. The Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party went a step further, instructing state-controlled media to condemn the meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Subsequently, during the 91st Academy Awards, Gaga’s image was intentionally omitted in Chinese media coverage, foreshadowing a pattern of censorship. Her appearance in Friends: The Reunion faced a similar fate, drawing criticism from her Chinese fanbase.

Lady Gaga’s journey through censorship reflects the complex interplay between artistic expression and regulatory scrutiny in the global landscape. These incidents underscore artists’ broader challenges in navigating the delicate balance between creative freedom and regulatory constraints.

LGBT Advocacy

Lady Gaga has emerged not only as a pop sensation but also as a fervent advocate for the rights of the LGBT community. Identifying as a bisexual woman, Gaga has been an unwavering supporter of LGBT rights globally.

Acknowledging the pivotal role played by her gay fans in propelling her early success, she proudly embraces her status as a gay icon. In the initial stages of her career, Gaga faced challenges securing radio airplay but found a supportive audience within the gay community, which she considers a turning point.

Her unwavering commitment to the cause took on various forms. In 2009, Gaga spoke at the National Equality March in Washington, DC, where she emphasized her support for the LGBT rights movement. At the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, she highlighted the US military’s discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Accompanied by four gay and lesbian former members of the Armed Forces affected by the policy, Gaga used her platform to advocate for its repeal. She urged her fans to join the fight against the discriminatory regulation.

Gaga’s activism extended to Europride in Rome in 2011, where she decried the insufficient state of gay rights in certain European countries. Tragically, her influence was underscored by the mention of her name in the final moments of teenager Jamey Rodemeyer’s life, prompting Gaga to address the issue of anti-gay bullying with then-President Barack Obama .

Her involvement continued in 2016 during a vigil in Los Angeles for the victims of the Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando. Gaga passionately read aloud the names of the 49 individuals who lost their lives and later participated in a Human Rights Campaign tribute video. The artist consistently opposed policies perceived as detrimental to the LGBT community, including Donald Trump’s military transgender ban.

In 2019, Gaga criticized Vice President Mike Pence during one of her Enigma shows for his association with a school that turned away LGBTQ individuals, asserting that such actions were not in line with the principles of Christianity. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Gaga delivered a congratulatory speech at WorldPride NYC 2019, reaffirming her commitment to equality and inclusion.

Gaga’s activism demonstrates her dedication to advocating for LGBT rights. She uses her platform to challenge discriminatory policies and promote a message of acceptance and love.

In a 2011 Rolling Stone ranking based on record sales and social media metrics, she earned the moniker “Queen of Pop.” Her influence extends beyond music, reaching realms as diverse as fashion, activism, and taxonomy.

Gaga’s controversial penchant has been a strategic tool to draw attention to social issues. Notably, her protest dressing on the red carpet, including the infamous meat dress, made a bold statement against the US military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Frankie Graddon of The Independent acknowledges Gaga’s role in influencing protest dressing, bringing a political edge to the glitz of Hollywood events.

Her meteoric rise in 2009 earned her the “Greatest Pop Star” title by Billboard. The success of her debut album, The Fame , positioned Gaga as a game-changer in the music industry. She is credited with popularizing synth-pop in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Critics hailed Gaga’s innovative approach to celebrity, treating her fame as an evolving art project. The album Born This Way found a place among the 50 best female albums of all time, with Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield noting that it’s hard to imagine a world without Gaga.

Academic recognition came from a 2017 journal published by Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, which identified Gaga’s tracks, including “Bad Romance” and “Poker Face,” as some of the catchiest. NPR acknowledged her impact, naming her the second most influential female artist of the 21st century in 2018, highlighting her significance in the “Internet age.”

Gaga’s influence transcends music, reaching a myriad of artists across genres. From Miley Cyrus to Kanye West , her innovative spirit has inspired a generation of musicians, validating her position as a cultural trailblazer. Even a new genus of ferns, aptly named Gaga , and several species, including G. germanotta , G. monstraparva , and Kaikaia gaga , pay homage to her creative legacy.

Beyond taxonomy, Gaga has been commemorated in various ways globally. In Taiwan, July 3 is celebrated as “Lady Gaga Day,” marking her first visit in 2011. In West Hollywood, May 23 has been declared “Born This Way Day” in honor of the album’s tenth anniversary, with a street painting featuring Daniel Quasar’s pride flag version.

Awards and Recognition

Gaga’s mantelpiece boasts thirteen Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Brit Awards, and the prestigious Contemporary Icon Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The National Arts Awards’ Young Artist Award, the Jane Ortner Artist Award, and a National Board of Review Award for Best Actress further underline her multifaceted talents. The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) recognized her as a Fashion Icon, solidifying her impact beyond music.

In 2019, Gaga achieved an unprecedented feat, becoming the first woman to win an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award in a single year for her contribution to A Star Is Born ‘s soundtrack. The 2020 MTV Video Music Awards honored her with the inaugural Tricon Award, celebrating her achievements across three or more entertainment fields.

Billboard, acknowledging Gaga as the Greatest Pop Star in 2009, Woman of the Year in 2015, and a consistent presence on various charts, recognizes her enduring influence. She holds the record for the longest reign on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Albums chart, and her albums The Fame and Born This Way continue to receive acclaim, with the latter featured in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us. Lady Gaga

Gaga’s global impact extends to her estimated 170 million record sales and chart-topping singles, contributing to her status as one of the world’s best-selling music artists. Her concert tours and residencies have generated over $689.5 million in revenue, earning her the Pollstar Award for Pop Touring Artist of the Decade.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recognizes Gaga as the 18th top digital singles artist in the US, with several Diamond-certified songs, a Digital Diamond Award, and the distinction of being the first female artist with four singles selling at least 10 million copies globally.

Guinness World Records documented Gaga’s social media dominance, naming her the most followed person on Twitter from 2011 to 2013. Forbes consistently featured her on the Celebrity 100 list, and she ranked among the World’s Most Powerful Women. Time magazine recognized her influence, naming her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010 and 2019.

Financially, Gaga’s prowess is undeniable. Forbes estimated her net worth at $275 million in 2016, and she consistently appeared on their highest-earning lists, including Top-Earning Celebs Under 30 and Top-Earning Musicians of the Decade . Gaga’s decade earnings reached a staggering $500 million, securing her place as one of the highest-earning female musicians.

As we celebrate Lady Gaga’s remarkable life story, it is evident that her legacy goes beyond the music industry. Her achievements, which include estimated sales of 170 million records and a net worth of $275 million, highlight her unparalleled influence in the entertainment world. Gaga’s impact on fashion and activism and her ability to reinvent herself seamlessly make her a true cultural phenomenon, confirming her position as a pop star and an enduring symbol of artistic brilliance and empowerment.

The Story of How Lady Gaga Became Famous Will Make You Like Her Even More

When Lady Gaga performed her Sound of Music tribute at the Oscars in February, many onlookers were genuinely surprised by Mother Monster's chops. Critics had assumed she was all meat dress and no talent, all schtick and no skill. How wrong they were. "I have always been an artist," Gaga told the Telegraph in 2010. "And I've always been famous, you just didn't know it yet."

In fact, the whole story of Gaga's career is the story of her resilience. From bullying to bad reviews, Lady Gaga is always overcoming. The story of how she got to where she is now is one of the most inspiring in music.

Born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in 1986, Gaga was raised by Italian-American parents. She and her parents — Joseph, an Internet entrepreneur, and Cynthia, a Verizon executive — lived in a duplex on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Gaga is known for her work ethic and her studiousness — and it started because her parents cared deeply about education from a young age and enrolled their daughter at Convent of the Sacred Heart, an Upper East Side private Catholic school. That's where the merciless bullying began.

"I used to do these really big Evita brows," Gaga told Rolling Stone in 2011. "I used to self-tan, and I had this really intense tan in school, and people would say, 'Why the fuck are you so orange, why do you do your hair that way, are you a dyke? Why do you have to look like that for school?' I used to be called a slut, be called this, be called that. I didn't even want to go to school sometimes."

But Gaga credits that bullying, for better and for worse, with her drive to overcome. "Bullying really stays with you your whole life," she told Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. "And it really, really never goes away. And I know you're using words like 'superstar' and 'most-Googled' and 'billions of YouTube [views].' But I was never the winner. I was always the loser. And that still stays with me. And do I want to stick it to anybody? No. I just wanna make music."

She's had that drive since a very young age. When Gaga turned 11, she started taking vocal lessons from Christina Aguilera's singing coach , Don Lawrence. She still takes lessons from Lawrence to this day; to prep for her Sound of Music tribute, Gaga practiced with him every single day for half a year leading up to the performance. As a kid, she learned classical piano and took a full day of acting classes every Saturday. She never underestimated the value of thoughtful study — as a child in a classic rock cover band or as a grown superstar.

"I was classically trained as a pianist and that innately teaches you how to write a pop song," Gaga told the Telegraph . "Because when you learn Bach inversions, it has the same sort of modulations between the chords. It's all about tension and release."

But she knew she had to break the mold. Though always grateful for her education, Gaga wasn't afraid to take risks. After surviving high school, Gaga enrolled in NYU Tisch School of the Arts, but it wasn't long before she dropped out to become a rock star. "I left my entire family, got the cheapest apartment I could find and ate shit until somebody would listen," she told New York Magazine .

It seemed like she'd be successful at first. At 19 years old, Gaga signed to Def Jam records. But after three months, the label delivered a crushing blow and dropped her. "It just wasn't for them," she told the Sunday Times . By then, she was used to bouncing back.

To her father's chagrin , Gaga had moved to the Lower East Side, where she dabbled in cocaine and danced in dive bar burlesque shows. "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," she told the Telegraph .

But in 2008, Gaga's then-boyfriend Rob Fusari brought Gaga to Interscope records as a songwriter, where she composed hits for New Kids on the Block (whom she also toured with early on), Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears. While singing a reference vocal for a song she had written, Gaga caught the ear of R&B songwriter Akon; he signed Gaga to his own label. Her moment had come.

Within the year, Gaga had released her first album, The Fame , to critical and popular acclaim. "It'd be easy to dismiss a 22-year-old debut artist sporting a blonde Cher wig, hooded Catwoman suit and glowing staff she calls the 'disco stick' — but not if she delivers an album full of hits," Billboard wrote in their praising review. "The full-length The Fame proves she's more than one hit and a bag of stage tricks." The album went on to sell more than 4 million units. It made her a legend, and she began returning the favor to her fans almost immediately.

She still knows how to pick herself back up. After the critical and relative commercial flop of Artpop , it was clear that the act that made her famous wouldn't do it for her any longer. So, four albums and seven years since her fame exploded, Gaga is staging another reinvention . Last year, she released an album of jazz standards with famous crooner Tony Bennett that went on to win a Grammy . And while many were surprised at Gaga's pivot from live antics to stripped-down solos, she's always been a musician first and foremost. "She won a jazz competition when she was about 14 or 15," her dad told the Telegraph . "That was her roots: She was trained in jazz. It's a great foundation for singing."

Gaga has been many things in her career — fashion icon, sex icon, provocative pop chanteuse. But she has been, most importantly, a singer and a resilient star. Her latest Grammy, and her stunning Sound of Music tribute, earned her hard-won praise for being a fantastic musician. They proved, though, that most importantly, Gaga doesn't need anyone's approval to be a star. That's something she does for herself.

The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Lady Gaga

When it comes to women in pop music, the multi-talented Lady Gaga is in a league all her own. Per Britannica , her career took flight in 2008 with the release of her debut album "The Fame" and its immediate follow-up, 2009's "The Fame Monster." The world quickly fell in love with the quirky wonder of Lady Gaga — whose career is a tribute to David Bowie and is named after the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga" — and her disco-inspired electronic dance hits like "Just Dance," "Poker Face," and "Bad Romance." She's friends with musical icons like Elton John and Tony Bennett , and, as of 2022, she has released six albums, taken home 13 Grammys , and generated a devoted following of Little Monsters who refer to her as their Mother Monster (per Diggit Magazine ).

And music is only part of her story. As Vogue notes, the songstress is also a fashion icon, regularly shocking the world with her meat dresses, armadillo heels, and bizarre stunts like emerging from a giant egg on stage . More recently, she has also demonstrated her acting skills in movies like 2018's "A Star Is Born" and 2021's "House of Gucci" (per Britannica). But beneath the larger-than-life personality of sequins, fake blood, and lace is a real woman with very real struggles. By age 36, the pop star had already had quite a turbulent life. From bullying to sexual abuse to the endless trappings of fame, here is the tragic real-life story of Lady Gaga.

She was bullied in school

Born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, the Italian-American youth who would become Lady Gaga spent her formative years attending an all-girls Catholic school in New York City (per Britannica ). As she notes in "Channel Kindness" — a book published by her charity, the Born This Way Foundation — the experience was far from constructive. Germanotta describes an instance when her high school bully interrupted her diligently prepared presentation to ask her why she was still talking, causing her to burst into tears in front of her entire class. She also claims that a group of boys — encouraged by girls from her school — once picked her up and threw her into a trash can, telling her that was where she belonged. Older girls also pinched her and called her a slut.

Unfortunately, her torment did not end with high school. As former classmate Lauren Bohn wrote on Facebook (via Upworthy ), Germanotta experienced difficulties while attending New York University as well. Bohn claims that a group of students created a Facebook group called "Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous" that was purely devoted to slamming the future Lady Gaga, whom Bohn described as "a pretty Norah Jones-esque young 18-year-old ... who sang and played piano at local bars." While the joke is now on them, Lady Gaga claims the effects of bullying never went away. In a 2011 Google interview, she said, "I was never the winner. I was always the loser. And that still stays with me."

Lady Gaga made music in an attempt to heal her father

Stefani Germanotta showed musical promise at a young age. Per Biography , she began playing the piano when she was just four years old, and by age 13, she had written her first piano ballad. But tragically, her musical development was largely driven by her father's suffering. In a 2020 interview with Zane Lowe , Lady Gaga said she initially wrote songs on the piano to cheer her father up and hoped her music would heal his pain. As she explained in a 2017 interview with V Magazine , her father's sister, Joanne, died at age 19 due to complications from lupus, causing her family lasting sadness.

In 2010, Lady Gaga told MTV that she felt deeply connected to her Aunt Joanne, though they had never met. Joanne was a poet and a painter but died before publishing her works. So, as a gift to her father, Lady Gaga printed her aunt's poetry in the liner notes of her 2008 debut album "The Fame." Later, she released her 2016 album " Joanne " as a tribute to her late aunt — and as a further attempt to heal her father's trauma (per Zane Lowe). The experience left her depressed, and in 2020, she told Zane Lowe: "I realized that no matter what I make, no matter how big I become, no matter how many sold-out stadiums I have, I can't fix my dad."

Eating disorders have been a lifelong struggle for her

Growing up in an Italian home, Stefani Germanotta struggled to keep her figure while eating the food her family served. At the 2012 "It's Our Turn" conference hosted by Maria Shriver at a California school (via Radar Online ), Lady Gaga told students that she used to throw up all the time in an attempt to stay thin, explaining, "I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina, but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night." She later said she stopped making herself vomit after eating when she realized how damaging it was to her vocal cords and cautioned the students against believing the inaccurate images of women portrayed in the media.

Still, Lady Gaga continued to struggle with her body image and fame only complicated matters. In a 2010 interview with New York Magazine , she said "pop stars should not eat," suggesting that she stayed thin by starving herself. Later, in an essay in her charity the Born This Way Foundation's book "Channel Kindness," she admitted as much by stating that she had previously suffered from both anorexia and bulimia. She also explained how seeing news stories about her weight gain — however trivial — still causes her to have panic attacks.

If you need help with an eating disorder, or know someone who is, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

She was raped and held captive by a producer

In 2014, Lady Gaga shocked the world by revealing that she was raped by a record producer on the Howard Stern Show . She elaborated further in a 2015 interview with The New York Times , stating that she did not tell anyone about the incident for seven years because she blamed herself for it. In 2021, Lady Gaga fully opened up about her experience on Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry's series "The Me You Can't See" (via The Guardian ), claiming that she was raped repeatedly and held captive by a record producer when she was 19. The producer insisted that she undress or he would destroy her music. Her assault ended months later when her abuser dropped her off on a street corner sick and vomiting. As it turned out, she was pregnant.

Following the sexual abuse, Lady Gaga claimed that she "was not the same girl," according to "The Me You Can't See" (via The Economic Times ). To make matters worse, she told Oprah in a 2020 interview that no one in the music industry was willing to help her prosecute the producer. She has not named her abuser as she has chosen not to relive her trauma. She did, however, perform the song "Til It Happens to You" for "The Hunting Ground," a 2015 documentary about sexual assault on college campuses (per Billboard ). Her 2013 song "Swine" is also about the experience (via Songfacts ).

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Her first record label dropped her

In 2006, after years of underground performing, Lady Gaga thought she had finally made it. According to Johnny Morgan in his book "Gaga," she and her producer had written several electronica songs incorporating a synthesizer, a beatbox, and a piano that were unlike anything currently being played in the New York club scene. The two started pitching the songs to music industry big wigs, and eventually gained the ear of Joshua Sarubin, the head of A&R at Island Def-Jam. Following an audition, Sarubin and his employer Antonio "L.A." Reid signed an artist development deal with her with the goal of releasing an album in nine months.

Lady Gaga was over the moon. But three months into the deal, Reid stopped meeting with her to discuss the album. Desperate, she sat outside of his office for days hoping for a chance to salvage things, but, despite her best efforts, the deal stalled out. As Lady Gaga told E! News in 2011, she was in the hospital when she found out that she had been dropped from the label — an event later recreated in her music video for "Marry the Night." Per Morgan, losing her first record deal devastated Lady Gaga, drove her to drug use, and strained her relationship with her parents.

She struggles with mental health issues

On a 2016 episode of "The Today Show," Lady Gaga revealed that she suffered from PTSD. Per Mayo Clinic , PTSD — short for post-traumatic stress disorder — is a mental health condition that is triggered by witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. Symptoms vary, and, in some cases, can take months or years to present. In a 2018 interview with Vogue , Lady Gaga said her PTSD symptoms mimic the feeling just before a roller coaster plunges. She also experiences difficulty breathing, a full-body spasm, and crying.

Later, in a 2021 episode of Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry's series "The Me You Can't See" (via BBC ), Lady Gaga said she had a psychotic break as a result of her sexual abuse at 19. During the break, she experienced severe physical pain followed by full-body numbness and weeks of sickness. As she notes in a 2020 interview with Oprah , she was admitted to a hospital in a panicked state — completely broken from reality — following a triggering event years after the abuse and was referred to a psychiatrist. She claims not processing her trauma led to both PTSD and the break and she credits her team of doctors with teaching her how to manage her mental health and saving her life.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website .

She has self-harmed in the past

In a 2020 interview with Oprah , Lady Gaga admitted that she used to cut herself and throw herself against walls during times of emotional distress. She claimed that the physical pain from self-harming offered a temporary reprieve from the psychological pain but ultimately made her feel more out of control and worsened her mental state. Cutting also allowed her to show others that she was in pain. In a 2020 interview with Zane Lowe , she elaborated on her self-harm, explaining that it allowed her to temporarily express feelings of shame and inadequacy but always left her feeling worse.

Cutting has left permanent scars on her wrists, and she claims that people have made hurtful comments about the marks, compounding her pain. In 2012, Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, started the Born This Way Foundation to assist young people with mental health struggles (per HuffPost ). Partnering with universities and psychologists, the organization seeks to provide youths with relevant resources and "make the world a kinder and braver place." One of the teachings Lady Gaga imparts through the foundation is her personal philosophy on combating self-harm: "Tell me, don't show me."

Lady Gaga lives with trauma-induced chronic pain

In 2018, Lady Gaga was forced to cancel the last 10 dates of her European "Joanne" tour following a severe bout of chronic pain caused by fibromyalgia, which she was diagnosed with in 2016 (per ABC News ). Per Mayo Clinic , fibromyalgia is a trauma-induced disorder that causes widespread body pain, fatigue, and mood issues. In a 2020 interview with Oprah , Lady Gaga explained that the condition causes her to experience full-body pain as a trauma response — similar to what she felt after being sexually abused.

Lady Gaga lived and toured with constant pain for years, yet MRIs and medical tests revealed no physical cause for her agony. Prior to the diagnosis, she claims that the intense unexplained pain made her feel like she was going to die. Finally, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and received mental health therapy and non-narcotic medication that helped her manage the condition — though the chronic pain never went away entirely.

She has had two failed engagements

Lady Gaga's love life has been tumultuous. According to ELLE , she had a six-year on-again-off-again relationship with fellow musician Lüc Carl that started in New York before her big break and continued until 2011. She wrote the song "Yoü and I" about their final break-up. While shooting the music video for the song in 2011, she met actor Taylor Kinney, who played her paramour in the video. The couple dated for years and Kinney proposed in 2015. But in 2016, Lady Gaga announced their break-up on Instagram , citing their busy schedules. Many believe her sad ballad "Million Reasons" — released that same year — is about their relationship.

In 2017, Lady Gaga began spending a lot of time with her talent agent, Christian Carino (per ELLE). While she kept the details of their relationship private, she addressed him as her fiancé during her ELLE Women in Hollywood acceptance speech in 2018. According to Us Weekly , she called off the engagement in 2019 due to Carino's jealous and controlling behavior. Per Harper's Bazaar , she has been happily dating tech philanthropist Michael Polansky since 2020 so perhaps it was all for the best.

Lady Gaga has struggled with substance abuse

In a 2011 interview with Howard Stern (via Billboard ), Lady Gaga admitted to having used ecstasy and cocaine to cope with difficult times, noting cocaine made her feel like she had a "friend." Still, she stated that she regretted using it, referred to it as "the devil," and warned fans never to touch it. She shared a similar struggle on a 2013 episode of Elvis Duran and the Morning Show , saying she was once addicted to marijuana, smoked up to 20 joints a day, and regularly "lily-padded" from one substance to another as a form of self-medicating to cope with pain, anxiety, and depression.

Though she has worked on her mental health over the years and does not use narcotics or opioids, Lady Gaga admitted to Zane Lowe in a 2020 interview that she continues to self-medicate with alcohol. In fact, her hit song "Rain on Me" refers to her failed attempts at sobriety and is a metaphor for heavy drinking. As she sings in the song, "I'd rather be dry but at least I'm alive."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Her dogs were stolen in a violent attack

On February 24, 2021, Lady Gaga's dog walker, Ryan Fischer, was violently attacked and shot in the chest around 10 p.m. while walking her three French bulldogs in Hollywood (per The New York Post ). After battling Fischer, who refused to surrender the dogs, the attackers fled with two of them — Koji and Gustav — leaving him bleeding in the street with the third dog, Miss Asia. Lady Gaga, who was in Italy filming a movie at the time, posted about the tragedy on Instagram , saying, "My heart is sick and I am praying my family will be whole again with an act of kindness." She offered a $500,000 reward for the safe return of her dogs, and also praised Fischer for his bravery.

According to NPR , Fischer lost part of a lung but recovered. Koji and Gustav were returned two days later by a woman who claimed she had found them tied to a pole. As ABC News notes, she has since been arrested in connection with the crime along with four others — all confirmed gang members. Police believe that Fischer was targeted due to the high value of French bulldogs and that the criminals did not know that the dogs belonged to Lady Gaga. Per NPR, one of the suspects was charged with second-degree robbery and sentenced to four years in prison.

Filming House of Gucci was difficult for her

Lady Gaga commits fully to her art, often to her own detriment. In a 2021 episode of Marc Malkin's podcast, "Just for Variety," she explained how she fully embraces the characters she portrays in films, becoming them full-time in a particularly extreme form of method acting. While playing murderess Patrizia Gucci in 2021's "House of Gucci," Lady Gaga lived her life as Patrizia, speaking with her heavy Italian accent around the clock and immersing herself in Patrizia's darkness.

Compared to Ally in "A Star Is Born," Patrizia is a duplicitous character with a tragic life, and playing the role began to take a toll on Lady Gaga's mental health. In fact, she needed an onset psychiatric nurse to accompany her to the set during the last few days of filming for her own safety. It didn't help that physical safety was also a very real concern while filming on location in Italy. Patrizia was more than a character, she was a real person. And since she was no longer in jail, the cast and crew had to be ready in the event that she showed up to the set and was less than enthused about her portrayal. Turns out, the real Gucci family did have some things to say about the "House of Gucci."

She nearly lost her identity to her persona

Stefani Germanotta originally invented her Lady Gaga persona as a superhero for herself. In a 2020 interview, she told Oprah that Gaga was everything Germanotta wanted to be: confident, self-compassionate, and full of love for others. But over time, the persona became her full identity and she started feeling like she no longer belonged to herself and belonged to the world instead. Therapy helped her work through the concept of objectification and get to know herself.

She elaborated on her struggles with objectification in a 2020 interview with Zane Lowe , claiming that celebrity culture had stripped her of her humanity and reduced her to a robot, which caused her to become depressed and afraid of the public. Despite her apparent bravado, being a woman in Hollywood has never been easy for Lady Gaga. Donning an oversized suit at her 2018 ELLE Women in Hollywood acceptance speech in lieu of a dress, she declared: "We are not just objects to entertain the world. We are not simply images to bring smiles or grimaces to peoples' faces ... We women in Hollywood, we are voices."

Lady Gaga Biography

Lady Gaga, a pop icon like no other, has captivated the world with her unique style and eccentric personality. From her foot-tapping numbers to her inspiring fashion choices, she has become a role model for countless young people worldwide. Despite risking her education, Gaga followed her dreams and it paid off when she got her first break in 2008 with the album ‘The Fame’. Since then, her fame has skyrocketed, earning her three Grammy awards and a place among music legends like The Beatles and Mariah Carey. Despite controversy surrounding her music, Gaga’s popularity only continues to grow.

Quick Facts

Also Known As: Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta
Age: 37 Years, 37 Year Old Females
Family: father: Joe Germanotta, mother: Cynthia Germanotta, siblings: Natali Germanotta
Born Country: United States
Quotes By Lady Gaga
Height: 5’1″ (155 cm), 5’1″ Females
Notable Alumni: Convent Of The Sacred Heart, Roman Catholic School, Lee Strasberg Theatre And Film Institute
Personality: INFJ
City: New York City
U.S. State: New Yorkers
Education: Lee Strasberg Theatre And Film Institute, Roman Catholic School, Convent Of The Sacred Heart
Humanitarian Work: Co-creator of ‘Born This Way Foundation’

Childhood & Early Life

Lady Gaga, originally named Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, was born on March 28, 1986, in Manhattan, New York City. She was born to Joseph Anthony Germanotta Jr and Cynthia Louise. Stefani attended the Roman-Catholic institution named ‘Convent of the Sacred Heart’ when she was eleven years old. She was an excellent student who excelled in both academics and extra-curricular activities. Stefani’s first introduction to music was at the age of four when she started playing the piano. By the age of thirteen, she had already written her first ballad for the piano. After graduating from school, she enrolled in the renowned ‘New York University’s ‘Tisch School for The Arts’ to pursue her passion for music. However, she discontinued her studies after just one year.

In 2005, Stefani took a break from college and decided to pursue a career in the music industry. She collaborated with American hip-hop artist Melvin Grover on an audio book project for children. She also formed a band called ‘SG Band’ with friends from the ‘New York University’. The band gained popularity in New York City after performing at various nightclubs. They caught the attention of music producer Joe Vulpis and worked with him briefly in 2005. In 2006, musician Wendy Starland noticed the band’s talent and introduced Stefani to music producer Rob Fusari. Inspired by the song ‘Radio Ga ga’, Rob gave Stefani the name Gaga. They formed a partnership and produced music in the Synthpop genre. Gaga’s talent was recognized by the American record label ‘Def Jam Recordings’, and she signed a deal with them. However, the partnership ended shortly, and she started working with ‘Interscope Records’ in 2007. She worked as a lyricist for various celebrity singers associated with the label. In 2008, Gaga gained significant success with the release of her single ‘Just Dance’. This marked the beginning of her music career.

Major Works

Gaga’s debut album ‘The Fame’ was a huge success, with the track ‘Poker Face’ becoming a worldwide hit. The album sold approximately 10 million copies worldwide and won several awards, including a Grammy. Her second album ‘Born This Way’ was also a commercial success, and she earned approximately $220 million through her concert tour ‘Monster Ball’. Gaga continued to release successful albums, including ‘Artpop’ and ‘Cheek to Cheek’, a collaboration with Tony Bennett.

Awards and Achievements

Lady Gaga has won numerous awards throughout her career. She won a Grammy for her album ‘The Fame’ in the ‘Best Electronic/Dance Album’ category. She has also been nominated for several Grammy Awards in various categories. Gaga received a ‘Bambi’ award in 2011 and was nominated for a ‘Primetime Emmy’ for her venture ‘The Monster Ball Tour at Madison Square Garden’. She won another Grammy in 2015 for her album ‘Cheek to Cheek’ in the ‘Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album’ category. She has also been nominated for a ‘Kids Choice Music Award’ in the ‘Favorite Female Singer’ category.

Personal Life & Legacy

During her early career, Gaga struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. She has been an advocate for the rights of the LGBT community and has started the ‘Born This Way Foundation’ to support young people. Gaga has also been involved in charitable initiatives, including the ‘We are the World 25’ project to raise funds for the victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Lady Gaga (American Singer-Songwriter And Actress) Biography

Last updated on January 16, 2024 by Sophia

Born in New York City, New York, on March 28, 1986, Lady Gaga is an American singer-songwriter and performance artist. She is well-known for her outrageous outfits, thought-provoking lyrics, and powerful vocal range. Her hits include “Just Dance,” “Bad Romance,” and “Born This Way.”

Table of Contents

Lady Gaga Info

Early life and career.

Germanotta was born into an Italian American family in New York City. She learned music at an early age and was performing onstage in New York City clubs by the time she was a teenager. She attended an all-girls school, Convent of the Sacred Heart, in Manhattan before going on to study music at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She studied at Tisch for two years before dropping out to manage her own career.

After dropping out, she began transforming herself from Germanotta into Lady Gaga, whose style combined glam rock and over-the-top fashion design. In 2007 she and performance artist Lady Starlight formed a revue called the Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow. That same year Lady Gaga, who also wrote songs for other pop artists such as Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls, and Britney Spears, was signed by the singer Akon and Interscope Records and began preparing her debut album, The Fame , which was released in 2008.

Although she modeled herself on such theatrical performers as David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust period, the New York Dolls, Grace Slick, and Freddie Mercury—her adopted stage name was derived from Queen’s song “Radio Ga Ga”—she created a character that came to occupy a unique space in the music world. Her fashion combined with her up-tempo, synthetic dance music and her edgy, theatrical performance to create stunning sounds and visuals. Indeed, while producing music, Lady Gaga also created her own sexually charged fashions—replete with dazzling wigs and space-age bodysuits—through her creative team Haus of Gaga.

2005–2007: Career beginnings

Gaga collaborated with hip-hop musician Melle Mel on two tracks in 2005 for an audio book that accompanied Cricket Casey’s children’s book The Portal in the Park. She and her friends from NYU also started a band called the SGB and. They performed all around New York, setting themselves as mainstays of the Lower East Side club scene in the city’s downtown . Talent scout Wendy Starland saw her at the Songwriters Hall of Fame New Songwriters Showcase in June 2006 at the Cutting Room and referred her to music producer Rob Fusari. Fusari worked closely with Gaga, who commuted to New Jersey every day, to help her refine her songs and create new material. The producer claimed to have been the first to refer to her as “Lady Gaga” and stated that they started dating in May 2006. was inspired by the song “Radio Ga Ga” by Queen. Their romance continued until January of 2007.

Together, Fusari and Gaga founded “Team Lovechild, LLC” in order to advance her career. After creating and recording electropop songs, they sent them to executives in the music business. After receiving a favorable response from Sarubin’s supervisor, Antonio “L.A.” Reid, Def Jam Recordings’ head of Artists and repertoire (A&R), Joshua Sarubin signed Gaga in September 2006.

Three months later, she was taken off the label and spent Christmas at her family’s house. Gaga started doing neo-burlesque shows because, in her words, they stood for liberation. She got to know performance artist Lady Starlight during this period, and she credits her for shaping her theatrical persona. The two started playing at clubs in the downtown area, such as the Rockwood Music Hall, the Bitter End, and the Mercury Lounge. Their existence A performance art work titled “The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow” and titled “Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue” paid homage to 1970s variety shows. In 2007, they took part in the Lollapalooza music festival.

After concentrating on cutting-edge electronic dance music at first, Gaga started fusing pop melodies with Queen and David Bowie’s glam rock aesthetic. Fusari worked on the songs he had written with Gaga and Starlight while they were playing, sending them to producer and record executive Vincent Herbert. Herbert signed Gaga to his company, Streamline Records, an Interscope Records brand that was founded in November 2007. Herbert is recognized by Gaga as being the one who first discovered her. After interning at Famous Music Publishing as an apprentice songwriter, Gaga signed a music publishing contract with Sony/ATV. She was therefore hired to pen songs for artists including Fergie, the Pussycat, Britney Spears, and New Kids on the Block.

Gaga met with producer and composer RedOne around the end of 2007. She signed with Cherrytree Records, an Interscope label founded by producer and songwriter Martin Kierszenbaum, and worked with him for a week in the recording studio on her debut album. Kierszenbaum also co-wrote four of her songs.38 She said, “My name is Lady Gaga, I’ve been on the music scene for years, and I’m telling you, this is what’s next,” to radio stations that thought her music was too “racy,” “dance-oriented,” and “underground” for the mainstream market, despite having landed a record deal.

Success: The Fame and The Fame Monster

Her first single, “Just Dance,” became popular in clubs throughout the United States and Europe and eventually landed at number one on the Billboard Pop Songs chart (also called the radio chart). Three other singles off The Fame —“Poker Face,” “LoveGame,” and “Paparazzi”—also reached number one on the radio chart, making Lady Gaga the first artist in the 17-year history of that chart to have four number ones from a debut album.

The Fame was well received critically and proved enormously successful commercially, selling more than eight million copies worldwide by the end of 2009. The album also yielded Lady Gaga five Grammy nominations, including for album of the year and song of the year (“Poker Face”); she captured two Grammys—best dance recording (“Poker Face”) and best electronic/dance album ( The Fame )—and her opening duet with Sir Elton John was among the most talked-about elements of the 2010 Grammys telecast. In February 2010 she also picked up three Brit Awards (the British equivalent of the Grammys)—for best international female, best album, and breakthrough act.

Her second album, The Fame Monster , was released in November 2009 (it was originally conceived as a bonus disc) and almost instantly produced another hit, “Bad Romance.” Other popular singles from the album followed, including “Telephone” (which featured Beyoncé, as did a nine-minute video produced by Jonas Åkerlund starring the pair and referencing Quentin Tarantino’s film Kill Bill: Vol. 1 [2003]) and “Alejandro.”

During 2010 Lady Gaga proved to be one of the most commercially successful artists, with a sold-out concert tour (which had been launched to coincide with the release of The Fame Monster ), while she also headlined Chicago’s Lollapalooza music festival and played in front of a record 20,000 people at NBC’s Today show. She was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and was named by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s most powerful women, and she capped off 2010 by being named Billboard magazine’s artist of the year. After arriving at the 2011 Grammy Awards ceremony encased in a giant egg, Lady Gaga went on to claim honours for best pop vocal album (for The Fame Monster ) and best female pop vocal performance and best short form video (for “Bad Romance”).

Lady Gaga Net Worth

Lady Gaga is an American pop singer, songwriter, and actress who has a net worth of $320 million . Lady Gaga, also known as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, began her performance career as a musical theater and burlesque performer in the East Village in New York, seemingly attempting to follow in the footsteps of night club performers gone superstars like Bette Midler and Madonna. She struggled for a number of years, but finally got the ball rolling around 2005, recording her first album and writing songs for other artists, such as Britney Spears, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls. The release of her first album, “The Fame”, seemed to be only moderately successful, but five months after its release, the first single from the album, “Just Dance”, was everywhere.

Also Read : Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (Indian Actress) Biography!

Lady Gaga Fast Fast

At 17 she was accepted (early admission) to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied art
Was signed to the Def Jam record label when she was 19, but was dropped soon after
Rap star Akon signed her to his label with Interscope records, and by the time she was 20 she had a record deal
Has written songs for Britney Spears, the Pussycat Dolls, New Kids on the Block and Fergie
She took her stage name from Queen’s song “Radio Ga Ga
” Her debut single, “Just Dance,” was released in 2008, followed by her full-length debut album, The Fame, in August of that year
It earned critical acclaim and sold more than a million copies
Many of her eye-catching outfits are manufactured by stylists and set designers known as the Haus of Gaga
Recorded an album of jazz standards with Tony Bennett, called Cheek to Cheek, in 2014
Founded the Born This Way Foundation, a non-profit that focuses on the wellness of young people

Lady Gaga Later Albums

Lady Gaga’s third album, Born This Way (2011), found the entertainer reaching back to earlier musical eras for inspiration. As a blonde dance-pop performer with a penchant for provocation, Lady Gaga had often earned comparisons to the singer Madonna, and on the album’s first two singles the similarities were especially pronounced. The title track was a self-empowerment anthem in the style of Madonna’s 1989 single “Express Yourself,” while “Judas” brazenly mixed sexual and religious imagery. Both songs quickly became hits. Other tracks on the album featured guest appearances from guitarist Brian May of Queen and saxophonist Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

In 2013 Lady Gaga released Artpop . Although the energetic lead single “Applause” extended her string of chart successes, the album was perceived as a commercial disappointment. She came back the following year with Cheek to Cheek, a collection of standards that she recorded with Tony Bennett. The recording topped the Billboard 200 as well as the jazz and traditional jazz album charts, and it earned the Grammy for best traditional pop vocal album. The duo also won that award for their second collaboration, Love for Sale (2021), a tribute album to Cole Porter.

During this time Lady Gaga continued to record solo albums. The relatively understated Joanne (2016) performed poorly until Lady Gaga’s halftime Super Bowl performance in February 2017 brought it favourable attention. For her sixth studio album, Chromatica (2020), Lady Gaga returned to her earlier music, mixing disco and electronic-pop.

Lady Gaga Acting and Activism

In addition to recording music, Lady Gaga made occasional film appearances, notably in Machete Kills (2013) and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). She played a vampiric countess with no regard for life or suffering in the fifth season of the television show American Horror Story: Hotel (2015–16). For her performance in the anthology series, Lady Gaga received a Golden Globe Award. She also appeared in the sixth season, which aired in 2016. Lady Gaga garnered critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for her first lead role, a guileless up-and-coming singer-songwriter in the 2018 remake of the movie A Star Is Born. She cowrote most of that movie’s songs, many of which she performed with costar and director Bradley Cooper. The lead single, “Shallow,” won two Grammy Awards and the Oscar for best original song. In 2021 Lady Gaga appeared in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, which centres on the true story of the murder of Maurizio Gucci, who headed his family’s luxury fashion brand.

Lady Gaga also contributed songs to other films. She notably cowrote and performed “Til It Happens to You” for the documentary The Hunting Ground (2015) and “Hold My Hand” for Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Both tracks received Oscar nominations for best original song.

Lady Gaga cultivated a devoted following, particularly among gay men (she acknowledged her own bisexuality), who became some of her most loyal fans. She became particularly outspoken on gay rights, especially same-sex marriage, and was a featured speaker at the 2009 National Equality March in Washington, D.C. In 2021 Lady Gaga sang the national anthem at the U.S. presidential inauguration of Joe Biden.

Is Lady Gaga married?

Lady Gaga’s never been married, although she’s been engaged twice. In 2011, she started dating Chicago Fire star Taylor Kinney , who starred in the video for her song “Yoü And I,” and the couple got engaged on Valentine’s Day 2015, with Kinney giving her a heart-shaped ring.

Alas, the pair broke things off two years later. “Taylor and I have always believed we are soulmates,” she shared on Instagram at the time. “Just like all couples we have ups and downs, and we have been taking a break. We are both ambitious artists, hoping to work through long-distance and complicated schedules to continue the simple love we have always shared. Please root us on. We’re just like everybody else and we really love each other.”

In Gaga: Five Foot Two , however, she hinted that the breakup had to do with her burgeoning film career. “I did a movie and lose Taylor,” she said, nodding to her work on A Star Is Born . “This is the third time I’ve had my heart broken like this.

A year later, she became romantically linked to Christian Carino , a Hollywood talent agent, and they were engaged within a year. By early 2019, however, they were broken up. “It just didn’t work out. Relationships sometimes end,” a source told PEOPLE. “There’s no long dramatic story.”

Who is Lady Gaga’s boyfriend Now?

Gaga’s beau of almost four years, Polansky, has an impressive resume: A Harvard grad and tech entrepreneur, he is currently the executive director of the Parker Foundation, a philanthropic organization started by Sean Parker , who co-founded Facebook.

The couple was first spotted in Las Vegas at NoMad Restaurant on New Year’s Eve 2020, walking hand-in-hand and smooching at midnight. In early February 2020, they went Instagram-official with an adorable photo featuring Gaga sitting in Polansky’s lap.

Is Lady Gaga Engaged?

Gaga and Polansky aren’t engaged. In August 2021, a source told Entertainment Tonight that Polansky is Gaga’s “North Star,” and called the couple “the real deal,” adding, “He is such a grounding and guiding presence for her… He loves Lady Gaga, but he’s in love with Stefani.” In a November 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter , Gaga reiterated how positive the relationship is for her: “My dogs and the man that I love are my whole life.

Lady Gaga Awards

2022Oscar-Best Achievement in Music (Original Song): Nominated
2020Grammy-Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: Winner
2019Golden Globe-Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama: Nominated
2019BAFTA Film Awards-Best Leading Actress: Nominated
2019BAFTA Film Awards-Best Original Music: Winner
2018Critics’ Choice Awards-Best Supporting Actor: Nominated
2018Critics’ Choice Awards-Best Actress: Winner
2018Screen Actors Guild Awards-Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role: Nominated
2018Oscar-Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role: Nominated
2017Emmy-Outstanding Special Class Program: Nominated
2015Emmy-Outstanding Variety Special: Nominated
2015Oscar-Best Achievement in Music (Original Song): Nominated
2012Critics’ Choice Movie Awards-Best Song: Nominated
2011Emmy-Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special: Nominated

Lady Gaga Relationship

Taylor Kinney — Ex-fiancé
Luc Carl — Ex-significant Other
Joe Germanotta — Father
Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John — Godchild
Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John — Godchild
Paul Bisset — Grandfather
Ronnie Bissett — Grandmother
Cynthia Germanotta — Mother
Cynthia Louise Germanotta — Mother
Natali Germanotta — Sister

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Tony Bennett

Jazz singer Tony Bennett was best known for performing standards and his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

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Who Was Tony Bennett?

Quick facts, early songs, professional and personal struggles in the 1970s, career revival: 'the simpsons' and 'mtv unplugged', 'duets' albums and other collaborations, tony bennett and lady gaga, final albums and retirement, paintings, books, and philanthropy, wives and children, latest news: tony bennett dies at 96.

Grammy-winning singer Tony Bennett died on July 21, 2023, in New York City. His publicist confirmed the news but didn’t share a cause of death. The 96-year-old was less than two weeks away from his birthday. Bennett, whose career spanned eight decades, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016 and retired in 2021.

Jazz singer Tony Bennett enjoyed his first hit single, “Because of You,” in 1951, and in 1962, he released his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Bennett’s popularity waned as younger fans turned to rock music, but he rebounded by the 1990s through increased exposure and an acclaimed MTV Unplugged appearance. He later teamed up with artists such as Lady Gaga , Amy Winehouse , and Carrie Underwood for the highly successful Duets and Duets II albums, adding to his collection of Grammy Awards even as he approached his 90 th birthday. In 2014, the 88-year-old broke his own record as the oldest artist to have a No. 1 album with the release of Cheek to Cheek , a collaboration with Gaga. Bennett died in July 2023 at age 96.

FULL NAME: Anthony Dominick Benedetto (stage name Tony Bennett) BORN: August 3, 1926 DIED: July 21, 2023 BIRTHPLACE: Queens, New York SPOUSES: Patricia Beech (1952-1971), Sandra Grant (1971-2007), and Susan Benedetto (2007-2023) CHILDREN: Danny, Dae, Johanna, and Antonia ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo

Tony Bennett was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto on August 3, 1926, in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York. His parents were Italian, and his father immigrated to the United States as a boy. Coming of age during the Great Depression, he experienced more difficulty at age 10, when his father passed away. His mother worked as a seamstress to support Bennett and his two siblings.

Bennett attended the High School of Industrial Arts in New York City, but he dropped out to help the family finances and worked as a singing waiter. After serving in the Army infantry during World War II, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill and studied singing at the American Theatre Wing. During this period, his vocal coach Mimi Spear offered some advice that he took to heart: Don’t imitate other singers; emulate instrumentalists instead.

First Hits: “Because of You” and “Cold, Cold Heart”

Performing under the name Joe Bari, Bennett was discovered in 1949 by Pearl Bailey, who asked him to open for her show in Greenwich Village. He subsequently caught the attention of Bob Hope , who advised him to take the name Tony Bennett and put him in his road show. As Bennett told Billboard in 1997, “I’ve been on the road ever since.”

Bennett signed with Columbia Records in 1950 and started working with record producer Mitch Miller. His early hits included “Because of You,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” and “Rags to Riches,” his smooth voice earning the adoration of young fans.

By the late 1950s, Bennett had become interested in creating jazz albums, and he teamed with some of the top talent in the business. His 1958 album with Count Basie , Basie Swings, Bennett Sings , featured the tracks “Jeepers Creepers” and “Chicago.” While his songs were more substantive by this point, they also failed to match the success of earlier hits.

“I Left My Heart in San Francisco”

tony bennett smiles at the camera while walking on a street with his hands in his pants pockets, he wears a yellow jacket and black pants, behind him is a view of coit tower and surrounding buildings in san francisco

Bennett returned to the spotlight in 1962 with the debut of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Released as the B-side to “Once Upon a Time,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was the recording that captured the public’s attention. It led to Bennett’s first Grammy Awards, for Best Record of the Year and Best Male Solo Vocal Performance, and became his signature song. Its popularity also paved the path for more immediate success, with the subsequent releases “I Wanna Be Around” and “The Good Life” going on to crack the Top 20.

In 1994, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Bennett’s success led to some artistic differences between the singer and his record company. His interest in singing quality material made him want to try new songs and new kinds of music, but Columbia for a while wanted him to repeat the style of his early hits. The relationship became further strained in the late 1960s, when the company tried to steer Bennett toward the contemporary rock sound popularized by The Beatles and other artists.

Bennett left Columbia in the early 1970s and soon founded his own label, Improv. Although he recorded what has come to be regarded as some of his best work, including The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975) and Together Again (1976), his songs failed to gain traction on the charts. By the end of the decade, Improv was out of business, and Bennett had stopped recording.

Bennett’s break from the studio coincided with some difficult times for the singer. Having moved to Los Angeles, he began using cocaine and marijuana, drugs that were an integral part of the celebrity party scene. A near-death experience in the bathtub and the memory of Lenny Bruce ’s drug-related death scared Bennett into changing his habits.

With help from his oldest son, Danny, who became his personal manager, Bennett was able to put his personal and professional lives back together. The singer re-signed with Columbia records, and in 1986, he released The Art of Excellence, his first studio album in nearly 10 years.

Danny Bennett saw to it his father received plenty of exposure; the elder Bennett surfaced on talk shows with David Letterman and Jay Leno , made an animated appearance on The Simpsons and delivered an acclaimed performance on MTV Unplugged, which led to a pair of Grammy Award wins for Album of the Year and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance.

Bennett unleashed a series of acclaimed tribute albums during this period, including Perfectly Frank (1992) for Bennett’s childhood idol Frank Sinatra , Steppin’ Out (1993) for Fred Astaire , and Tony Bennett on Holiday (1997) for Billie Holiday . He also branched out with an album of children’s songs, Tony Bennett: The Playground (1998), and in 2002, he delivered a collection of holiday favorites with Christmas with Tony Bennett and the London Symphony Orchestra.

In 2002, Bennett teamed up with k.d. Lang to record A Wonderful World . The album netted Bennett another Grammy, for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, and established a standard for collaboration that would mark this late stage of his career.

To commemorate his 80 th birthday in 2006, the singer released Duets: An American Classic , recorded with a collection of stars that included Barbra Streisand , Elton John , Stevie Wonder , Sting , and Michael Bublé .

tony bennett and amy winehouse stand next to each other, smile, and pose for a photo, bennett wears a black suit and tie with large glasses, winehouse wears a low cut black dress and has one hand on bennetts chest

The project proved such a success that he created another celebratory album in 2011, Duets II , with performances from Aretha Franklin , Carrie Underwood , Willie Nelson , and others. On its release, Duets II also hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200—something no other 85-year-old had done—marking Bennett’s first chart-topping album. Among the highlights were “The Lady Is a Tramp,” sung with Lady Gaga , as well as “Body and Soul,” which turned out to be the late Amy Winehouse ’s final recording. The following March, Bennett took home a Grammy for his duo with Winehouse, as well as for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.

Also in 2012, his fans were treated to an inside look into the recording of Duets II and the life of the legendary singer in the documentary The Zen of Bennett . The project was the brainchild of Bennett’s son Danny, who served as its producer, and aired at the Tribeca Film Festival that April.

Later that year, Bennett released his next recording, Viva Duets . The Latin-themed album featured songs in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with contributions from such famed talents as Marc Anthony and Gloria Estefan . Despite now being well into his 80s, Bennett lined up a series of concerts to promote this latest album.

From their collaboration on Duets II , Bennett and Lady Gaga struck up a friendship and continued working together for several years.

In September 2014, they released an album of jazz standards called Cheek to Cheek , which won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album and also topped the Billboard 200. Discussing the collaboration in an interview with Parade magazine , Bennett expressed what he learned from working with the pop star, “Nobody has communicated with the public more than Lady Gaga. Ever. I trust the audience, and I’m very impressed. As far as they’re concerned, she’s part of their family. The only guy who ever did that was Bing Crosby , years ago.”

Bennett and Lady Gaga rejoined in 2021 for Love For Sale , their take on a collection of Cole Porter songs. Bennett’s last album, Love For Sale garnered five Grammy nominations and won Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2022.

tony bennett and lady gaga stand onstage and extend their arms to the crowd, bennett wears a black suit and tie with a blue pocket square, lady gaga wears a shimmering bronze gown and holds a microphone

The ageless crooner returned to solo vocals with his next album, The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern (2015). A pared-down effort in comparison with his recent high-profile duos, the album nevertheless achieved a similar result by claiming the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album Grammy in 2016. In 2018, Tony Bennett Celebrates 90 also garnered a Grammy in the same category.

In February 2021, Bennett revealed that he had Alzheimer’s disease. He had been diagnosed five years earlier. Later in the year, he released his final album, Love For Sale , and performed his final concert “One Last Time” alongside Lady Gaga . The first show in the two-night special at Radio City Hall in New York City coincided with Bennett’s 95 th birthday.

His career spanned eight decades and included dozens of accolades. Bennett won 19 Grammy Awards, including eight for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album and the 1995 Album of the Year for his MTV Unplugged live recording. In 2001, the Recording Academy presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to Bennett. Four years later, Bennett was honored by the Kennedy Center.

Along with his music, Bennett nurtured a lifelong love of visual art, dating back to his time in high school. His paintings, which he signed with his given name of Anthony Benedetto, have been featured in the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1999, he founded Benedetto Arts LLC to oversee this aspect of his artistic career.

Bennett’s first book, Tony Bennett: What My Heart Has Seen (1996), features a collection of his portraits, landscapes, and still lifes rendered in various mediums. He followed with The Good Life: The Autobiography of Tony Bennett (1998), Tony Bennett in the Studio: A Life of Art & Music (2007), and Life Is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett (2012).

Bennett was also involved in various charitable and racial justice causes, for which the United Nations named him a Citizen of the World and gave him the Humanitarian Award. In 1999, he started the nonprofit Exploring the Arts with Susan Crow, who would eventually become his third wife. The couple also founded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a public high school in New York City. Beyond education, Bennett raised money to support the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and the American Cancer Foundation.

While serving in the Army, Bennett disdained the racial segregation and prejudice he saw against Black soldiers. He got in trouble for bringing a Black friend to a Thanksgiving dinner meant only for white soldiers. Back in the States, Bennett joined Martin Luther King Jr. for the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and performed for the protesters alongside Harry Belafonte , Sammy Davis Jr. , and others.

susan benedetto and tony bennett embrace and smile at the camera, benedetto wears a gray jacket with a black, white and red pattern, bennett wears a bright blue suit with a patterned tie

Bennett was married three times and had four children.

In 1952, he married Patricia Beech. The couple had two sons—Danny and Daegal, known as Dae—before separating in the ’60s. Their divorce was finalized in 1971. Danny became his father’s manager in the 1980s and helped him revitalize his career. Dae also had a hand in his father’s success, working as a music engineer for Bennett.

Next, the singer married actor Sandra Grant, with whom he had two daughters, Johanna and Antonia. That union, which began in 1971, also ended in divorce. The paperwork was finalized in 2007, though the couple had split in the late 1970s.

In 2007, Bennett married his longtime girlfriend Susan Benedetto (nee Crow), a teacher. They remained married until Bennett’s death.

I think if you have a passion for what you do then there are no limitations on how long or how much you can accomplish.
What you find out about Louis Armstrong , once you get hooked on his music, is he’s the original source of popular music in America.
I need two lifetimes. I’ll never get finished.

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Lady Gaga reveals trailer for Chromatica Ball concert film on HBO: 'I'm so excited'

Put your paws up, little monsters. It’s time to return to Chromatica .

On Wednesday, Lady Gaga dropped the trailer for “Gaga Chromatica Ball,” a concert film that pays tribute to the popstar’s 2022 Chromatica Ball tour . The nearly minute-long teaser shows an eye-popping sequence of Gaga performing onstage, taking on high-energy choreography in various striking outfits.

“I’ve always just said I was born this way,” Gaga says in the clip, referencing her 2011 hit "Born This Way."

The HBO film, directed and produced by Mother Monster herself, chronicles Gaga’s Chromatica Ball performance at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, according to a press release .

“I’m so excited that we can finally share The Chromatica Ball film with the world,” Gaga wrote on X alongside the trailer. “This film chronicles a time of immense creativity…the fashion, the dance, the music. Revisiting the tour leaves me speechless the way we had each other—you all showed up for music and art in a big way, and with a level of excitement and freedom that I will never forget.”

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Lady Gaga in concert: Popstar is returning for her jazz residency in Las Vegas: What to know

Watch the trailer for 'Gaga Chromatica Ball'

“Gaga Chromatica Ball” marks the second collaboration for Lady Gaga and HBO.

A concert film on Gaga’s 2009-2011 Monster Ball tour, “Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden,” aired in May 2011. The film, co-executive produced by Gaga, earned five Primetime Emmy nominations , winning an award for Outstanding Picture Editing.

“Lady Gaga is a complete powerhouse,” said Nina Rosenstein, executive vice president of HBO Programming, Late Night & Specials, in a statement. “She’s a once-in-a-lifetime artist who never holds back, and 'Gaga Chromatica Ball' puts her endless list of talents on full display. We’re thrilled to partner with her once again for this breathtaking concert special.”

The Chromatica Ball ran from July to September 2022 in support of Gaga’s sixth studio album “Chromatica.” Released in 2020, the dance-pop LP debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and earned Gaga a Grammy Award for best pop duo/group performance for “Rain on Me,” a collaboration with Ariana Grande .

“Here’s the truth—no matter where life or my career has taken me, my time with you always is a path back to a very powerful part of myself,” Gaga wrote to fans on X. “I hope you will feel seen when you watch this film. And know that I edited it carefully to honor you.”

Lady Gaga speaks out: Singer defends Dylan Mulvaney against anti-trans hate after International Women's Day post

“Gaga Chromatica Ball” will air on HBO on May 25 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT.

The special will also be available to stream on Max.

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Lady gaga reveals ‘chromatica ball’ release date nearly two years after announcement.

The concert film will feature Lady Gaga's 2022 Chromatica Ball Tour, which traveled to stadiums across the globe.

By Zoe G Phillips

Zoe G Phillips

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Lady Gaga Reveals 'Chromatica Ball' Release Date Nearly Two Years After Announcement

Lady Gaga ‘s long-awaited Chromatica Ball will finally hit screens this month following a two-year wait, the singer announced Wednesday.

The concert film, originally announced in 2022, will include footage from Gaga’s global Chromatica Ball stadium tour, which featured music from her 2020 album, Chromatica . The movie premieres on HBO on May 28, and will subsequently be available to stream on Max.

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Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga (born March 28, 1986, New York City, New York, U.S.) is an American singer-songwriter and performance artist, known for her flamboyant costumes, provocative lyrics, and strong vocal talents, who achieved enormous popular success with songs such as "Just Dance," "Bad Romance," and "Born This Way.". Early life and career. Germanotta was born into an Italian American family ...
Lady Gaga
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Lady Gaga
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Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga. Actress: A Star Is Born. Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is an American songwriter, singer, actress, philanthropist, dancer and fashion designer. Gaga was born on March 28, 1986 in Manhattan, New York City, to Cynthia Louise (Bissett), a philanthropist and business executive, and Joseph Anthony Germanotta, Jr., an internet entrepreneur. Her father is of Italian ...
Lady Gaga/Early Years
1986-2004: Early life. Stefani Germanotta (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ), who performs under the stage name Lady Gaga, was born on March 28, 1986 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, New York, the eldest child of Joseph and Cynthia (née Bissett) Germanotta. She is mostly of Italian heritage with some French ancestry on her ...
Lady Gaga Biography
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Lady Gaga
1.1 1986-2004: Early life. 1.2 2005-07: Career beginnings. 1.3 2008-11: The Fame and The Fame Monster. ... 1986), better known as her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, activist, record producer, businesswoman, fashion designer, philanthropist, actress, dancer and model.
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The "Just Dance" video, shot a few miles from the Roosevelt, features Gaga shimmying with a disco ball in her hands while her friends drape themselves on a couch nearby—though most of those ...
Lady Gaga: Biography, Success Story, Life Facts
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March 10, 2015. When Lady Gaga performed her Sound of Music tribute at the Oscars in February, many onlookers were genuinely surprised by Mother Monster's chops. Critics had assumed she was all ...
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In 2010, Lady Gaga told MTV that she felt deeply connected to her Aunt Joanne, though they had never met. Joanne was a poet and a painter but died before publishing her works. So, as a gift to her father, Lady Gaga printed her aunt's poetry in the liner notes of her 2008 debut album "The Fame." Later, she released her 2016 album "Joanne" as a tribute to her late aunt — and as a further ...
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Today, Lady Gaga has sold over 125 million albums and has made her mark in the film industry with roles in major movies such as A Star Is Born (2018) and House of Gucci (2021). Childhood Born into an upper-middle-class Catholic family, Germanotta's musical journey started when her mother insisted on her learning the piano at the age of four to ...
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The True Story Of Lady Gaga's Rise To Fame. Subscribe to our channel: https://goo.gl/hHvOf8 Lady Gaga has been a prominent and iconic figure in the music ind...
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Lady Gaga Biography. February 20, 2024 by 2gqci. ... Childhood & Early Life. Lady Gaga, originally named Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, was born on March 28, 1986, in Manhattan, New York City. She was born to Joseph Anthony Germanotta Jr and Cynthia Louise. Stefani attended the Roman-Catholic institution named 'Convent of the Sacred ...
Before she was Gaga
Before she was Gaga. 1 of 15. Editor's note: This story was originally published on February 24, 2012. CNN —. We've come to know her as Lady Gaga, but before the world tours, "The Fame ...
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Lady Gaga: A Biography details Lady Gaga's life from birth to 2011. Readers will learn about her personal background—where she was born, who her parents were, what her early school years as a "weird girl" with "rabbit teeth" were like—as well as her pre-fame years where she gained an education in music and "paid her dues" as a small-time ...
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The Rise of a Pop Star in an Age of Celebrity. [email protected]. M. De em, Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58468-7_3. CH AP TE R 3. The Life and Times of Lady Gaga. The ...
Lady Gaga (American Singer-Songwriter And Actress) Biography
Born in New York City, New York, on March 28, 1986, Lady Gaga is an American singer-songwriter and performance artist. She is well-known for her outrageous outfits, thought-provoking lyrics, and powerful vocal range.
Tony Bennett: Biography, Jazz Singer, Collaborator of Lady Gaga
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PDF Lady Gaga biography
Lady Gaga is a singer, songwriter, performance artist, and actress. Since rising to pop music stardom in the early 2000s with her catchy dance songs—as well as her highly original persona and avant-garde, often outrageous outfits—she has expanded the scope of her career and explored various public images. She has also frequently used her ...
Lady Gaga drops trailer for HBO Chromatica Ball concert film: Watch
Put your paws up, little monsters. It's time to return to Chromatica. "I've always just said I was born this way," Gaga says in the clip, referencing her 2011 hit "Born This Way." The HBO ...
Lady Gaga Reveals 'Chromatica Ball' Release Date
A post shared by Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) The Chromatica Ball tour was initially scheduled for summer 2020, but was postponed due to COVID-19. The singer announced the film in September 2022, when ...