Lady Gaga

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, born March 28, 1986, known by her stage name Lady GaGa, is an American singer and songwriter who works in the electronic pop music field.

Born into a low-income family, Stephanie is the eldest child of Italian entrepreneurs Joseph Germanotta and Cynthia Bissett. At the age of four, she taught herself to play the piano, picking up tunes by ear, and as a child she sang songs by Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson, recording her voice on a cheap tape recorder. She is left-handed.

At 11 years Stephanie went to a private Catholic school "Convent of St. Christ," but was one of the poorest students, so the mother and father had to get a few jobs to pay for school. The famous Hilton sisters attended this school.

As a teenager, the future Lady GaGa wrote her first song. Already at the age of 14 she was hosting open evenings. In the theatrical productions of the school she always got the main roles. She was in the play Regis, played the role of Philia in Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum, the role of Anna Andreevna in The Government Inspector, Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Alice Moore in the production of Man for All Seasons. She also sang in the high school jazz band.

By the age of 17, Stephanie was one of only 20 people in the world to take the Cleve Davis program at the New York School of the Arts in its musical theater program ahead of schedule. She graduated far ahead of the others because she was so much smarter than her peers.

Her father paid her rent and Stephanie moved out from her parents right after high school. She switched to clubs in lower east New York, where she performed with her early bands Mackin Pulsifer and SGBand. Surrounded by musicians and singers who worked in one particular musical style, Stephanie decided to do something fresh and provocative. In 2006, she began collaborating with Rob Fasari, a well-known producer, with whom she wrote several early compositions, including "Beautiful Dirty Rich," "Dirty Ice Cream" and "Disco Heaven." Lady Gaga came up with her stage name when she performed the song "Again, Again." This moniker is a reference to the song "Radio Ga-Ga" by Queen. The day the nickname was coined, the girl asked that she never be called Stephanie again around musicians.

At 19, Stephanie signed her first contract with Def Jam, but left the label three months later. In early 2007, she was offered a job with Interscope. The executives hired her as a songwriter and put her in touch with singer Eikon, with whom she had collaborated. While working on track demos, Eikon requested that Germanotta go to the recording booth herself and do the vocals. Realizing that she herself had a talent for singing, Stephanie was offered a combined contract with Kon Live.

During this period, she met DJ Lady Starlight, who also worked as a dancer at the same time. It was she who helped Stephanie with future stage outfits. The pair collaborated together, developing a costume show from the late '70s called "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Review." They sang, danced promiscuous pas, had glittering disco balls set up on stage, and sprayed fire on the audience.

It was through her acquaintance with Eikon that Lady Gaga began working on her own material for her debut album with the producers of Red One. Already having glamorous electronic songs in stock, she wanted to mix her retro dances with urban melodies, with pop choruses and rock 'n' roll motifs. Together they created the first song, "Boys, Boys, Boys." Fasari sent the songwriting to Interscope Records, but it wasn't until Eikon spoke with management that Stephanie was signed.

In August 2007, Lady Gaga and her show ballet performed at the Lollapalooza Festival, where they entertained the crowd with their creative shows. And in October of that same year, Stephanie combined her love of the art of performing, rock 'n' roll, glamorous '70s rock, parodies, heavy metal and came up with a new weekly entertainment program called Revival of Street and Thrash Dance NYC. That's when she not only made her first appearance with blonde hair, but also the first time she demonstrated a stage concept: two dancers assisted her in dancing, while her friend DJ Lady Starlight played in the background.

By 2008 Stephanie had moved to Los Angeles to work with her record company on the album 'The Fame'. The debut single "Just Dance" was released on April 8, 2008. The song topped the charts in Canada and Australia, but went unnoticed in the United States. Although it was constantly played in clubs, the song only earned second place on Billboard's Hot Dance Songs and Hot Club Songs charts.

The debut album was released in Canada, Australia and other European countries, reaching the top 10, and Lady Gaga finally released the disc in the U.S. on Oct. 28. The disc reached No. 17 on Billboard's 200 Albums chart and sold 24,000 copies in its first week. It also debuted at number one on the electronic album charts. Critics warmly welcomed the singer's first work. And in October "Just Dance" finally started to be played on the radio. The song took a respectable No. 2 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. The second single, "Poker Face," went #1 in Australia, Canada and several other countries.

In the fall, Lady Gaga went on a promotional tour with the revived band New Kids on the Block, opening their concerts. Collaborating with the boys, she performed the song "Big Girl Now" from their new album.

In late December, it was announced that Lady Gaga would be opening for The Pussycat Dolls concert tours in Europe from January to May 2009. The tour began in Scotland on January 18.

To celebrate the second season of the hit show "Dirty Sexy Money", ABC created a brand new exclusive video for the song "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich", where viewers could visit Gaga's mansion and watch the trial.

In late 2008, Lady Gaga was nominated for a Grammy for Best Dance Recording. On January 12, 2009, the singer announced The Fame Ball tour.

In September 2009, Lady Gaga won three nominations at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York City and was officially named Download Queen on September 6, 2009 after being named one of the "40 Most Downloaded Songs of All Time" by the Official Charts Company.Published by The Official Charts Company to mark their fifth anniversary, "Poker Face" was in first place (779,000 downloads) and "Just Dance" was in third place (700,000 downloads). On September, 25th, 2009 the album "The Fame" got the platinum status in Russia.

Already by this point, Lady Gaga was at the height of fame. Her name was mentioned more and more often in all sorts of ratings and lists, she received more and more awards. In 2009, she was recognized as one of the 10 most charming people.

The album "The Fame Monster" was released on November 23, 2009. The album received somewhat controversial but generally high marks from critics, who found it to be an original, highly eccentric work that was not a formal accompaniment to the debut album, but of undeniable independent value.

In November 2009, Lady Gaga embarked on her second international tour "The Monster Ball" through early 2011. As part of the tour, the singer is scheduled to visit numerous countries including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Holland, among others. This show is very different from the first tour - it is more "progressive" in every way. With this tour, it became clear that Gaga has not hundreds but thousands of fans in power, who for 2 hours can't help but admire the fashion, debauchery, sex, art and images that the singer takes on during the show. In February 2010, a DVD version of the tour in 3D was announced.

On January 31, the 52nd Grammy Awards took place, where Lady Gaga won two of the five categories: Best Dance Hit and Dance Album of the Year.

In March 2010, the singer announced that she had started work on her new studio album. Three months later, it became known that she had finished it, but she promised that she would not release the disc until 2011, but in the summer she offered her fans an alternative - an album of official remixes of her most popular hits, which was released on August 3. Lady Gaga admitted that she writes music every day and plans to announce the title of her new album on New Year's Eve by getting a tattoo of its name on her body.

On August 3, 2010, it became known that Lady Gaga will claim 13 MTV Video Music Awards at once, which is a record for the entire history of the award.

In September 2010, at the MTV Video Music Awards, Gaga won in eight categories, a record for the award. At the same time, she entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the most searched woman on the Internet. In October 2010, Lady Gaga became the first musician to have more than a billion views of her videos on YouTube.

By March 2010, in an interview with MTV UK, Gaga announced that she had begun work on her new studio album and had already finished the album's lead song. In September, she announced the title of her third studio album, Born This Way, during her speech at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. We already know that it will include the song that Lady Gaga performed on various talk shows and also on "The Monster Ball Tour" "You and I".

Lady Gaga officially announced on her Twitter that her new single "Born This Way" will be released on February 13, 2011, and the album itself - on May 23 of the same year. On January 19, 2011, Lady Gaga presented a remix at a fashion show in Paris, the remix was called Scheisse (German for "shit"). On February 11, the singer presented the first single Born This Way from the album of the same name. On February 18, the singer spoke in an interview with Rolling Stone about the six songs from the new album[46]. On February 28, Lady Gaga unveiled a new music video for the song "Born This Way". On April 15, the single "Judas" was premiered. On the same day, Lady Gaga tweeted the cover art for the new album. On May 9th the promotional single "The Edge of Glory" was released, but because of the overwhelmingly positive feedback and good sales it was decided to make it a proper single. On May 16, the promo single "Hair" was premiered. On May 19th, the album Born This Way was officially released in France, but in the first hour after its release, thanks to the Internet, it was spread all over the world. The album received positive reviews from critics. More than 1,921,000 copies of the album were sold in the first week.

In spring 2011 it was reported that Lady Gaga paired her song The Greatest Thing (which was not on Gaga's debut album) with singer Cher, and this was later confirmed in late summer 2011 when she was supposed to sing backup vocals for the song, but Cher and Lady Gaga eventually recorded a duet. The Greatest Thing will be on Cher's 26th studio album and will be the first single from it. In November 2011, it was rumoured that Gaga was working on a new album. In January 2012, Gaga's Twitter rep left a message that Gaga will release a fourth album in late 2012, after which Fernando Garibay revealed that Gaga's fourth album is set to release in August-September 2012, adding that Gaga will return to the sound and lyrics of The Fame and The Fame Monster albums and that the album is also rumoured to contain a duet with Elton John.

Source ladygaga