Lady Gaga

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, to an upper middle-class Catholic family. Both of her parents have Italian ancestry.

Gaga began playing the piano at age four when her mother insisted she become “a cultured young woman” and took piano lessons and practised throughout her childhood.

In 2003, at age 17, Gaga gained early admission to Collaborative Arts Project 21, a music school at New York University (NYU)’s Tisch School of the Arts, and lived in an NYU dorm.

Her stage name was inspired by Queen‘s 1984 hit “Radio Ga Ga.” She told Flybe Magazine that her former producer and boyfriend Rob Fusari first called her Gaga, and claimed that the name came about when he texted “Radio Gaga” and it autocorrected to “Lady Gaga,” which prompted Gaga to take on the name.

Living in New York, she worked as a waitress in an Upper East Side diner and a stripper in the Lower East Side. When she stripped, she was part of the duo “Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue,” where they performed ’70s and ’80s cover songs. She stated: “I’d wear black leather and dance to Black Sabbath, Guns N’ Roses, and Faith No More. Very rock ‘n’ roll.”

At 19 years old, Gaga was signed by Def Jam Records for a short time. In 2008 her then-boyfriend Fusari got her a job at Interscope Records co-writing songs for other artists including for Britney Spears, Fergie, The Pussycat Dolls, and New Kids on the Block.

By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles to work extensively with her record label to complete her debut album, The Fame, and to set up her own creative team called the Haus of Gaga, modeled on Andy Warhol’s The Factory.

Her debut studio album The Fame was released in August 2008 and reached number one in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK. Its first two singles, “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” reached number one in the United States, Australia, Canada and the UK. The latter was also the world’s bestselling single of 2009, with 9.8 million copies sold that year, and spent a record 83 weeks on Billboard magazine’s Digital Songs chart.

Although Gaga is known for her acclaimed roles in American Horror Story, A Star is Born, and House of Gucci, she made a TV appearance much earlier. At 15 years old, Gaga – credited as Stefani Germanotta – played “Girl at Swimming Pool #2” in a season three episode of The Sopranos.

The singer’s second studio album, Born This Way, was released in May 2011 and reached the number-one spot in the United States along with twenty other countries. Its eponymous lead single was an international success, peaking at number one in nineteen countries including the United States, where it became her third number-one single.

The 2011, single “Born This Way” sold more than one million copies within five days, earning the Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling single on iTunes. It debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the 1,000th number-one single in the history of the charts.

For her performance at the 87th Academy Awards, she sang a medley of songs from The Sound of Music in a tribute to Julie Andrews.

Elton John and David Furnish have two sons, Zachary and Elijah. Friends with the couple, Gaga was honoured with being named both children’s godmother. She released a cover of Elton John’s “Your Song” for his tribute album Revamp.

In Taichung, Taiwan, July 3 is designated as “Lady Gaga Day” marking the first day Gaga visited the country in 2011.

In 2011, 121 women gathered at the Grammy Awards dressed in costumes similar to those worn by Gaga, earning the 2011 Guinness World Record for Largest Gathering of Lady Gaga Impersonators.

After the release of her film A Star is Born and its chart-topping soundtrack and song “Shallow,” Gaga became the first woman to win awards from the five major award shows within the same year. First, at the Golden Globes, Gaga won Best Original Song for a Motion Picture for “Shallow.” Then at the Critics’ Choice Awards, she again won best song for “Shallow.” At the Grammys, Gaga and Bradley Cooper won for best pop duo/group performance of the year. Gaga also won in the category of best song written for visual media with her co-writers. Gaga also accepted the award for best film music for A Star is Born at the BAFTAs and an Oscar for Best Original Song for “Shallow” at the Academy Awards.

In September 2014, Gaga and Tony Bennett released the collaborative album Cheek to Cheek. The two first met at the Robin Hood Foundation gala in New York City in 2011, and later recorded a rendition of “The Lady Is a Tramp” together, after which they began discussing plans to work on a jazz project.

She is the longest-reigning act of Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Albums chart with 244 weeks at number one, while The Fame (2008) holds the record for the most time on top in the chart’s history, with 175 non-consecutive weeks.

A bisexual woman, Gaga actively supports LGBT rights worldwide. She attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered a gay icon.

Gaga is one of the world’s best-selling music artists, with estimated sales of 170 million records as of 2018,

The singer revealed to Vogue Magazine that when she performed at Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Gaga wore a stunning and dramatic blue and red gown by Schiaparelli which was bulletproof.

Gaga made an appearance in the television special Friends: The Reunion, in which Gaga sang “Smelly Cat” with Lisa Kudrow.

A new genus of ferns, Gaga, and three species, G. germanotta, G. monstraparva and Kaikaia gaga, have been named in her honour. The name monstraparva alluded to Gaga’s fans, known as Little Monsters, since their symbol is the outstretched “monster claw” hand, which resembles a tightly rolled young fern leaf prior to unfurling.

Her sixth studio album, Chromatica, was released on May 29, 2020. It debuted atop the US charts, becoming her sixth consecutive number-one album in the country, and reached the top spot in more than a dozen other territories.