Lady Gaga

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her image reinventions and versatility across the entertainment industry, she is an influential figure in popular music. With estimated sales of 124 million records, she is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Publications such as Billboard and Rolling Stone have ranked her among the greatest artists in history.

After signing with Interscope Records in 2007, Gaga achieved global recognition with her debut album, The Fame (2008), and its reissue, The Fame Monster (2009). The project yielded a string of successful singles, including "Just Dance", "Poker Face", and "Bad Romance", which made her one of the few artists with at least three Diamond-certified songs in the US. Her second studio album, Born This Way (2011), explored electronic rock and techno-pop and sold 1.1 million copies first-week in the US. Its title track became the fastest-selling song on the iTunes Store, with over one million downloads in less than a week. Following her electronic dance music-influenced third album, Artpop (2013), she pursued jazz on the album Cheek to Cheek (2014) with Tony Bennett, and delved into soft rock on the album Joanne (2016).

Gaga also ventured into acting, gaining praise for her leading roles in the miniseries American Horror Story: Hotel (2015–2016) and the films A Star Is Born (2018) and House of Gucci (2021). Her contributions to the A Star Is Born soundtrack, which spawned the chart-topping single "Shallow", made her the first person to win an Academy, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Grammy Award in one year. Gaga returned to her early sound with the pop-oriented albums Chromatica (2020) and Mayhem (2025), which respectively included the number-one singles "Rain on Me" and "Die with a Smile". She also continued to explore jazz with Love for Sale (2021), her second and final album with Bennett, and the soundtrack Harlequin (2024).

Gaga has seven number-one albums and six number-one songs on the US Billboard 200 and Hot 100 charts, respectively. She is the only female artist with four singles that each sold at least 10 million copies globally and holds the record for the most-attended concert by a woman. The highest-paid female musician in 2011, she has received 16 Grammy Awards, 22 MTV Video Music Awards, 2 Golden Globe Awards, a Sports Emmy Award, and a recognition from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Gaga's philanthropy and activism focus on mental health awareness and LGBTQ rights. Her business ventures include vegan cosmetics brand Haus Labs and the non-profit Born This Way Foundation, which supports the wellness of young people.

Life and career

1986–2004: Early life

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born into an upper-middle-class Catholic family on March 28, 1986, at Lenox Hill Hospital in the neighborhood of Lenox Hill, Manhattan, New York City, United States. Both of her parents have Italian ancestry. Her parents are Cynthia Louise (née Bissett), a philanthropist and business executive, and Internet entrepreneur Joseph Germanotta, and she has a younger sister named Natali. Brought up in the neighborhood of Upper West Side, Gaga said in an interview that her parents came from lower-class families and worked hard for everything. From age 11, she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Catholic school. Gaga has described her high-school self as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure". She considered herself a misfit and was mocked for "being either too provocative or too eccentric".

Gaga began playing the piano at age four when her mother insisted she become "a cultured young woman". She took piano lessons and practiced through her childhood. The lessons taught Gaga to learn music by ear, which she preferred over reading sheet music. Gaga's parents encouraged her to pursue music and enrolled her in Creative Arts Camp. As a teenager, she played at open mic nights. Gaga played the lead roles of Adelaide in the play Guys and Dolls and Philia in the play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Regis High School. She also studied method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute for ten years. Her screen debut was a background appearance in the 2000 music video for AC/DC's song "Stiff Upper Lip". Gaga auditioned unsuccessfully for New York shows, though did appear in a small background role as a high-school student in a 2001 episode of The Sopranos titled "The Telltale Moozadell". Fan interest in that episode increased when a clip of Gaga's scene surfaced online in 2010. She later said of her inclination towards music:

I don't know exactly where my affinity for music comes from, but it is the thing that comes easiest to me. When I was like three years old, I may have been even younger, my mom always tells this really embarrassing story of me propping myself up and playing the keys like this because I was too young and short to get all the way up there. Just go like this on the low end of the piano ... I was really, really good at piano, so my first instincts were to work so hard at practicing piano, and I might not have been a natural dancer, but I am a natural musician. That is the thing that I believe I am the greatest at.

In 2003, 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. She studied music there and improved her songwriting skills by writing essays on art, religion, social issues, and politics, including a thesis on pop artists Spencer Tunick and Damien Hirst. In 2005, Gaga withdrew from school during the second semester of her second year to focus on her music career. That year, she also played an unsuspecting diner customer for MTV's Boiling Points, a prank reality television show.

In a 2014 interview, Gaga discussed being raped at age 19 by her producer, and later undergoing mental and physical therapy for this. She has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and attributes it to the incident, stating that the trauma had changed her as a person, and would never leave her. She has credited support from doctors, family, and friends with helping her. Gaga later gave additional details about the rape, including that "the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner at my parents' house because I was vomiting and sick. Because I'd been being abused. I was locked away in a studio for months."

2005–2007: Career beginnings

In 2005, Gaga recorded two songs with rapper Melle Mel for an audio book accompanying Cricket Casey's children's novel The Portal in the Park. She also formed a band called the SGBand with some friends from NYU. They played gigs around New York and became a fixture of the downtown Lower East Side club scene. After the 2006 Songwriters Hall of Fame New Songwriters Showcase at the Cutting Room in June, talent scout Wendy Starland recommended her to music producer Rob Fusari. Fusari collaborated with Gaga, who traveled daily to New Jersey, helping to develop her songs and compose new material. The producer said they began dating in May 2006, and claimed to have been the first person to call her "Lady Gaga", which was derived from Queen's song "Radio Ga Ga". According to his account, the name was coined when on one occasion he attempted to call her "Radio Ga Ga" via text message, but the spell checker autocorrected "Radio" to "Lady". Their relationship lasted until January 2007.

Fusari and Gaga established a company called Team Lovechild, LLC to promote her career. They recorded and produced electropop tracks, sending them to music industry executives. Joshua Sarubin, the head of Artists and repertoire (A&R) at Def Jam Recordings, responded positively and, after approval from Sarubin's boss Antonio "L.A." Reid, Gaga was signed to Def Jam in September 2006. She was dropped from the label three months later and returned to her family home for Christmas. Gaga began performing at neo-burlesque shows, and said these represented freedom to her. During this time, she met performance artist Lady Starlight, who helped mold her onstage persona. The pair began performing at downtown club venues like the Mercury Lounge, the Bitter End, and the Rockwood Music Hall. Their live performance art piece, known as "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue" and billed as "The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow", was a tribute to 1970s variety acts. They performed at the 2007 Lollapalooza music festival.