Lady Gaga (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta; March 28, 1986) is an American singer, songwriter and performance artist. She began performing in the rock music scene of New York City's Lower East Side. Lady Gaga soon signed with Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, upon its establishment in 2007. During her early time at Interscope, Gaga worked as a songwriter for fellow label artists and captured the attention of Akon, who recognized her vocal talent, and had her also sign to to his own label, Kon Live Distribution.

Her debut album The Fame was released in August 2008 and was a critical and commercial success. In addition to receiving generally positive reviews, it went number-one in four countries, also topping the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart in the United States. The album's first two singles, "Just Dance" and "Poker Face", co-written and co-produced with RedOne, have become international number-one hits, and the former was nominated for Best Dance Recording at the 51st Grammy Awards. In early 2009, after having opened for New Kids on the Block and the Pussycat Dolls, Gaga embarked on her first headlining tour, The Fame Ball Tour. By the end of 2009, Gaga released The Fame Monster, an extension of The Fame, containing eight new songs with the global chart-topping lead single "Bad Romance", as well as having embarked on her second headlining tour of the year, The Monster Ball Tour.

Gaga is inspired by glam rockers such as David Bowie and Queen, as well as pop singers like Michael Jackson and Madonna. She is also inspired by fashion, which she has said is an essential component to her songwriting and performances. To date she has sold over 20 million digital singles and more than four million albums worldwide.

1986–2004: Early life and education

Born on March 28, 1986 in New York City, New York, the eldest child of Joseph and Cynthia (née Bissett) Germanotta, she is of Italian heritage. At age 11, she was set to join Juilliard School in Manhattan, but instead attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private Roman Catholic school. Playing piano by ear from the age of 4, she went on to write her first piano ballad at 13 and began performing at open mike nights by age 14. At age 17, she gained early admission to the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. There, she studied music and improved her songwriting skills by composing essays and analytical papers focusing on topics such as art, religion and socio-political order. She later withdrew from the school to focus on her musical career.

2005–2007: Career beginnings

Gaga had initially signed with Def Jam Recordings at the age of 19 after Island Def Jam Music Group Chairman and CEO L. A. Reid heard her singing down the hallway from his office. After three months, Gaga was dropped from Def Jam, although at the same time, her former management company introduced her to songwriter and producer RedOne, whom they also managed. The first song she produced together with RedOne was "Boys Boys Boys", a mash-up inspired by Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls" and AC/DC's "T.N.T." She moved out of her parents' house and started performing downtown in the Lower East Side club scene, with bands Mackin Pulsifer and SGBand. Soon after she began taking drugs and performing at burlesque shows. Gaga said her father "just didn't understand it", and that he could not look at her for several months. Music producer Rob Fusari, who helped Gaga write some of her earlier songs, compared her vocal style to that of Freddie Mercury. He nicknamed her Gaga, after the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga". She began to use it as her stage name and was known thereafter as Lady Gaga.

Throughout 2007, Gaga collaborated with performance artist Lady Starlight, who helped her create her onstage fashions. The pair began playing gigs at downtown club venues like the Mercury Lounge, The Bitter End, and the Rockwood Music Hall, with their live performance art piece known as "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue". Billed as "The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow", their act was a low-fi tribute to 1970s variety acts. In August 2007, Gaga and Starlight were invited to play at the American music festival Lollapalooza. The show was critically acclaimed, and their performance received highly positive reviews. Having initially focused on avant-garde, and electronic dance music, Gaga found her musical niche when she began to incorporate pop melodies and the vintage glam rock of David Bowie and Queen into the mix.

Rob Fusari sent the songs he produced with Gaga to his friend, producer and record executive Vincent Herbert. Herbert was quick to sign Gaga to his label Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, upon its establishment in 2007. Gaga has credited Herbert as the man who "discovered me", while adding that "I really feel like we made pop history, and we're gonna keep going". Having already 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, as well as being commissioned by Interscope to write for labelmates New Kids on the Block, Fergie and the Pussycat Dolls. While she was writing at Interscope, singer-songwriter Akon recognized her vocal abilities during her singing of a reference vocal for one of his tracks in studio. He then convinced Interscope-Geffen-A&M Chairman and CEO Jimmy Iovine to form a joint deal by having Gaga also sign with his own label, Kon Live Distribution, and would later call Gaga his "franchise player." Gaga pursued her collaboration with RedOne by working with him in the studio for a week on her debut album, spawning the debut international hit singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". Gaga also joined the roster of Cherrytree Records, an Interscope imprint established by producer and songwriter Martin Kierszenbaum, after co-writing four songs with Kierszenbaum including the single "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)".

2008–present: The Fame and The Fame Monster

By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles, working closely with her record label to finalize her debut album The Fame. Gaga said that she combined a lot of different genres on the album, "from Def Leppard drums and handclaps to metal drums on urban tracks." She began to work with a collective called the Haus of Gaga, who collaborate with Gaga on her clothing, stage sets, and sounds. The Fame received mostly positive reviews from critics; according to the music review aggregation of Metacritic, it has received an average score of 71/100. Times Online described the album as "a fantastic mix of Bowie-esque ballads, dramatic, Queen-inspired midtempo numbers and synth-based dance tracks that poke fun at celebrity-chasing rich kids." The Fame peaked at number one in Austria, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland, and at number four in Australia and the United States; worldwide sales as of July 2009 stand at 3 million copies. The album's lead single, "Just Dance," was released on April 8, 2008, and has topped the charts in six countries - Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It received a Grammy nomination for the Best Dance Recording, but lost to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." The second single, "Poker Face", was released on September 23, 2008, and has reached number one in nearly twenty countries, including almost all major music markets in the world. "Poker Face" became Gaga's second consecutive number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 2009.

Afterward, the Haus of Gaga turned its focus further upon the American market with Gaga going on her first ever concert tour with fellow Interscope pop group, the reformed New Kids on the Block. Gaga started her stint with them in Los Angeles on October 8, 2008, and continued through the end of November. She appeared as a guest artist on the song "Big Girl Now" from their new album, The Block. Gaga's first headlining North American tour, The Fame Ball Tour, began on March 12, 2009, and has received critical acclaim. Gaga opened for the Pussycat Dolls on the U.K leg of their World Domination Tour and Australia in May. Her performance there was well-received, with a reviewer writing that she upstaged the Dolls. Around the same time, the music video for her international third single, "LoveGame," was banned by the Australian channel Network Ten, who refused to play the video reasoning that it contained sexually explicit imagery.