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Joanne Stefani Germanotta (born March 20, 1986), best known by her stage name Lady GaGa, is an American singer-songwriter and musician, known for work in the electronica genre.

Biography

She attended Convent of the Sacred Heart School, an exclusive private all-girls school; also attended by Nicky and Paris Hilton. As a little girl, she remembers singing into a plastic tape recorder to the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson. By age four, Lady GaGa had taught herself to play the piano by ear. When she was a teenager she penned her first song. When she was just fourteen she was playing open mic nights at New York’s Bitter End, and by the age of seventeen she was one of twenty people in the world to gain early admission to the Clive Davis program at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She was a fixture in the productions of the Regis High School Repertory, including the roles of Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Anna Andreyevna in The Government Inspector, Lola in Damn Yankees, Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and Alice More in A Man for All Seasons. She also sang in the productions of the Regis Jazz Band.

Discovering the Fame

Germanotta started hanging out downtown, performing in the Lower East Side club scene. Finding herself surrounded by singers who all wrote the same style of music, she decided to do something fresh and provocative in the rock’n roll underground: pop music. In 2006, she started working with music producer Rob Fusari, with whom she wrote several of her early downtown hits like “Beautiful Dirty Rich“, “Dirty Ice Cream” and “Disco Heaven”. It was when she wrote the song “Again, Again” with Fusari that she created the stage name, Lady GaGa (which is a reference to the song “Radio Ga-Ga” by Queen).[3] He said she was “so theatrical and dramatic, so Freddie Mercury, so Radio Gaga” while she sang the song on piano, and he then started calling her GaGa around the studio as a nickname to which Stefani later added “Lady”, to feminize it.

Lady GaGa was originally signed to Def Jam when she was nineteen years old but was dropped after three months. In early 2007, she was offered a deal with Interscope, hired as a songwriter and partnered with singer/producer/songwriter Akon. While working on demo tracks for an artist signed to Konvict Muzik, Tami Chynn, Akon would have GaGa go into the booth to lay down reference vocals. Realizing her immense singing talent and after listening to her demo recordings, Akon later signed her to a joint deal with Kon Live.

During this time, Lady GaGa worked with Lower East Side DJ/go-go dancer/performance artist Lady Starlight, who helped Lady GaGa create her on stage fashions. 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.

Background information
Birth name Joanne Stefani Germanotta
Born March 20, 1986 (1986-03-20) (age 22)
Origin Yonkers, New York, United States
Genre(s) Pop, dance-pop, electropop, R&B, hip hop, piano rock
Occupation(s) Singer, songwriter
Years active 2008 – present
Label(s) Streamline, Kon Live, Interscope
Website www.ladygaga.com Official Website