Lady GaGa Bio

Joanne Stefani Germanotta (born March 20, 1986), best known by her stage name Lady GaGa, is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Born in Yonkers, New York, to an Italian family, Gaga is known for work in the electronica genre, and has been nominated for a Grammy Award. In 2008 she released her debut album, The Fame which she explained was "about how anyone can feel famous". To date, the album spawned the hit singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". Both singles topped the Canadian Hot 100 as well as ARIA Singles Chart.

By the age of fourteen, she was playing open-mic nights at New York’s Bitter End. 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, 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.

Germanotta started hanging out downtown, performing in the Lower East Side club scene with previous bands, Mackin Pulsifer and SGBand. 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. Her entrepreneur father was shocked when his daughter ran off to the Lower East Side to dabble in drugs and appear in burlesque shows at dive bars with drag queens and go-go dancers. "He couldn’t look at me for a few months," she admits of her early experimentations. "I was in leather thongs, so it was hard for him — he just didn’t understand. But my parents saw me getting better, and now my father cries when he sees me perform."

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 performed the song "Again, Again" for Fusari that she created the stage name, Lady GaGa (which is a reference to the song "Radio Ga-Ga" by Queen). He started calling her "GaGa" as a nickname around the studio after noticing she evoked the high theatrical stylings of Queen lead vocalist Freddie Mercury while performing. "He [Rob Fusari] said to me 'That's the most interesting part of you, right there. That girl'. Then I just took a vow to always be that honest" recalls Lady GaGa.