Tracking an Artist Throughout Their Career.

   Lady Gaga.  

 

 

Real Name: Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta

 

D.O.B: March 28th 1986

 

Place of Birth: New York City, USA

 

Fan base name: The Little Monsters

 

In the summer of 2005, Lady Gaga recorded a few songs with hip-hop singer Grandmaster Melle Mel, for an audio book to the children's book 'The Portal in the Park', written by Cricket Casey. This was the beginning of her musical career. She also started the Stefani Germanotta band with some of her friends in September 2005. They had a small group of fans, but eventually earned the attention of Joe Vulpis- a music producer.They spent some time in Vulpis' studio. Soon SGBand were selling  'Words' and 'Red and Blue' (both 2005) at gigs around New York. They were also local celebs of the downtown Lower East Side club area.

 

In 2006, the band peeked at the Songwriters hall of fame new songwriters showcase at the Cutting Room in June. Wendy Starland was a talent scout for producer Rob Fusari that day. Fusari was looking for a female lead singer for his new band after SGB broke up.

 

The stage name 'Lady Gaga' was then inspired by one of the best bands of all time-Queen-and their hit song 'Radio Gaga'. 

 

Fusari and Gaga set up the company 'Team Lovechild' and produced electro-pop songs. Joshua Sarubin (head of A&R at Def Jam Recordings) told the company to take a chance on Gaga, to which his boss Antonio Reid agreed. She was signed to Def Jam in September 2006 but was dropped from the label 3 months later. She returned to her parents and the Lower East Side.

 

She then dressed in little more than a bikini and started experimenting with go-go dancing, burlesque and drugs. She became a go-go dancer at St.Jerome's and she became distant from her father for many months because of her drug use. Although Germanotta had received a Catholic education, the New York Underground scene represented freedom to her.

 

Lady Gaga and Lady Starlight met, and started performing together in many various downtown clubs. Their performance was called, 'Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue'. They were invited to play at the 2007 Lollapalooza festival in August and were their performance was very positively received. Fusari still worked on songs and sent them to producer and record expert Vincent Herbert who quickly signed Gaga to Streamline records.

 

Gaga was an apprentice songwriter as an intern for Famous Music Publishing. She then struck a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV and was hired to write songs for Britney Spears, New Kids on the Bloc, The Pussycat Dolls and Fergie.

 

Akon recognised her vocal talent and  convinced Interscope-Geffen-A&M Chairman and CEO Jimmy Iovine to form a joint deal by having her also sign with his own label Kon Live.

 

Near the end of 2007, she was introduced to songwriter and producer RedOne. The first song they produced together was 'Boys Boys Boys'. They created Gaga's debut album and she joined Cherrytree Records (established by producer and songwriter Martin Kierszenbaum) after co-writing 4 songs with Kierszenbaum including, 'Christmas Tree' and, 'Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say'. There was fear about her being 'too racy', 'dance-orientated' and 'underground' for the mainstream market that the company was used to.

 

She is still extremely relevant in today's music culture and is very famous-even if that is because she wears outrageous outfits (such as a dress made from meat) and acts out from mainstream society!