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1986–2004: Early life

Stefani Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, the eldest child of Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta (nee Bissett), in New York City. She is of Italian American descent through her father, and French, German, and English heritage through her mother. 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 mic nights by age 14. At age 11, the singer attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private Roman Catholic school. An avid thespian in high school musicals, Germanotta portrayed lead roles as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Chorus girls cattily would call her "the Germ." "They always talked behind her back, like, 'Gross, she’s the Germ! She’s dirty!'" remembered a classmate. She described her academic life in high school as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure" as she told in an interview, "I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down. I didn’t fit in, and I felt like a freak."

Acquaintances dispute that she didn't fit in in school. "Stefani was always part of school plays and musicals," recalled a former high school classmate. "She had a core group of friends; she was a good student. She liked boys a lot, but singing was No. 1." "She was always popular," said Julia Lindenthal, Marymount ’04. "I don’t remember her experiencing any social problems or awkwardness."

At age 17, Germanotta 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, social issues and politics.

Germanotta lived in an NYU dorm on 11th Street but quickly felt that she was further along creatively than some of her classmates. "Once you learn how to think about art, you can teach yourself," she says. By the second semester of her sophomore year, she withdrew from the school to focus on her musical career. Her father reportedly agreed to pay her rent for a year on the condition that she reenroll if she was unsuccessful. “I left my entire family, got the cheapest apartment I could find, and ate shit until somebody would listen,” she said.

Contrary to her subsequent outr? style, the New York Post described her early look as like "a refugee from Jersey Shore" with "big black hair, heavy eye makeup and tight, revealing clothes.""She was a very suburban, preppy, friendly, social party girl," says a former dorm-mate, who was friends with members of her former jam band. "There was nothing that would tip you off that she had this Warhol-esque, ‘new art’ extremism." Another acquaintance noted that her 'crazy' outfits at the time, "was putting suspenders on her jeans."

2005–2007: Career beginnings

Germanotta 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, she 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 Motley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls" and AC/DC's "T.N.T." She moved into an apartment on the Lower East Side, with a futon for a couch and a Yoko Ono record hung over her bed. From there she started the Stefani Germanotta Band with some friends from NYU, recording an EP of her Fiona Apple–esque ballads at a studio underneath a liquor store in New Jersey, becoming a local fixture performing downtown in the LES club scene. Soon after she began taking drugs and performing at burlesque shows. She 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 her write some of her earlier songs, compared her vocal style to that of Freddie Mercury. Fusari helped create the moniker Gaga, after the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga". The singer was in the process of trying to come up with a stage name, when she received a text message from Fusari that read "Lady Gaga".

"Every day, when Stef came to the studio, instead of saying hello, I would start singing 'Radio Ga Ga.' That was her entrance song. [Lady Gaga] was actually a glitch; I typed 'Radio Ga Ga' in a text and it did an autocorrect so somehow 'Radio' got changed to 'Lady'. She texted me back, "That's it." After that day, she was Lady Gaga. She’s like, "Don’t ever call me Stefani again."" — Rob Fusari

She was known thereafter as Lady Gaga. Throughout 2007, she 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, she and Lady Starlight were invited to play at the American Lollapalooza music festival. The show was critically acclaimed, and their performance received highly positive reviews. Having initially focused on avant-garde, and electronic dance music, Lady 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. During this time she was featured on a couple of songs in a two-CD audio book that was done to go along with the children's book The Portal in the Park by Cricket Casey. She performed with Melle Mel on the songs "World Family Tree" and "The Fountain of Truth".

Rob Fusari sent songs he produced with her to his friend, producer and record executive Vincent Herbert. Herbert was quick to sign her to his label Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, upon its establishment in 2007. She has credited Herbert as the man who discovered her, 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, she 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 her also sign with his own label, Kon Live Distribution, and would later call her his "franchise player." She 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". She 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. She said that she combined a lot of different genres on the album, "from Def Leppard drums and hand claps to metal drums on urban tracks." She began to work with a collective called the Haus of Gaga, who collaborate with her 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. It peaked at number one in Austria, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland, and the top-five in Australia and the United States. 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. Gaga went on her first concert tour with fellow Interscope pop group, the reformed New Kids on the Block. She started her stint with them in Los Angeles on October 8, 2008, and continued through the end of November. Her first headlining North American tour, The Fame Ball Tour, began on March 12, 2009. She opened for the Pussycat Dolls on the UK and Australian leg of their World Domination Tour in May.

Gaga appeared semi-nude, wearing only plastic bubbles, on the cover of the annual 'Hot 100' issue of Rolling Stone in May 2009. In the issue she discussed that while she was making her beginnings in the New York club scene, she was romantically involved with a heavy metal drummer. She described their relationship and break-up, saying of it, "I was his Sandy, and he was my Danny [of Grease], and I just broke." He later became an inspiration behind some of the songs on her debut album The Fame. Gaga appeared on rapper Wale's single "Chillin." She was nominated for a total of nine awards at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards winning the award for "Best New Artist", while her single "Paparazzi" won two awards for "Best Art Direction" and "Best Special Effects." In October 2009, Gaga received Billboard magazine's Rising Star of 2009 award. She attended the Human Rights Campaign's "National Dinner" on October 10, 2009, before marching in the National Equality March in Washington, D.C. In November 2009 she announced the release of The Fame Monster, a collection of eight songs that dealt with the darker side of fame as experienced by her over the course of 2008–09 while travelling around the world, and are expressed through a monster metaphor. "Bad Romance" was released as the first single from the album. It topped the British, Canadian, Irish, Finnish, Danish and Swedish charts while reaching the top-two in the United States, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. On December 11, 2009, she met Queen Elizabeth II and sang the song "Speechless" at The 2009 Royal Variety Performance. She also announced The Monster Ball Tour, associated with the release of her sophomore album. The singer was named chief creative officer for a line of imaging products for Polaroid at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 7, 2010 where she commented that she will create fashion, technology and photography products.

On January 14, 2010, Gaga had to cancel the Monster Ball concert in West Lafayette, Indiana, due to health concerns. In an interview with Barbara Walters, she dismissed an urban legend, the claim that she is intersexual, and responded to a question on the issue by stating: "At first it was very strange and everyone sorta said, 'That's really quite a story!' But in a sense, I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny." Gaga was nominated for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Dance Recording for her single "Poker Face", winning the last of the three. The Fame itself had been nominated for Album of the Year and won the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. The second single from The Fame Monster was "Telephone", which reached number one on Billboard's Pop songs chart, thus becoming Gaga's and Beyonc?'s sixth number one on the chart, tying them with Mariah Carey. The song also peaked the chart in UK. On March 19, 2010, Rob Fusari sued Gaga's production company Mermaid Music LLC, claiming that he was entitled to a 20% share of its earnings. Gaga's lawyer Charles Ortner described the agreement with Fusari as "unlawful" and declined to comment.

Lady Gaga has been influenced by glam rock musicians such as David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, as well as pop music artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson. The Queen song "Radio Ga Ga" inspired her stage name. She commented: "I adored Freddie Mercury and Queen had a hit called Radio Gaga. That's why I love the name... Freddie was unique - one of the biggest personalities in the whole of pop music." Madonna told Rolling Stone that she sees "[her]self in Lady Gaga." In response to the comparisons between herself and Madonna, Lady Gaga stated: "I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I've made it my goal to revolutionise pop music. The last revolution was launched by Madonna 25 years ago." Fashion icon, actress and singer Grace Jones has also been cited as an inspiration. She has often been likened to Blondie singer Debbie Harry.

Lady Gaga's vocals have drawn frequent comparison to Madonna and Gwen Stefani, while the structure of her music is said to be reminiscent of classic 1980s pop and 1990s Europop. In reviewing her debut album The Fame, The Sunday Times asserted "in combining music, fashion, art and technology, Lady GaGa evokes Madonna, Gwen Stefani circa Hollaback Girl, Kylie Minogue 2001 or Grace Jones right now." Similarly, The Boston Globe critic Sarah Rodman commented that she draws "obvious inspirations from Madonna to Gwen Stefani... in [her] girlish but sturdy pipes and bubbly beats." Though her lyrics are said to lack intellectual stimulation, "[she] does manage to get you moving and grooving at an almost effortless pace." Simon Reynolds has written that "Everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just ruthlessly catchy noughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B-ish beats.

Lady Gaga has stated that she is "very into fashion" and that it is "everything" to her. She has her own creative production team called the Haus of Gaga, which she handles personally. The team creates many of her clothes, stage props, and hairdos. Her love of fashion came from her mother, who she stated was "always very well kept and beautiful." She said that: "When I'm writing music, I'm thinking about the clothes I want to wear on stage. It's all about everything altogether—performance art, pop performance art, fashion. For me, it's everything coming together and being a real story that will bring back the super-fan. I want to bring that back. I want the imagery to be so strong that fans will want to eat and taste and lick every part of us." The Global Language Monitor named 'Lady Gaga' as the Top Fashion Buzzword with her trademark 'no pants' coming in at No. 3. Entertainment Weekly put her outfits on its end of the decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Whether it's a dress made of Muppets or strategically placed bubbles, Gaga's outr? ensembles brought performance art into the mainstream. (We're still not sold on the hair bow, though.)" In response to Lady Gaga saying that she considers Donatella Versace her muse, Melissa Magsaysay of Los Angeles Times commented, "[Gaga's] aversion to wearing a top and bottom at the same time swigging champagne and being fanned by oily men in Speedos [is] very Donatella-esque." Toward the end of 2008, comparisons were made between the fashions of Lady Gaga and recording artist Christina Aguilera, noting similarities in their styling, hair, and make-up. Aguilera later said she was "completely unaware of [Gaga]" and "didn't know if it [was] a man or a woman." Lady Gaga released a statement in which she welcomed the comparisons due to the attention providing useful publicity, saying, "She's such a huge star and if anything I should send her flowers, because a lot of people in America didn't know who I was until that whole thing happened. It really put me on the map in a way." Alice Cooper called her style "vaudevillian". Lady Gaga is a natural brunette, however she had cited a reason for bleaching her hair blonde was that she was often mistaken for Amy Winehouse.

She has six known tattoos, among them a peace symbol which was inspired by the late John Lennon who The Guardian stated was her "hero," and a curling German script on her left arm which quotes the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, her "favorite philosopher," commenting that his "philosophy of solitude" spoke to her:

"In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?" — Rainer Maria Rilke

Lady Gaga attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered to be a rising gay icon. Early in her career she had difficulty getting radio airplay, and stated, "The turning point for me was the gay community. I've got so many gay fans and they're so loyal to me and they really lifted me up. They'll always stand by me and I'll always stand by them. It's not an easy thing to create a fanbase." She thanked FlyLife, a Manhattan-based LGBT marketing company with whom her label Interscope works, in the liner notes of her debut studio album, The Fame, saying, "I love you so much. You were the first heartbeat in this project, and your support and brilliance means the world to me. I will always fight for the gay community hand in hand with this incredible team." One of her first televised performances was in May 2008 at the NewNowNext Awards, an awards show aired by the LGBT television network Logo, where she sang her song "Just Dance". In June of the same year, she performed the song again at the San Francisco Pride event. After The Fame was released, she revealed that the song "Poker Face" was about her bisexuality. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she spoke about how her boyfriends tended to react to her bisexuality, saying "The fact that I’m into women, they’re all intimidated by it. It makes them uncomfortable. They’re like, 'I don’t need to have a threesome. I’m happy with just you'." When she appeared as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in May 2009, she praised DeGeneres for being "an inspiration for women and for the gay community". She proclaimed that the October 11, 2009 National Equality March rally on the national mall was "the single most important event of her career." As she exited, she left with an exultant "Bless God and bless the gays," similar to her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech for Best New Artist a month earlier.

Aside from recording music, Lady Gaga contributed to a number of charities and causes throughout her career. In the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake there were numerous celebrities working together for the cause of helping restore what had been destroyed, and also helping those left to survive. Gaga donated all of her proceeds from the January 24 show of her current tour, the Monster Ball (ticket sales, merchandise, etc.), and from her online store; the total amount donated was over $500,000. She has also been very proactive with raising awareness to young women about the risk of HIV/AIDS. Along with recording artist Cyndi Lauper, Gaga teamed up with MAC AIDS Fund's VIVA Glam campaign, which raised over $160 million to fight against AIDS and HIV, and bring awareness about the diseases to women around the world. All proceeds from a purchase of a VIVA Glam lipgloss or lipstick go directly towards the fund to aid those infected with the disease. In a statement, Gaga said that, "We want women to feel strong and feel strong enough that they can remember to protect themselves. To have this lipstick as a reminder in your purse, that when your man is laying naked in bed, you go into the bathroom, you put your lipstick on, and you bring a condom out with you...There are no exceptions."