Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta)

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), in New York City, better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American pop singer-songwriter. After performing in the rock music scene of New York City's Lower East Side in 2003 and later enrolling at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she soon signed with Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records. During her early time at Interscope, she worked as a songwriter for fellow label artists and captured the attention of rapper Akon, who recognized her vocal abilities, and signed her to his own label, Kon Live Distribution.


Lady Gaga eldest child of Italian American Joseph Germanotta, an internet entrepreneur, and Cynthia (née Bissett).She is left-handedand began learning to play piano aged four, went on to write her first piano ballad at 13 and began performing at open mike nights by age 14.Gaga was raised a Roman Catholic. At the age of 11, Gaga attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school on Manhattan's Upper East Side, but has stressed that she does not come from a wealthy background, saying that her parents "both came from lower-class families, so we've worked for everything—my mother worked eight to eight out of the house, in telecommunications, and so did my father."An avid actor in high school musicals, Gaga portrayed lead roles as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. When Lady Gaga was a little girl, she would sing along on her mini plastic tape recorder to Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper hits and get twirled in the air in daddy’s arms to the sounds of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The precocious child would dance around the table at fancy Upper West Side restaurants using the breadsticks as a baton. And, she would innocently greet a new babysitter in nothing but her birthday suit. It’s no wonder that little girl from a good Italian New York family, turned into the exhibitionist, multi-talented singer-songwriter with a flair for theatrics that she is today: Lady Gaga.

Gaga's second studio album and third major release Born This Way will be released on May 23, 2011. She announced the title of the album during her acceptance speech for Video of the Year at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards.Its arrival follows the release of its eponymous lead single on February 11, 2011.The previous date for the single release of February 13, 2011, was tweeted by Gaga at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day, 2011.Described as "a marriage of electronic music with majormetal or rock 'n' roll, pop, anthemic style melodies with really sledge-hammering dance beats", Born This Way will be Gaga's third release in three years.She stated, "It came so quickly. I've been working on (the album) for months, and I feel very strongly that it's finished right now. Some artists take years. I don't. I write music every day."With two tracks already confirmed by Gaga—one she has been performing during The Monster Ball Tour, she has referred to the album as "about what keeps us up at night and what makes us afraid."Likening Born This Way to "bad kids going to church" that are "having fun on a high level",Gaga characterized her new music as "something so much deeper than a wig or lipstick or a fucking meat dress" and upon hearing it, Akon remarked that she will take music to the "next level." On February 13, Gaga performed live for the first time her single "Born This Way", released on February 11, on the 53rd Grammy Awards. She was carried by fashion models through the red carpet in a gigantic embryo-shaped incubator (called "The Vessel") by its designer, Hussein Chalayan, from where she emerged onstage for her performance. The song debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100, being the 19th number-one debut and the 1,000th number-one single in the history of the charts.[On April 18, it was announced that Queen guitarist Brian May provides electric guitar for the track "Yoü and I".
Lending her vocals elsewhere, Gaga also paired with Elton John to record an original duet for the animated feature film Gnomeo & Juliet. The song, titled "Hello, Hello", was released on February 11, 2011, without Gaga's vocals. The duet version is only featured in the film. She undertook her job as a fashion columnist for V, where she wrote about her creative process, her studying of the world of pop culture, and her ability to tune into the evolution of pop-culture meme.