Sunday, October 6, 2013
STEFANI JOANNE ANGELINA GERMANOTTA (born
March 28, 1986), known by her stage name LADY GAGA, is an American
singer-songwriter, record producer, activist, businesswoman, fashion designer
and actress. Born and raised in New York City, where she lives, Lady
Gaga primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly
attended New York University's Tisch School of the Artsbefore
withdrawing to focus on her musical career. She soon began performing in the
rock music scene of Manhattan's Lower East Side. By the end of 2007,
record executive and producer Vincent Herbert signed her to his label
Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records. Initially working as
a songwriter at Interscope Records, her vocal abilities captured the attention
of recording artist Akon, who also signed her to Kon Live
Distribution, his own label under Interscope.
In 2008, Lady Gaga came to prominence with her debut studio
album, The Fame, which was a critical and commercial success. The
record included the international number-one tracks "Just Dance" and
"Poker Face". In 2009, her extended play, The Fame
Monster, was released to a similar reception, and produced the hit singles
"Bad Romance", "Telephone", and "Alejandro". Its
accompanying Monster Ball Tour became one of thehighest-grossing
concert tours of all time. Lady Gaga's second album, Born This Way (2011),
topped albums charts in most major markets and generated chart-topping songs
"Born This Way", "Judas", and "The Edge of Glory".
Her third album, Artpop, is planned for release on November 11th,
2013.
Influenced by David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Madonna,
and Queen, Lady Gaga is recognized for her flamboyant, diverse and outré
contributions to the music industry through her fashion, performances and music
videos. As of October 2011, she had sold an estimated 23 million albums and 64
million singles worldwide and her singles are some of the best-selling
worldwide. Her achievements include five Grammy Awards and
13 MTV Video Music Awards. Lady Gaga has consecutively appeared on Billboard magazine's
Artists of the Year (scoring the definitive title in 2010), ranked fourth inVH1's
list of 100 Greatest Women in Music, is the fourth best selling digital singles
artist in US according to RIAA, is regularly placed on lists composed
by Forbes magazine, including The World's 100 Most
Powerful Women from 2010 to 2013, and was named one of the most
influential people in the world by Time magazine. Besides
her musical career, she involves herself with humanitarian causes
and LGBT activism.
Continually experimenting with new musical ideas and images,
Gaga's musical and performance style is the subject of much analysis and
scrutiny from critics. She professes that she is "liberating" herself
by constantly reinventing her sound and image, insisting that she has been
drawn to such a practice since her childhood. Vocally, Gaga possesses the
range of a contralto and exhibits "overwhelming expression,
instinctive vocal phrasing, '80s rock reminiscent chest belts and animalistic
vocal ticks" while being able to move through 2.7 octaves. Refusing
to lip sync, Gaga – whose range is frequently compared to those of Madonna
and Gwen Stefani – has manipulated her vocal style over the course of
her career yet considers Born This Way (2011) "much more
vocally up to par with what I've always been capable of." In
summation of her voice, Entertainment Weekly wrote,
"There's an immense emotional intelligence behind the way she uses her
voice. Almost never does she overwhelm a song with her vocal ability,
recognizing instead that artistry is to be found in nuance rather than lung
power."
The structure of her music is said to echo classic 1980s pop and 1990s Europop. Her
debut album The Fame (2008) provoked The Sunday Times to
assert "in combining music, fashion, art and technology, Gaga evokes
Madonna, Gwen Stefani circa 'Hollaback Girl', Kylie Minogue 2001 or
Grace Jones right now" and a critic from The Boston Globe to
comment that she draws "obvious inspirations from Madonna to Gwen
Stefani... in her girlish but sturdy pipes and bubbly beats." Music
critic Simon Reynolds wrote that "Everything about Gaga came
from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just
ruthlessly catchy naughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded
with R&B-ish beats." The follow-up The Fame Monster (2009),
saw Gaga's taste for pastiche, drawing on "Seventies arena glam,
perky ABBA disco and sugary throwbacks like Stacey Q"
while Born This Way (2011) also draws on the records of her childhood
and still has the "electro-sleaze beats and Eurodisco chorus chants"
of its predecessor but includes genres as diverse as opera, heavy metal, disco,
and rock and roll. "There isn't a subtle moment on the album,
but even at its nuttiest, the music is full of wide-awake emotional
details," wrote Rolling Stone, who concluded: "The more
excessive Gaga gets, the more honest she sounds."Although her early lyrics
have been criticized for lacking intellectual stimulation, "Gaga does
manage to get you moving and grooving at an almost effortless pace." She
admits that her songwriting has been misinterpreted; her friend and
blogger Perez Hilton articulated her message in a clearer way:
"you write really deep intelligent lyrics with shallow concepts."
Gaga opined, "Perez is very intelligent and clearly listened to my record
from beginning to end, and he is correct." "I love songwriting.
It's so funny – I will just jam around in my underwear or I could be washing my
dishes. I wrote several songs just at the piano," she confesses. Gaga
believes that "all good music can be played at a piano and still sound
like a hit." She has covered a wide variety of topics in her songs:
while The Fame (2008) meditates on the lust for stardom, The
Fame Monster (2009) expresses fame's dark side through monster
metaphors. Born This Way (2011) is sung in English, French,
German and Spanish and includes common themes in Gaga's controversial
songwriting like love, sex, religion, money, drugs, identity, liberation,
sexuality, freedom and individualism.
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