Lady Gaga

Recently crowned by Time magazine as The Most Influential Person In The World, Lady Gaga has taken the world by storm in just 2 years. Lady Gaga has also been announced as the Most Googled Woman of 2010.

Stefani Germanotta was born in New York City on March 28, 1986, to an Italian American family, the eldest child of Joseph Germanotta, internet entrepreneur, and Cynthia (née Bissett) She learned to play piano from the age of four, went on to write her first piano ballad at 13 and began performing at open mike nights by age 14.

Germanotta had initially signed with Def Jam Recordings at the age of 19, although she was dropped by the label after only three months.Shortly after, her former management company introduced her to songwriter and producer RedOne, whom they also managed. The first song she produced with RedOne was “Boys Boys Boys”, a mash-up inspired by Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and AC/DC’s “T.N.T.”

How she got the name Lady Gaga

Music producer Rob Fusari, who helped her write some of her earlier songs, compared some of her vocal harmonies to that of Freddie Mercury. Fusari helped create the moniker Gaga, after the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga”. Germanotta 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.”He explained,

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.”

She was known thereafter as Lady Gaga The New York Post, however, has reported that this story is incorrect, and that the name resulted from a marketing meeting.

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