Lady Gaga

About

Lady Gaga is the stage name of American singer and songwriter Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotte.^[2] She is known internationally for her chart-topping records and odd sense of fashion. On the web, Lady Gaga's photographs are often used in image macros or reaction gifs and her massive fan base known as "Little Monsters" have made her one of the most-followed celebrities on Twitter.

Online History

Lady Gaga joined MySpace^[1] on May 24th, 2005, Twitter on March 26th, 2008 and Facebook ^[26] on April 10th, 2008 and has gained 2.9 million friends, 29.4 million followers and 53.3 million likes respectively (as of September 2012). Her official website www.ladygaga.com^[3] was registered on March 14th, 2008. The artist launched her own channel ladygagaofficial^[4] on May 15th, 2008, followed by LadyGagaVEVO^[5] for her music videos a year later. On Last.fm^[6], Gaga has more than 173 million plays and more than 3 million unique listeners (as of September 2012).

On Twitter

Lady Gaga created her Twitter account @ladygaga^[27] on March 26th, 2008 and became the first person to reach 10 million followers^[28] in May 2011. Shortly after she broke 20 million followers in March 2012, fans of pop star Justin Bieber, who call themselves "Beliebers" launched Operation Unfollow Lady Gaga^[29] in order to slingshot Bieber up to the most followed account on Twitter. Lady Gaga's account is ranked the most followed on the microblogging site with more than 29 million followers (as of September 2012).

Little Monsters

A common motif in Lady Gaga's music is the idea of monsters, representing the dark side of both fame and life in general.^[2] Beginning in 2009, Gaga began to refer to her fanbase as "Little Monsters," due to the claw-like hand gestures they make during her performances.^[9] She wrote an ode to her fans titled "Manifesto of Little Monsters"^[30] which was included in the liner notes of her 2009 EP The Fame Monster. In February 2010, Gaga tattooed the phrase on her arm^[10] to show her dedication to the fandom, going so far as to call herself Mother Monster^[9] on her Twitter biography.

In February 2012, Gaga launched littlemonsters.com^[7], a social networking site for her fans to interact and share media with each other. The initial invitation-only beta launch was covered by CNET^[31], CNN^[32], The Daily Dot^[33] and Mashable^[34], who compared the layout of the site to Pinterest. A month into the beta, 10,000 super fans were chosen from one million applicants^[19] to join the network. The site opened to the public on July 10th, 2012, with coverage from the Daily Dot^[11], Huffington Post^[13], Spin^[14], ABC News^[15] and Mashable.^[17]

New Single Leak

On August 10th, 2013, several snippets of Lady Gaga's lead single "Applause" from her forthcoming album ArtPop were leaked online, eliciting an angry response from the singer via her Twitter account:

As a slew of links to stream and download the audio file began circulating on Twitter and elsewhere, one Gaga fan who goes by the handle @Gaganoosh tweeted a link to Universal Music Group's Piracy Referral Form page^[35], urging all of Gaga's fans to report all leaks via company's website. The vigilant fan's message was retweeted at least 2,500 times, one of them from the singer herself, while other fans chimed in by disclosing their contributions, with one fan claiming to have reported 500 links^[36] to illegal downloads.

However, despite the fans' crowdsourced campaign against spreading the leak, the full length version of "Applause" was rush-released to radio stations and Apple's iTunes store on August 12th, 2013, exactly one week ahead of its schedule.^[37][38][39]

Reputation

Fashion

The artist has her own creative production team called the Haus of Gaga, who create many of her clothes, stage props and hairdos. Gaga has made several appearances in public with highly unconventional dresses, most notably the bubble dress, the Muppets dress and the meat dress. Her outré fashion style has been recognized as an influential fashion icon by news publications and fashion institutions, including Time Magazine, Magazine Entertainment and the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

Gaga has also identified fashion as a major influence on her creative process in an MTV interview in June 2008:

"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."

Arrival at Venice Film Festival

On August 30th, 2018, Lady Gaga arrived at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of her film A Star Is Born. Entering on boat, Gaga's entrance was the subject of much reverence online. That day, Twitter^[40] user @ErikDavis tweeted a picture of her arriving and wrote, "Cancel all other Venice entrances, @ladygaga has arrived." The tweet (shown below, left) received more than 1,300 retweets and 5,400 likes in 24 hours.

Twitter^[41] user @tommydorfman tweeted, "LADY GAGA US FUCNING BACK YALL AND HERE TO STAY LG5 LEGEND." The tweet (shown below, center) received mor than 225 retweets and 2,000 likes in 24 hours.

Others began adding captions to the photographs, commenting on her expression, dress and location. Twitter^[42] user @ira tweeted, "Me watching my rich husband sink to his death." The post (shown below, right) received more than 775 retweets and 5,400 likes in 24 hours.

On August 31st, The Daily Dot posted a listicle about the image.

Personal Life

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotte was born March 28,1986 in New York City. At age 4, she began taking piano lessons, writing her first song at 13.^[2] After high school, she was accepted into Collaborative Arts Project 21, New York University's musical theatre training conservatory, but she dropped out in 2005 during her sophomore year to focus on her musical career. Her father obliged, agreeing to pay her rent for a year on the condition that she re-enroll at NYU if things did not work out.^[20] During this time, she began working with music producer Rob Fusari, who claims^[22] to have accidentally gave her the moniker Lady Gaga after a text message he sent to her in which T9 (predictive text) accidentally interpreted "radio" as "lady" while he was attempting to message her about the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga."^[21] However, other sources^[23] claim it came out of a marketing meeting.

She began performing as Lady Gaga in 2006, releasing her first album The Fame^[24] on August 19th, 2008. The record hit number one in six countries, breaking into the top five in seventeen others. Since then, she has released two additional albums, won five Grammy awards and 13 MTV Video Music Awards and earned more than $25 million dollars in 2011.

Search Interest

External References