By Anonymous - May 15, 2012

Pastinya sudah banyak yang tahu dengan yang namanya Lady gaga Penyanyi amerika Ini yang
suka bikin heboh dengan gaya Busana yang Bisa di bilang nyleneh ini, terutama dikenal karena
pakaiannya yang provokatif dan ekstravagan serta pengaruhnya yang besar terhadap selebiritis
lainnya.

Gaya musiknya diilhami oleh para rocker glam seperti David Bowie dan Queen serta penyanyi
seperti Michael Jackson dan Madonna. Ia telah memproduksi dua buah album (satu album dan
satu album repackage) berjudul "The Fame" (2008) dan "The Fame Monster" (2009).

Nama lahir Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta

Lahir 28 Maret 1986 (umur 26)
Asal New York City, New York, Amerika Serikat
Genre Pop, dance, elektronik
Pekerjaan Penyanyi, pencipta lagu, model, produser rekaman, penari, wiraswasta, aktivis
Instrumen Vokal, piano, synthesizer, keytar
Tahun aktif 2005–sekarang
Label Def Jam, Interscope, Kon Live, Streamline, Cherrytree

Situs web

www.ladygaga.com
Lady Gaga Opens Up About A Star Is Born,
MeToo, and a Decade in Pop
September 10, 2018 8:00 PM
by Jonathan Van Meter|photographed by Inez and Vinoodh

8
View Slideshow

 Facebook
 Pinterest

Lady Gaga’s house in Malibu is on a relatively nondescript road just off the Pacific Coast
Highway, situated in what feels (for Malibu) like a normal suburban neighborhood. When the
gates to her compound swing open, you head down a long gravel driveway that threads through
the multi-acre property, past the fenced-in ring where she rides her horse, Arabella, past the
barns and the stables and the giant barking dogs, Grandpa and Ronnie—and pull up to a house
made of fieldstone that looks, at first glance, as if it belongs in the South of France. A cheerful
young fellow greets you at your car, explains that he is the head of security, and asks you to sign
an NDA. There are at least a dozen other cars parked around, most of them belonging to people
who are doing some kind of work here—taking care of the property or the lady in residence in
one capacity or another. The whole setup is both grand and yet, somehow, unassuming (for a
rock star’s house in Malibu).

When Gaga comes down the stairs and makes her entrance on this hot, do-nothing August
afternoon, she is wearing a diaphanous periwinkle robe with ruffled edges that sweeps the floor,
nothing underneath but a matching bra and thong—along with nude kitten heels and Liz Taylor–
worthy diamond jewelry. Having just returned yesterday from a long, restful vacation on some
remote tropical island with her boyfriend, she is uncharacteristically tan, and as she leads me out
through the French doors into the garden, I can see nearly every one of her tattoos—and her
shapely behind—through the robe. There are roses trembling in the breeze, and a long, sloping,
grassy lawn that leads down to a pool and the Pacific Ocean beyond, flickering in the high
afternoon sun. “This is my sanctuary,” she says. “My oasis of peace. I call it my ‘gypsy palace.’
”

She bought this palace about four years ago, when she was going through a rough patch—both
physically and mentally—and has been spending more and more time here lately. “I just got rid
of my place in New York—it was too hectic every day outside on the street,” she says. As we
stand there looking out at the ocean, I ask if she’s happy. “Yes—I’m focusing on the things that I
believe in. I’m challenging myself. I’m embarking on new territory—with some nerves and some
overjoyment.” (Gaga has a funny habit of making up words that always make perfect sense.)
“It’s an interesting time in my life. It’s a transition, for sure. It’s been a decade.”
In April, Gaga noted on her Instagram that it was the tenth anniversary of her first single, “Just
Dance.” It was the song of the summer of 2008—the final hours of the golden years, just before
the economy imploded and the Great Recession took hold—and almost immediately, she became
the biggest pop star in the world, haunting our dreams—and nightmares—with monsters, meat
dresses, and some of the stickiest melodies ever written (GAAAA-GA OOOH-LA-LA!). When I
ask her what has changed for her over these last ten years, Gaga, who’s 32, says, “A galaxy,” and
laughs. “There has been a galaxy of change.” She pauses for a moment. “I would just say that it’s
been a nonstop whirlwind. And when I am in an imaginative or creative mode, it sort of grabs me
like a sleigh with a thousand horses and pulls me away and I just don’t stop working.” Another
pause. “You . . . make friends, you lose friends, you build tighter bonds with people you’ve
known for your whole life. But there’s a lot of emotional pain, and you can’t really understand
what it all means until ten years has gone by.”

On October 5, Warner Bros. Pictures will release the fourth iteration of the tragi-musical love
story A Star Is Born, starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. The first version came out in
1937, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, followed by Judy Garland and James Mason in
1954 and Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in 1976. Gaga thinks of it less as a remake
than as a “traveling legacy.” Directed by Cooper, in his debut, the film is remarkably assured,
deeply engaging, and works on several levels: as a romance, a drama, a musical, and something
else entirely, almost as if you’re watching something live, or documentary footage of a good old-
fashioned rock-’n’-roll concert movie. “I wanted to tell a love story,” says Cooper, “and to me
there’s no better way than through music. With music, it’s impossible to hide. Every fiber of
your body becomes alive when you sing.” As Sean Penn said, after seeing the film more than
once, “It’s the best, most important commercial film I’ve seen in so many years,” and he
described the stars as “miracles.” Cooper and Gaga, and the film itself, are likely to be
nominated for all manner of awards.

Cooper is a revelation, having utterly transformed himself into a booze-and-pills-besotted rock

star: He learned how to play guitar, worked with a vocal coach and a piano teacher for a year and
a half, and wrote three of the songs. “All because of Gaga,” he says. “She really gave me the
confidence.” His singing is astonishingly good. Gaga, whose only acting experience is in some
of her early videos (Google the long-form versions of “Telephone” and “Marry the Night” if you
want to see the early promise), various episodes of American Horror Story, and a couple of
cameos in Robert Rodriguez films, not only holds her own with Cooper but somehow manages
to make you completely forget that she is Lady Gaga—no small feat. But what really makes this
film sing, as it were, is the impeccable chemistry between the two stars, particularly their early
scenes of meeting cute and falling in love, which are some of the most touchingly real and tender
moments between two actors I’ve ever seen.

Gaga and I have moved inside and taken up spots on the boho-chic sofas in the sitting room off
her kitchen. She opens a bottle of rosé. There are candles flickering, cut flowers on the table.
Gaga first met Cooper at Saturday Night Live about five years ago, but only briefly, and then one
day in 2016—having signed on to make A Star Is Born and in the early stages of figuring out
who could play Ally to his Jackson Maine—he went to a cancer benefit in Sean Parker’s
backyard in L.A. “She had her hair slicked back,” says Cooper, “and she sang ‘La Vie en Rose,’
and I was just . . . levitating. It shot like a diamond through my brain. I loved the way she moved,
the sound of her voice.” He called her agent and, the next day, drove to Malibu. “The second that
I saw him,” says Gaga, “I was like, Have I known you my whole life? It was an instant
connection, instant understanding of one another.” Cooper: “She came down the stairs and we
went out to her patio and I saw her eyes, and honestly, it clicked and I went, Wow.” He pretty
much offered her the part on the spot. “She said, ‘Are you hungry?’ and I said, ‘I’m starving,’
and we went into her kitchen for spaghetti and meatballs.”

Gaga: “Before I knew it, I was making him lunch and we were talking. And then he said, ‘I want
to see if we can sing this song together.’ ” Cooper: “She was kind of laughing at me that I would
be suggesting this, but I said, ‘The truth is, it’s only going to work if we can sing together.’ And
she said, ‘Well, what song?’ And I said, ‘ “Midnight Special,” ’ this old folk song.” Gaga: “I
printed out the sheet music, and he had the lyrics on his phone, and I sat down at the piano and
started to play, and then Bradley started to sing and I stopped: ‘Oh, my God, Bradley, you have a
tremendous voice.’ ” Cooper: “She said, ‘Has anyone ever heard you sing before?’ and I said
no.” Gaga: “He sings from his gut, from the nectar! I knew instantly: This guy could play a rock
star. And I don’t think there are a lot of people in Hollywood who can. That was the moment I
knew this film could be something truly special.”

Cooper: “And she said, ‘We should film this.’ So I turned on my phone and we did the song. It
was crazy. It kind of just worked. And that video is one of the things I showed to Warner Bros.
to get the movie green-lit.”

Weirdly enough, the film was originally to be directed by Clint Eastwood—at one point, starring
Beyoncé—and Eastwood offered Cooper the part of Jackson. “I was 38 then, and I just knew I
couldn’t do it,” says Cooper, now 43. “But then I did American Sniper with Clint and The
Elephant Man for a year on Broadway and I thought, I’m old enough now.” Pop stardom seems
to befall mostly the very young these days, but this is a story about grown-ups. “I would often
say to Lady Gaga, ‘This is a movie about what would have happened if you didn’t make it until
you were 31 instead of 21. We talked a lot about where she started on the Lower East Side, and
she told me about this drag bar where she used to hang, and I thought, Oh, this is just ripe for the
story.”

Indeed, one of the best scenes in the film comes right at the beginning, when Jack, desperate for
a drink, stumbles into a gay bar on drag night. Ally is the only woman the queens let perform on
their stage, and as she sings “La Vie en Rose,” Jack falls hard. Gaga says that the chemistry
between her and Cooper is so good on film because it’s real. But she also thinks that Cooper
“nailed” the complicated voodoo that happens when love and fame get intertwined. “They’re
both very complex, layered things, with a lot of emotional depth, and he captured that. This is
what I think makes the film so successful: that it was so real. And I’ve lived it, so I can testify to
that.” (Another thing that gives the film its authenticity: Cooper cast a few drag queens he knew
from Philly, as well as Gaga’s actual dancers, choreographer, and hair and makeup artists, who
appear in a few scenes.)

Last December, I went to Cooper’s house in Los Angeles to watch some early footage, and as we
sat in the screening room he built in his garage, surrounded by guitars and an old piano, his
editor cued up scenes. What struck me immediately was how intensely visceral the musical
sequences are. Cooper explained that at Gaga’s insistence, they were all shot live. “All the music
is as real as you can get it,” he said to me that day. They shot some of the concert scenes at the
Stagecoach country-music festival in Indio, California, and more at the Glastonbury Festival in
England. “At Stagecoach, four minutes before Willie Nelson went on, we hopped onstage,” says
Cooper. “That was real. At Glastonbury, I got onstage in front of 80,000 people. It was nuts. But
Lady Gaga is so good that if the world I’d created wasn’t authentic, it would stand out in a
second. Everything had to be raised to her level.”

One bit of history that’s gotten lost in the Gaga saga is that while she started playing piano at
four and writing songs by eleven, she wanted to be an actress before she wanted to be a singer.
When she was twelve, she began taking Method-acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre &
Film Institute and later at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. “I loved it so much,” she says, “but I
was terrible at auditioning—I would get too nervous and just couldn’t be myself.” So she
decided to make a go of it as a musician—and had a record deal within a year. Was she nervous
making a movie? “Of course—but I knew I had it in me, in my heart, to give an authentic
performance.”

The biggest challenge for Lady Gaga was creating a musical character that was not like . . . Lady
Gaga. “I wanted the audience to be immersed in something completely different,” she says. “And
it’s almost hard to speak about, because I just sort of became Ally.” For as good as the Garland
and Streisand versions are, you do sometimes sort of feel like you’re watching movies about . . .
Garland and Streisand. That being said, there may be no more perfect person to take up this
franchise than Gaga. “It’s so humbling,” she says. “Judy Garland is by far my favorite actress of
all time. I used to watch her in A Star Is Born, and it’s devastating. She’s so real, so right there.
Her eyes would get glassy, and you could just see the passion and the emotion and hear the grit
in her voice.” Streisand came to the set one day. “It was a magical moment. She really made me
feel like she passed the torch.” When I mention Streisand’s voice, she says, “The singing is
beyond, but what is even more beyond is how involved she was in everything she did. She was a
part of creating that film. That made me feel good, too, that we approached making this film the
right way.”

The soundtrack will be released the same day as the movie, and because this is a Lady Gaga
production, she has had a big hand in it. There were many writers and producers who worked on
different songs, but the brain trust was Gaga and Cooper, working closely with the blues-oriented
producer and songwriter Ben Rice and Lukas Nelson, who’s Willie’s son. “She’s a fan of my
dad’s, but she’s got a tattoo of David Bowie, and Bowie was my hero as well,” says Nelson. “I
tend to gravitate toward rockers who were kind and stood for change and the right to be who you
are—to be a freak and be proud of it. And I think a lot of people have turned to Gaga in that
realm—as a sort of beacon of hope: I can do whatever I want. She invented herself.”

It was Gaga’s idea to thread bits of dialogue throughout the record, and there are a few songs that
are not in the movie—“treats,” as she calls them. She asks if I want to hear some music, and we
head into a tiny vestibule off the kitchen, a kind of office with a desk, computer, and two very
loud speakers. She plugs in her phone and cues up a jaunty, mid-tempo piano banger called
“Look What I Found,” and as it begins to play, Gaga dances and sings along, at full volume,
about two feet from my face. Suddenly I feel a bit like James Corden in a new segment: Kitchen
Karaoke. I cannot resist, and start dancing too. “Our own little discotheque,” says Gaga.

She cues up another song—a huge, soaring, sad ballad called “Before I Cry,” with a full
orchestra. It is the first song for which Gaga composed the string arrangements—and conducted
the orchestra in the studio—and it was inspired by a harrowing scene in the film when Jack has
fallen off the wagon and picks a fight with Ally while she’s taking a bath. On the soundtrack, it
begins with this bit of dialogue:

Ally: “Why don’t you have another drink and we can just get fucking drunk until we just fucking
disappear? Hey! Do you got those pills in your pocket?”

Jack: “You’re just fuckin’ ugly, that’s all.”

Ally: “I’m what?”

Jack: “You’re just fuckin’ ugly.”

As the song plays, we stand facing each other in the little cubicle, and before it’s halfway
through, we both have tears in our eyes. She hugs me and, as we head into the kitchen for more
wine, says, almost to herself, “I love that we’re dancing and crying. Like, real Italian style.”
That’s my natural state, I say: dancing and crying. “Me, too,” she says.

One of the many things about Lady Gaga that go underappreciated is that she doesn’t tell us
everything. For example, we know very little about her new boyfriend, Christian Carino—other
than that he’s a 48-year-old CAA agent—because she doesn’t talk about him. She doesn’t want
to talk at all about the new music she’s working on for a future album, or the scripts that are
suddenly rolling in. She understands more than most that a little bit of mystery and magic go a
long way in this world of too much. She has sort of inverse boundaries: She won’t tell you, for
example, where she just went on vacation, but she’s totally open about having been sexually
assaulted when she was a teenager.

Her 2015 song “ Til it Happens to You,” which she wrote with Diane Warren for the sexual-
assault documentary The Hunting Ground, was nominated for an Academy Award. When she
performed it at the Oscars in 2016 on a stage full of 50 other assault victims, it eerily presaged
the #MeToo movement that unfolded a year later, much to Gaga’s surprise. “I feel like I’ve been
an advocate but also a shocked audience member, watching #MeToo happen,” she says. “I’m
still in disbelief. And I’ve never come forward and said who molested me, but I think every
person has their own relationship with that kind of trauma.”

She was still Stefani Germanotta when she was raped at nineteen by a music producer. She told
no one. “It took years,” she says. “No one else knew. It was almost like I tried to erase it from
my brain. And when it finally came out, it was like a big, ugly monster. And you have to face the
monster to heal.” In late 2016, Gaga revealed in a Today interview that she suffers from PTSD
because of the assault. “For me, with my mental-health issues, half of the battle in the beginning
was, I felt like I was lying to the world because I was feeling so much pain but nobody knew. So
that’s why I came out and said that I have PTSD, because I don’t want to hide—any more than I
already have to.” When I ask her to describe how she experiences the symptoms, she says, “I feel
stunned. Or stunted. You know that feeling when you’re on a roller coaster and you’re just about
to go down the really steep slope? That fear and the drop in your stomach? My diaphragm seizes
up. Then I have a hard time breathing, and my whole body goes into a spasm. And I begin to cry.
That’s what it feels like for trauma victims every day, and it’s . . . miserable. I always say that
trauma has a brain. And it works its way into everything that you do.”

In September 2017, Gaga announced on Twitter that she suffers from extreme nerve pain caused
by fibromyalgia, a complex and still-misunderstood syndrome she believes was brought on by
the sexual assault and that then became worse over time, exacerbated by the rigors of touring and
the weight of her fame. (Earlier this year, she had to cut her European tour short by ten shows
because of it.) In the Netflix documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two, which aired that same month
and was also produced by Live Nation Productions along with A Star Is Born, Gaga allowed
cameras to document her suffering to shed light on the syndrome. “I get so irritated with people
who don’t believe fibromyalgia is real. For me, and I think for many others, it’s really a cyclone
of anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma, and panic disorder, all of which sends the nervous system
into overdrive, and then you have nerve pain as a result. People need to be more compassionate.
Chronic pain is no joke. And it’s every day waking up not knowing how you’re going to feel.”

Today, Lady Gaga is the picture of health: bright-eyed, sun-kissed, fit as a fiddle. “It’s getting
better every day,” she says, “because now I have fantastic doctors who take care of me and are
getting me show-ready.” Speaking of shows, she recently signed a $100 million contract with
MGM Resorts International to do a Las Vegas residency at a 5,300-seat theater. It will be called
Lady Gaga Enigma, and beginning on December 28 she will perform 74 shows spread out over
two years—a reasonable pace that will allow her to take better care of herself and make more
movies. “I’ve always hated the stigma around Las Vegas—that it’s where you go when you’re on
the last leg of your career,” she says. “Being a Las Vegas girl is an absolute dream for me. It’s
really what I’ve always wanted to do.”

As she sits before me on our respective couches—in her periwinkle chiffon, dripping in
diamonds—Gaga and Vegas make perfect sense. She has always been a master at swirling
together the nostalgic with the startlingly modern and coming up with something that feels
entirely new. Creating the shows for Lady Gaga Enigma, of course, has brought back together
the Haus of Gaga—her team of stylists and monster-conjurers, including Nicola Formichetti.
“We’re plowing away, making something brand-new, but still with the iconography that we’ve
already created—and making sure fans leave with the feeling that they went home for a bit with
their community.”

Speaking of Gaga iconography! I have somehow failed to notice that for the past couple of hours
I’ve been sitting next to a half-mannequin with a heavy metal harness wrapped around it that
resembles a sort of human/reptilian rib cage and spinal column. It was made by Shaun Leane, a
jewelry designer who worked regularly with Alexander McQueen. Gaga picks up another piece,
a kind of metal orbiting fascinator, also designed by Leane, that was part of the “Savage Beauty”
exhibition at the Met, and gently sets it on her head. “I bought it at an auction,” she says, batting
her eyelashes. And now she wants to show me something else, and goes in search of a key. She
finds it in the kitchen, and then along the way to wherever we’re going I get a quick tour. In her
ballroom-size living room there is a grand piano and a giant modern pink blob sofa, and an even
bigger pink rug. “I like pink,” she says. “It’s a relaxing color.” There’s her Golden Globe (for
American Horror Story, in 2016) and a framed photograph of Patti Smith, along with pictures of
Elton John and David Furnish’s boys, Zachary and Elijah, Gaga’s godchildren. Resting on the
mantel is a framed letter from David Bowie (“Dear Lady, Unfortunately I will not be in NYC for
a few months but many thanks for the cake”). On one wall is an enormous George Condo
painting of a woman in a ball gown, her face obscured by smears and smudges. “Reminds me of
myself,” she says with a wink. “Beautiful but a little bit messy.”

Finally we arrive at the locked door. She turns the key and opens it to reveal . . . a room filled
with fashion! Two rooms! “This is mostly Saint Laurent from Hedi Slimane’s work there,” she
says. “I’m excited to see what he’ll be doing at Céline. Here’s a McQueen cape that was custom-
made for me for the ‘Alejandro’ video. And then in here”—we move into yet another chamber,
deeper into her fashion closet, racks upon racks of leather and feathers and sequins and a lot of
black—“this is all Gianni Versace from the nineties. I wear some of it, but I mostly collect it to
keep and preserve to give to a museum one day. Because I just love these designers.” Pause.
“There’s my Joanne hat!” That is the pink fedora she wore in nearly every video and every
performance from her Joanne album and tour, when she began presenting herself as . . . herself,
mostly.

When did all of the crazy-brilliant obfuscating costumes fall away? “For me, fashion and art and
music have always been a form of armor. I just kept creating more and more fantasies to escape
into, new skins to shed. And every time I shed a skin, it was like taking a shower when you’re
dirty: getting rid of, washing off, shedding all of the bad, and becoming something new.” I
wonder aloud where all that began. “I just remember feeling so irritated at the thought that I had
to conform to being ‘normal,’ or less of whatever I was already born as. And so I took such
radical enjoyment in expressing who I am in the most grandiose of ways.” She laughs. “It was
sort of like a very polite ‘Fuck off.’ It was never about looking perfect—it was always about just
being myself. And I think that’s what it’s always been about for my fans, too. It was a form of
protection, and a secret—like a wink from afar. I’m a monster, and you’re a monster too.”

She locks the door, and as we head back out to the living room to say goodbye, she picks up a
glass vase filled with fresh-cut roses from her garden and hands it to me: “Just a little
something,” she says. For all of Lady Gaga’s histrionics and grandiosity and obfuscation and
mucking around with monsters—and despite the fact that she claims to have “concrete in her
veins”—most people seem to get that she’s all heart. “I am not a brand,” she says. “I have my
unique existence, just as everyone else does, and at the end of the day, it’s our humanity that
connects us—our bodies and our biology. That’s what breeds compassion and empathy, and
those are the things that I care the most about. Kindness!” She lets out a mordant chuckle. “It can
drive you mad. Someone very important in my life says to me often, ‘You cannot stare at the
carnage all day.’ And I think . . . you have to stare at the carnage to an extent because if not,
you’re being ignorant and complacent—to not view injustice and want to be a part of advocating
for others. But. . . .” She pauses for a long time. “Once we just look each other in the eyes, if we
can keep that contact, that contract, I think the world will be a better place.”
Suddenly we both notice the sound of music wafting in from somewhere, as if someone opened a
little girl’s jewelry box. It’s a Mister Softee truck.

“It’s down by the beach,” she says, “but can you believe that? The sound travels all the way up
here.”

The sound is a little creepy, I say.

“Or,” she says, “it just sounds like kids having ice cream at the beach.” We both laugh. It
reminds me of something we talked about earlier: that while Gaga’s music is often funny—with
a wink or a bit of camp—she herself is a serious person. This has been a very serious
conversation, I say. “Yes, it has,” she says. “Isn’t that funny?”

In This Story:Lady Gaga

 Facebook
 Twitter
Pop icon Lady Gaga's debut album, 'The Fame,' included the hits 'Just Dance' and 'Poker Face.' She also
won a Golden Globe for her role in 'American Horror Story' and an Oscar nomination for her co-starring
role in 'A Star Is Born.'

Who Is Lady Gaga?

Lady Gaga was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986, in New York
City. She attended New York University's Tisch School for the Arts but left to find creative
expression. Her debut album, The Fame, was a huge success, and the single "Poker Face" topped
charts in almost every category, in almost every country. Lady Gaga has since earned acclaim for
subsequent albums, including a collaboration with Tony Bennett, as well as her acting skills,
nabbing a Golden Globe for her contributions to American Horror Story and an Oscar
nomination for her co-starring role in A Star Is Born.

Early Life
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, in Yonkers, New York, to
Cynthia and Joseph Germanotta. Now known as Lady Gaga (the inspiration for her name came
from the Queen song "Radio Ga-Ga"), she has become an international pop star.

Gaga learned to play the piano by the age of 4. At the age of 11, she was accepted to the Juilliard
School in Manhattan, but instead attended a private Catholic school in the city. She continued
studying music and performing, writing her first piano ballad at the age of 13, and she held her
first performance in a New York nightclub at the age of 14.

ADVERTISEMENT

A few years later, Gaga was granted early admission to New York University's Tisch School of
the Arts—she was one of only 20 students in the world to receive the honor of early acceptance.
While there, she studied music and worked on her songwriting skills. She later withdrew from
school to find creative inspiration. To make ends meet, she took three jobs, including a stint as a
gogo dancer, while she honed her performance-art act.

Professional Debut
In 2005, Lady Gaga was briefly signed by Def Jam Records, but was dropped just months later.
Being dropped by the label propelled the singer to perform on her own in clubs and venues on
New York City's Lower East Side. There, she collaborated with several rock bands, and began
her experimentation with fashion.

In 2007, at the age of 20, Gaga began work at Interscope Records as a songwriter for other artists
on the label, including Britney Spears, New Kids on the Block and The Pussycat Dolls. R&B
singer Akon discovered Gaga while she was performing a burlesque show that she created,
called "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue." Impressed, Akon signed the performer to his label
under the Interscope umbrella, Kon Live. Through 2007 and 2008, Gaga wrote and recorded her
debut album, The Fame. The record received positive reviews and was successful in the United
States. With the help of her own creative team, "Haus of Gaga," the performer also began to
make a name for herself internationally.

Commercial Breakthrough
Lady Gaga's debut single, "Just Dance," was released to radio in early 2008, and received both
popular and commercial acclaim. The song was then nominated for a Grammy Award (for best
dance recording) in 2008. The song lost to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," but this
didn't keep Gaga from reaching No. 1 on the mainstream pop charts in January 2009. The second
single off The Fame, "Poker Face," earned Gaga even more success. The song topped singles
charts in almost every category, and in almost every country. Both songs were produced by
Akon's affiliate RedOne, who co-wrote most of Lady Gaga's album.

Later in 2008, Lady Gaga opened for the newly reformed New Kids on the Block. She also
collaborated with them on the song "Big Girl Now" from the group's album The Block. The
following year, Gaga released an album of eight songs, The Fame Monster, followed by 2011's
Born This Way. In 2013, Lady Gaga released her third studio album, Artpop. The album didn't
resonate as strongly with her audience as her previous works. Among the shake-ups in her inner
circle, she and her manager parted ways.

Lady Gaga attends the premiere screening of FX's 'American Horror Story: Hotel' at Regal
Cinemas L.A. Live on October 3, 2015 in Los Angeles, California.

Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Working With Tony and Golden Globe

In 2014, she released an album of jazz duets with crooner Tony Bennett entitled Cheek to Cheek,
which later won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. In an interview with Parade,
Lady Gaga said of her latest collaboration, “Working with Tony has reaffirmed everything I
knew but that you start to forget when your life changes and it gets really noisy. For Tony, it’s all
about great music.”

Gaga continued to showcase her versatility and strength as a vocalist at the Academy Awards
telecast in Feburary 2015, paying tribute to the 50th anniversary of The Sound of Music and
actress/singer Julie Andrews by performing selections from the musical. Later that year, she also
showed her gifts as an actress by co-starring in American Horror Story: Hotel, earning a Golden
Globe for her portrayal of The Countess. At the ceremony, a visibly stunned and emotional Gaga
acknowledged that acting was her first dream before she embraced music, and thanked her
fellow cast members and producer Ryan Murphy for their support. Gaga returned to the show for
its sixth season, playing a witch in American Horror Story: Roanoke.

In February 2016, Gaga, joined by guitarist/producer Nile Rodgers, performed a tribute to the
late David Bowie. Paying homage to one of her biggest musical heroes, a red-wigged Gaga sang
a short medley of Bowie's hits. She also performed at the 88th Annual Academy Awards,
performing "Til It Happens to You" after being introduced by Vice President Joseph Biden. The
song was from the 2015 documentary The Hunting Ground, which looked at the issue of rape on
college campuses. Assault survivors were brought to the stage toward the close of the song, with
the performance earning a standing ovation.

Success With 'Joanne'

In October 2016, Gaga released her fifth studio album, Joanne, her fourth album to reach number
one in the United States and top the charts in countries around the world. Partnering with
producer Mark Ronson, Gaga tapped into her own life story for the album that is named after her
aunt and father's sister, Joanne Germanotta, who died of lupus complications at the age of 19
before Gaga was born. “Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history. .
.this is what makes you strong,” Lady Gaga told People magazine. “It’s not looking out that’s
going to do that – it’s looking in. Joanne is a progression for me. It was about going into the
studio and forgetting that I was famous.”

She also told People that her relationships influenced the stories she tells in Joanne. “When you
listen to the album, it’s clear the influence that all the men in my life have made on this record,"
she said. "That’s at the center of it, as well: I always wanted to be a good girl. And Joanne was
such a good girl. But I have such a rebellious spirit, and my father was always very angry. He
drank because of his sister’s death. I was trying to understand him through making this record,
and in that, also trying to understand why I love men that are cowboys.”

Gaga launched the Joanne World Tour in support of her latest album in August 2017. She made
news during a set in Connecticut in November, when she suddenly stopped her performance to
check on a fan who had been hit in the face. The artist later nabbed a Best Pop Solo Performance
Grammy for the album's title track.

Super Bowl Performances

In 2016, Lady Gaga performed the national anthem at Super Bowl 50, and she returned
the following year to headline the Super Bowl LI halftime show. She began her powerhouse
performance on the roof of the NRG Stadium in Houston, singing parts of "God Bless America"
and "This Land is Your Land" and reciting an excerpt of the pledge of allegiance before diving
through the air suspended by wires to the stage. Her half-time show included a medley of her
iconic songs including "Edge of Glory," "Bad Romance," "Poker Face," "Born This Way,"
"Telephone," "Just Dance," as well as "Million Reasons" from her album Joanne.

'A Star Is Born'

In 2016, it was announced that Gaga had been cast in a remake of A Star Is Born as Ally, a role
previously inhabited by Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. She was slated to co-
star with Bradley Cooper, who was also making his directorial debut with the project.
A Star Is Born became a hit with audiences upon its October 2018 release, grossing an
impressive $400 billion globally. The co-stars both earned Academy Award nominations for
their performances, while their duet for the film, "Shallow," produced Golden Globe, Grammy
and Oscar wins for Gaga.

Las Vegas Residency

On December 19, 2017, Gaga announced via Instagram that she had signed on for a Las Vegas
residency. The following August, she confirmed that she would begin her residency at MGM
Resorts' Park Theater at the end of the year, performing two separate shows over 27 dates: Lady
Gaga Enigma, a collection of her most popular songs, and Lady Gaga Jazz & Piano, which
features stripped-down versions of her greatest hits as well as selections from the Great
American Songbook.

Personal Life
On Valentine’s Day 2015, Lady Gaga became engaged to Chicago Fire actor Taylor Kinney.
After five years together, in July 2016, it was reported that the couple called off their
engagement and parted ways.

Gaga then got engaged to her agent, Christian Carino, in summer 2017. In February 2019, after
the singer attended the Grammys without her fiancé, a representative confirmed that the
engagement was off.
Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba.com

Jack Ma

Born in November, 1964, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China. Education: Earned degree
from Hangzhou Teachers Institute, 1988.

Addresses: Office —Alibaba.com, 39899 Balentine Dr., Ste. 355, Newark, CA 94560.

Career
Informal tour guide in Hangzhou, China, in the late 1970s; taught at Hangzhou Teachers Institute
after 1988, and founded a translation agency; founded China Pages, one of the first commercial
websites in China, c. 1995; worked for a joint telecommunications venture with Chinese
government as a general manager, and for the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic
Cooperation seeking out new business; launched Alibaba.com, 1999, and Taobao.com, 2003;
signed deal with Yahoo! that made Alibaba.com China's largest Internet company, 2005.

Sidelights
Jack Ma is the founder and chief executive officer of Alibaba.com, a pioneer in China's growing
information-technology sector. He launched Alibaba.com in 1999 as an e-commerce site that
facilitated business deals between companies in China and the rest of the world, and moved into
consumer trading four years later with Taobao.com, an auction site that quickly bested eBay as
the homegrown favorite. Ma is known for his excellent command of English idiom and business
jargon mixed with traditional Chinese proverbs. In discussing the Taobao startup, he told Justin
Doebele in Forbes Global that "eBay may be a shark in the ocean, but I am a crocodile in the
Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we lose—but if we fight in the river, we win."

Born in 1964, Ma grew up in Hangzhou, a city in an eastern coastal province of Zhejiang not far
from Shanghai. As a youngster, Ma was determined to learn English, and once the first foreign
visitors began arriving in Hangzhou thanks to China's new economic policies that opened up the
country to the outside world in the late 1970s, he began showing up at the single hotel in
Hangzhou that hosted the foreign tourists. For the next nine years, he came daily and offered a
free tour of the city for English-speaking guests, which allowed him to practice his
conversational English skills. He made his first trip outside of China in 1985 when he traveled to
Australia. He recalled being stunned by the obvious prosperity, he told the San Francisco
Chronicle some years later. "I was educated in China that we were the richest country in the
world and that we were the happiest people in the world."

Ma earned a degree from the Hangzhou Teachers Institute in 1988, and took a job as a teacher
there when he finished. His English skills were by then so proficient that he founded his own
translation agency, and worked with some of the first U.S. companies doing business in China.
In 1995, he traveled to the United States for the first time as an interpreter for one such venture,
and contacted a friend from China who was living in Seattle by then. That stint as a houseguest
provided his first contact with a personal computer, which were virtually nonexistent in China at
the time. It was also his first contact with the Internet. "I was scared, because very few
companies in China had computers. Computers were considered very high technology and very
expensive," he remembered in the interview with the San Francisco Chronicle . "So my friend
said, 'Jack, it's not a bomb, just touch whatever you want.'" Fascinated, he asked his friend to
help him put up a website for his translation business, and began receiving e-mails almost
immediately.

The Internet was an entirely new idea in China, but Ma returned and became one of the country's
first Web entrepreneurs, though this was still the dial-up connection era. "The day we got
connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house," he told New York
Times writer David Barboza, "[and] we waited three and a half hours and got half a page. We
drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. But I was so proud. I proved the Internet existed."
He soon launched China Pages, an Internet company that is believed to have been the first
commercial website in China, with $2,000 he borrowed from family and friends, and spent a
little over a year as general manager for a joint telecommunications venture with Chinese
government. That failed, and he took a job with the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic
Cooperation, which served to introduce him to Yahoo!'s Taiwan-born co-founder Jerry Yang in
1998.

Inspired once again to test China's free-market information-technology waters on his own, he
culled enough money—this time, $60,000—from a new batch of investor-friends to launch
Alibaba.com in 1999. Designed as a business-to-business (B2B) marketplace that connected
buyers and sellers of various goods, it quickly emerged as a successful new player in the global
bazaar, and another round of financing—this one $25 million—arrived when some major
financial players showed interest. Among them were the Wall Street investment bank Goldman
Sachs, and Japanese Internet entrepreneur Masayoshi Son.

Alibaba.com hit the one-million user mark in March of 2002, and finally began making money
later that year, as Ma had promised its backers. Initially it had been free to join, but offered a
host of extras, such as personalized Web pages, that brought in revenue. He hoped to someday
take the company public, which is based in his hometown of Hangzhou—one of China's fastest-
growing cities—but its formal paperwork was filed in Hong Kong to take advantage of the
island-city's special economic status. "Alibaba is founded by Chinese, but it's not a Chinese
company," he asserted in the San Francisco Chronicle . "It belongs to Alibaba's users, all over
the world."

In 2003, Ma stepped into the consumer online auction marketplace with Taobao.com, which
means "searching for treasure." It quickly emerged as a serious rival to eBay, a relative
newcomer to the Chinese consumer market, and its success helped Ma ink a historic 2005 deal
with Yahoo!, the U.S.-based online consumer services provider. Yahoo! bought a 40 percent
stake in Alibaba.com for $1 billion. In return, Alibaba—valued at the time of the deal as worth
$4 billion—assumed control over Yahoo! China's operations. His company was now China's
largest Internet company, with Ma as chief executive officer.
The Yahoo! deal allowed Ma to begin working on his next Internet triumph: to make Yahoo!'s
Chinese-language search engine as pared-down and fast as Google or Baidu, the top search
engine in China at the time. Yahoo! China does have to abide by some freedom-of-information
restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, such as automatically blocking domestic-user
access to websites about Chinese political reform or human rights. Ma is a firm believer,
however, in the revolutionary possibilities that technology brings. "The Internet in China is
definitely improving China in many ways: financially, politically and socially," he told the San
Francisco Chronicle . "Today, I think the Chinese government is changing very quickly.
Whether it's because of the Internet or not, I don't know."

Read more: https://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2007-Li-Pr/Ma-

Jack.html#ixzz5hfcqbFVF