Lady Gaga Bio

You know Lady Gaga hatched from a giant egg at the Grammys, but the Lady Gaga bio reveals this star was born the old-fashioned way. Unlike so many You Tube viral sensations and reality show contestants, she earned her fame the hard way: enduring boos in New York clubs. Read this Lady Gaga bio and you might just become a "little monster" – her pet name for fans – yourself.  

Before Gaga was the superstar she is today, she went by the name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Born on March 28, 1986, this queen of the "little monsters" spent her early years singing along to Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper. On her personal website, Lady Gaga tells how she used breadsticks as impromptu batons -- revealing early on her love of performance and props. By the tender age of four, Ms. Germanotta had learned to play piano by ear, says "People Magazine." By 13, she composed her own ballads. 

As a teenager, Germanotta's parents enrolled the future Gaga in the private Manhattan Catholic school, Convent of the Sacred Heart. You have to wonder if those schoolgirl uniforms sparked her passion for outrageous style in the years ahead. However, Catholic school never squelched Lady Gag's rock-n-roll spirit, as she was already performing in a rock band.

The talented prodigy earned the rare honor of early admission to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, but she dropped out at the age of 19. Once again in uniform, the future Lady Gaga waited tables. But she was planning her pop triumph all along, designing her own costumes and performing in burlesque clubs and bars. Even then, her performances pushed boundaries, as the future Gaga lit hairspray cans on fire to the music from "A Clockwork Orange." In an interview with Ellen, Lady Gaga confessed that audiences booed her off stage in the early days, but her mother's support kept her going.  

In 2008, Gaga received the best birthday gift a little monster could ever want: a recording contract with Interscope records, producing her first record, "The Fame." She was just 20 years old – still fresh from dropping out of NYU – and little did she know how her first single, "Just Dance," would explode onto the club scene and burn up Billboard's Hot 100 list – landing at Number 1. It was all too bad for Island Def Jam records, which had previously signed and dropped her.  

Lady Gaga's success didn't stop there. She continued to burn up the charts with hits such as "Poker Face" and "LoveGame." Her follow-up album, "The Fame Monster" churned out the addictive hit "Bad Romance," for which she won Video of the Year at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. That same year, she won the Grammys for Best Dance Recording and Best Electronic/Dance Album.

Through these whirlwind years, Lady Gaga made as many headlines for her style as for her music, with bizarre hats and masks, a dress made from stuffed Kermit the Frogs, costumes comprised of bubbles and even outfits missing the pants. This outrageous style helped catapult Lady Gaga to hero status on the hit show "Glee," on which the glee club losers sing her songs as anthems of self-acceptance, social tolerance and diversity. The Lady Gaga bio will no doubt continue to tell a tale of incredible success. In 2011, her latest singles "Born This Way" and "Judas" hit the airwaves, and more hits and outrageous costumes will surely follow.