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Hattie Collins
Click here to download Lady GaGa's The Fame for free

Even in the OTT insanity that is Las Vegas, Lady GaGa stands out a mile. Dressed in a Thierry Mugler-inspired black rubber dress adorned with gold origami pyramids, stupendously long false eyelashes, crystal-encrusted sunglasses and impossibly high heels, she cuts quite a figure as she wanders past the agog gamblers. “This is just how I am all the time,” she shrugs, oblivious to the attention as she prepares to perform at the wonderfully ostentatious Mirage hotel. “You’ll never see me in flip-flops and a T-shirt.”

The surreal city is the perfect setting for a GaGa gig. The Italian-American singer is a perplexing, somewhat camp combination of brash, bright and slightly strange. “It’s the future of pop music,” she insists of tracks such as the excellent new single, Just Dance. Surrounded by four male dancers and brandishing a glow-in-the-dark disco stick, she gamely stagedives into her adoring audience, which tonight includes the R&B superstar Ne-Yo.

Having seen her perform in both Los Angeles and London earlier this year, I can say that her spirited showmanship isn’t reserved only for the bright lights of Sin City. She is just as enthralling at all of her shows, regardless of location. “Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show,” she says of her impressive stage set. “I don’t give a f*** about money. What am I going to do with a condo and a car? I can’t drive.”

In combining music, fashion, art and technology, Lady GaGa evokes Madonna when she was good, Gwen Stefani circa Hollaback Girl, Kylie 2001 or Grace Jones right now. “My art is my whole life,” she says of her “digital age”, multimedia approach to artistry. As well as touring with huge moveable screens that display myriad images, GaGa uploads self-made documentaries to MySpace: “I’ve taken something decidedly commercial and made it interesting.”

Her debut album, The Fame, is indeed just that. Written and co-produced by GaGa, it’s a fantastic mix of Bowie-esque ballads, dramatic, Queen-inspired midtempo numbers and synth-based dance tracks that poke fun at celebrity-chasing rich kids. It’s entertaining, incredibly witty and, above all, captivating.

“I’m defying all of the preconceptions we have of pop artists,” says the 22-year-old with a penchant for Chanel, Gareth Pugh and Marni. “I’m very into fashion — I channel Versace in everything I do. Donatella is my muse in so many ways: she’s iconic and powerful, yet people throw darts at her. She’s definitely provocative, and I channel that more so than anything else.”

There are a lot of other figures being “channelled”, though. Her stage name is a nod to Queen’s Radio Ga Ga, while her ideology is Warholian in essence. She works with a collective called the Haus of GaGa, who collaborate with their muse on clothing, stage sets and sounds. “In this industry, you get a lot of stylists and producers thrown at you, but this is my own creative team, modelled on Warhol’s Factory. Everyone is under 26 and we do everything together.” The point of her pop music, she adds, isn’t merely to entertain, but to provoke response and discussion. “How do I make pop, commercial art be taken as seriously as fine art? That’s what Warhol did,” she says, sipping a green tea an hour before show time. “How do I make music and performances that are thought-provoking, fresh and future? We decide what’s good and, if the ideas are powerful enough, we can convince the world that it’s great.”

GaGa’s success is far from overnight, but after she made a career out of songwriting for other acts, the buzz about her is starting to build. Currently No 5 in the Billboard Hot 100 with Just Dance, she is also the recent recipient of a Grammy nomination. In the UK, she has been tipped in the influential BBC Sound of 2009 poll. If all goes according to her pop masterplan, she is set to be a huge act next year. “I’m filling an enormous hole. There’s a wide-open space for a female with big balls to fill,” the classically trained pianist announces. “I’m here to make great music and inspire people.”

It’s not only GaGa herself and music- industry insiders who are excited. The influential American gossip blogger Perez Hilton predicts she will be “massive” in 2009: “She makes good music, it’s pop with substance. She’s the real deal, the total package.” Another fan is the fashion designer Henry Holland. “Her music is pure, brilliant pop, and I love the fact that she has such an iconic look,” he says. “It’s not very often that someone comes along and looks different and individual . . . I think that’s exciting and inspiring.”

GaGa is apparently already influencing other artists, with numerous blogs gleefully pointing out the similarity of Christina Aguilera’s styling, hair and make-up in recent months. “I’m not sure who this person is, to be honest,” Aguilera sniffed when asked whether she was a fan. “I don’t know if it is a man or a woman.” GaGa, for her part, is unbothered by the backbiting.

“I think she’s very talented and, anyway, look at me: I might as well be a gay man. When I hear comments like that, I’m like, ‘She’s dead on’, because she saw the Warhol in me. Of course it bears a resemblance, but nobody can copy me, because I can’t be copied.”


Lady GaGa is loath to give her real name, insisting friends and family refer to her only by her stage name (“When I make love, they say GaGa”), but some digging reveals she was born Stefani Joanne Germanotta on the Upper West Side (“I am New York, I’m a hustler, I ate dust since I was 15 and I kept going even when I was told no”).

She attended the private Catholic school Convent of the Sacred Heart, whose alumni include the Hilton sisters and Caroline Kennedy. Contrary to popular belief, the song Beautiful, Dirty, Rich isn’t about her former classmate Paris Hilton. “I never saw those girls for more than 10 seconds down the hallways.” Yet it seems the school has had some part in her transformation from fitted blazers to Balenciaga shoes: “I was the arty girl, the theatre chick. I dressed differently and I came from a different social class from the other girls. I was more of an average schoolgirl with a cork.”

That cork eventually popped when she graduated from NYU, where she had studied art. Her entrepreneur father was, unsurprisingly, shocked when his daughter ran off to the Lower East Side to dabble in drugs and appear in burlesque shows at dive bars with drag queens and go-go dancers. “He couldn’t look at me for a few months,” she admits of her early experimentations. “I was in leather thongs, so it was hard for him — he just didn’t understand. But my parents saw me getting better, and now my father cries when he sees me perform.”

The drugs disappeared around the same time as her act began to take serious shape. “I had a scary experience one night and thought I might die,” GaGa remembers. “I woke up, but it helped me become the person I am. I see things in quite a fragmented, psychotic manner, which I think is because of that. But I decided it was more important to become a centred, critical thinker. That was more powerful than the drug itself.”

Refining her act in downtown Manhattan, she signed to Def Jam at the age of 19, but was dropped shortly after. “It just wasn’t for them,” she says nonchalantly. She was spotted a couple of years later by the music executive Vincent Herbert and signed to Interscope in January 2008. Impressed by her ear for melody and knack for spotting a great hook, various acts — Akon’s Konvict label, as well as Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls, Britney and New Kids on the Block — have hired her as a songwriter.
Now, though, her music is surpassing those she provided hits for. With plenty of hype surrounding GaGa, only time will tell whether she will take over planet pop — or fizzle without trace. Either way, there’s no doubt she is currently the genre’s most interesting proposition. “If people think GaGa is over the top and decadent now, I’m afraid for them, they have no idea what’s to come,” she laughs, contemplating her future. “I eat, sleep, breathe and bleed every inch of my work. I’d absolutely die if I couldn’t be an artist.”

The single Just Dance is out digitally on December 29 and physically on January 5.

The album The Fame is out on January 19.

Lady GaGa tours the UK with the Pussycat Dolls from January 18
[Edited 12/21/08 10:04am]

well i knew the title was coming sooner or later. Whether its bands getting titles like "Best Band in the world" that was Arcade Fire's title, remember them? The article sites all of these different styles and yet they are all based on someone. The album is good, dont get me wrong, but the future of pop? right now with music in the toilet, i dont think anyone is the future of anything. Sorry to say "titles" like this are the kiss of death, whether its Amy Whinehouse, Arcade Fire or a slew of others that just couldnt even deliver anymore product or just fell of the face of the earth, she needs to just ignore the titles. This is a major reason i hate media outlets and these writers at magazzines, they use these bullshit buy lines to make it seem like they are on top of something unique before everyone else is. Funny she mentions Queen as the influence for the "GAGA" name, i wonder if she realizes what that song was really about. It was a total opposite of what she is doing.

i've not been terribly impressed with her BUT i have only heard a handful of stuff. what i've heard, though, invokes absolutely no comparison to grace jones. just because a bitch rocks some hot avante garde fashion does not mean she's in league with grace jones.

I don't get the hype around her at all.

DiamondGlove said:

she has very good publicists.

She put out maybe the best pop album of 2008. She can sing and perform. There is reason to justify the hype.

I like her!

More like Lady WackWack!