Lady Gaga is known for her chart-topping pop songs and unusual stage attire but she's managed to shock fans again, teaming up with Michael Bolton.
Access Hollywood has confirmed that Gaga has co-written a ballad with the adult-contemporary singer, expected to land on his upcoming album, "One World Love," which is due out later this month. According to MTV News, the song is called "Murder My Heart."
Gaga may now be an international sensation, but the "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You" singer apparently met her before she was famous.
"I was taking a break from production when my manager and the label tag-teamed me on the phone about writing with a young artist named 'Lady Gaga' who I had never heard of but they were raving about," Bolton recounted to London's Metro newspaper. "They said that she was a huge fan of mine and wanted to write with me."
Bolton was provided with a copy of her tunes and was quickly swept up in Gaga fever.
"No one I knew had heard of her," he continued. "Less than a minute into 'Just Dance,' I thought, 'This CD is gonna be huge,'" he said.
And Bolton revealed he predicted Gaga was about to go global.
"When I met her in the studio later that night, I realized she was not only about to have a big hit record but Gaga was a superstar about to launch -- energy was so high and her focus excited me," he said. "She reminded me of a young Madonna -- with more exuberance and emphasis on the art rather than the marketing."
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Lady Gaga Teams Up With Michael Bolton
Spot The Difference: Lady Gaga Vs. Roisin Murphy
It is the pop scandal of the century. Did Lady Gaga steal her look from Irish electro ice-maiden Roisin Murphy?
According to Murphy herself, yes she did! who told Irish Central: "Lady Gaga is just a poor imitation of me. She has copied my style."
And the pictures, courtesy of Idolator, would seem to bear her claims out:
The point is, Lady Gaga is far from the only musician to take visual clues from someone else. Manic Street Preachers started out aping the Clash, with their slogan T-shirts. Coldplay nicked their French revolutionary jackets from the Sgt. Pepper sleeve (via Arcade Fire). Elvis Presley pinched his "jumpsuit-era" look from comic book hero Captain Marvel Jr.
Neither is Gaga the first musician to come over all stalkerish in her commitment to aping another artist. Kasabian's Tom Meighan would clearly kill to be Liam Gallagher. Brandon Flowers flits between wanting to be Bruce Springsteen and wanting to be the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant. In La Roux's head, she's a cross between Annie Lennox and Adam Ant.
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Lady Gaga Live in Manila!
The year,s biggest pop sensation Lady Gaga is coming to Manila this August. Her upcoming concert is set at the Araneta Coliseum on August 11, 8PM. With her fantastic vocal quality and style, boundless energy and fabulous avant garde costumes, she has undoubtedly created an innovative and enticing act that broke new grounds in pop music and culture.
This new, trend-setting standard has captivated millions around the world, spawning a frenzy of excitement and ecstasy that reached fever pitch with the huge success of her mega-hits, “Just Dance” and “Poker Face.”
With her overnight success, Lady GaGa has evolved into the true embodiment of today’s pop icons who help define pop culture with their authentic and distinct sound and style that reflect the spirit, mood and attitude of the times.
“Lady GaGa In Manila!” is presented by Smart Buddy and co-presented by Subaru in cooperation with Converse, Maldita and San Mig Light.
It is also sponsored by ETC, 2nd Avenue, C/S Origin, Jack TV, ABS CBN, ASAP Live!, Magic 89.9, Edsa Shangri-La Manila, MTV, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, Philippine Star, BusinessWorld and philstar.com.
Other supporters are MCA Music, Inc.-Universal, GetzMo.dom, Wave 89.1, Energy FM 81.5, OptimaSignsolutions, Focalcast Network, Monster Radio RX 93.1, 99.5 RT, Mellow 94.7, Max FM 103.5, Jam 88.5 and Home Radio 97.9.
Lady Gaga Live in Manila concert tickets:
VIP (1ST 10 ROWS OF 101 & 103) (Reserved Seating) 7875
Patron Standing 5775
Patron (Reserved Seating) 5775
Lower Box (Reserved Seating) 3675
Upper Box A 2625
Upper Box B 1050
Gen. Admission 525
For inquiries and reservation, you may call Ticketnet at 911-5555 or visit the Ticketnet outlets near you.
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Lady Gaga Profile
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986 in Yonkers, New York, better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American recording artist.
She the eldest child of Italian American parents. Her father, Joseph Germanotta, is an internet entrepreneur, and her mother, Cynthia, works as a telecommunications assistant. By the time she was eleven, she was set to join Juilliard School in Manhattan, but instead attended the private Catholic school Convent of the Sacred Heart. Having learned piano at the age of four, she went on to write her first piano ballad at thirteen and began performing at open mic nights by the age of fourteen. At the age of seventeen, she gained early admission to the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied music. She improved her songwriting skills by composing essays and analytical papers focusing on topics such as art, religion and socio-political order.
She began playing in clubs in the New York City area while also working at Interscope Records as a songwriter for several established acts, including Akon, who signed her to a joint deal with his own label, Kon Live Distribution after hearing Gaga sing. She then started to work on new material for her first studio album.
She began working with a collective called the Haus of Gaga in 2008, and released her debut album The Fame. The album peaked in countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, and topped the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart in the United States. To date, the album has spawned the international number one singles "Just Dance" (nominated for Best Dance Recording at the 51st Grammy Awards) and "Poker Face." After opening for New Kids On The Block and the Pussycat Dolls, Gaga headlined her first tour, The Fame Ball Tour.
She has been influenced by fashion and has been appreciated for her provocative sense of style and her influence on other celebrities. Musically, she is inspired by glam rockers such as David Bowie and Queen, as well as pop singers such as Michael Jackson and Madonna.
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Irish singer Roisin Murphy has accused Lady Gaga of copying her outrageous style
Irish singer Roisin Murphy has accused Lady Gaga of copying her outrageous style and attempting to pass it off as her own.
The Just Dance hitmaker has been lauded as a fashion pioneer since topping the charts with her debut album The Fame, becoming a tabloid staple with her oversized hats, thigh-high boots and daring headpieces.
But former Moloko frontwoman Murphy maintains she's responsible for dreaming up the pop star's outlandish looks.
Murphy reportedly told the Daily Mail, "She's copied my style. I met her about a year ago before she got really big and I had no clue that this was all going to happen. She wasn't wearing shoulder pads at the time, and I was.
"Lady Gaga is just a poor imitation of me. She has copied my style, she took my shoulder pads and all that. Mind you she doesn't wear the bottom half!"
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Lady Gaga Hermaphrodite Rumors 'Ridiculous,' Manager Says
That's what her manager's asserting after an up-skirt photo of the pop star sparked rumors that she's a hermaphrodite. The photo, taken from video shot at England's Glastonbury festival, reveals a bulge between Gaga's legs -- a bulge that could have been caused by undergarments, a bad angle, or, as some blogs would have you believe, a penis.
Bossip.com alleged that Gaga said this when asked about the subject:
"It's not something that I'm ashamed of, just isn't something that I go around telling everyone. Yes. I have both male and female genitalia, but I consider myself a female. It's just a little bit of a penis and really doesn't interfere much with my life. The reason I haven't talked about it is that it's not a big deal to me. Like come on. It's not like we all go around talking about our v***. I think this is a great opportunity to make other multiple gendered people feel more comfortable with their bodies. I'm sexy, I'm hot. I have both a **** and a p*****. Big f******g deal."
ABCNews.com asked Gaga's manager if the "Poker Face" singer is a hermaphrodite and if she said the above quote. His reply:
"This is completely ridiculous."
Gaga's sexuality has been the subject of intense speculation ever since she told Rolling Stone magazine that she considers herself bisexual, though her attraction to women is purely physical.
"I think I'm changing what people think is sexy," she told the magazine in May.
In June, she elaborated on the issue to USA Today, saying, "I don't think being gay or being bisexual or being sexually free is anything that should be hidden. Everybody has a right to their secrecy, of course, but I don't feel particularly shy about it. It is who I am. I sing very openly about it in my music, so I suppose I could say that I choose not to hide it in interviews because I don't care to hide it and, two, because it is very obvious in my music that I like women."
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Dance queen Lady GaGa fashions booming career
Sprawled on her bed in an Amsterdam hotel, Lady GaGa is channeling Lady Godiva-sans the horse.
While the 23-year-old has famously worn everything from Kermit the Frog to a hat made to resemble the solar system, today she's rocking the one constant in her ever shifting wardrobe-underpants. And nothing more.
But despite her dominance on the pop charts worldwide and bleached blonde hair, GaGa is not the average pop tart. She's an accomplished songwriter and performer who seems to have come out of nowhere, bursting from the corner of Ludlow and Rivington fully formed and fabulous. In conversation, she's chatty and articulate, but gives off the distinct sense she's 10 steps ahead of everyone else -- while the Internet is still buzzing about the lampshade she wore over her face in a TV interview, she's plotting her next move.
Of course, if she invests wisely, she may never need to work again: Her debut album, "The Fame" has sold nearly 1.3 million copies in the United States since its low-key release last September via Interscope. For the year, it's both the best-selling set for a debut artist, and the fifth-best-selling album overall.
Her digital single, "Just Dance," has sold 4.4 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the No. 2 best-selling digital song of all time. Earlier this week, she snagged nine nominations at the MTV Video Music Awards, sharing the lead with Beyonce.
In addition to co-writing all the tracks on her album, GaGa has previously written for Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears and New Kids on the Block.
"Getting into writing for others happened naturally, because at the time, I didn't have a record deal," GaGa says. "I don't have an ego about other people singing my songs."
And-as surprising as it may seem amid her outre outfits and the nudge-nudge-wink-wink lyrics-GaGa's path from behind-the-scenes songwriter to cultural phenomenon was a smart, regimented plan. Before she was Lady GaGa, she was Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, an Italian Catholic schoolgirl from Yonkers, N.Y. She played piano and studied music as a child, but it wasn't until she hit her early 20s that her songwriting and performance style clicked.
"She wrote almost all her hits in a week," says Vince Herbert, who signed GaGa to his Streamline Records label, a joint venture with Interscope. "She flew to L.A. and sat in a studio with (producer) RedOne and just cranked it out."
GaGa writes mostly at the piano, and to her, if a song doesn't come easily, it isn't meant to come at all. "A hit record writes itself," she says. "If you have to wait, maybe the song isn't there. Once you tap into the soul, the song begins to write itself. And I usually write the choruses first, because without a good chorus, who really gives a f---?"
But before she had hit records, she was an apprentice songwriter, working with a number of producers and trying to build a name for herself. Jody Gerson, who signed GaGa's publishing deal with Sony/ATV, points out that she was driven to understand the publishing business from a young age.
"She interned at Famous Music Publishing before any of this," Gerson says. "And even back then, she was famous for showing up for work in her undies."
GaGa says she doesn't want to be underestimated or written of as merely a pop songwriter. "I think most music is pop music," she says. "The mark of a great song is how many genres it can embody. It's about honesty and connection-look at a song like 'I Will Always Love You.' Whitney (Houston) killed it as a pop song, but it works as a country song, a gospel song, everything. If I can play a song acoustic, or just on the piano, and it still works, I know it's good."
Gerson says that she and GaGa are both particular about who the artist will work with, especially with her current touring schedule. "She's swamped right now," Gerson says. "There is a lot of interest; we're talking to ("American Idol" runner-up) Adam Lambert right now, for instance. But it has to be a good match for her to spend the time."
Coincidentally, GaGa's crowning TV moment came in April, when she performed "Poker Face" on the "American Idol" results show. While the show helped boost her album sales (according to Nielsen SoundScan, "The Fame" sold 45,000 copies the week before the show aired, 51,000 the week it aired and 56,000 the week after), more important, it showed middle America that she was a bona fide pop star.
GaGa gets plenty of additional screen exposure through the use of her songs in soundtracks and commercials. But deciding whether to align her with big brands has been trickier.
Steve Stoute, head of the branding agency Translation, thinks GaGa herself is a brand. To that end, he has signed a deal with her and says he will treat her just like he does such clients as McDonald's or State Farm. "I don't just want to do deals for a check with her," he says. "She's at the point where she's bigger than life. She's transcended music."
A few months ago, Lady GaGa decided to try a little experiment.
"I was talking to the members of the Haus (her creative team) about the power of image and the camera, and I wanted to say something on a real level about fame," she says.
"I drink a lot of tea, and I decided to take a purple teacup out of my china collection and take it to London and make it famous. I put it in videos and had fans pose with it and put it on TV -- at one point, the teacup had a call time." It became the most famous teacup since Meret Oppenheim covered one in fur.
Not surprisingly, GaGa has a background in art history, which she studied for a while at New York University before leaving to pursue music and performance full time.
"There is certainly a performance art element to all of this," she says. "I get challenged in interviews all the time, people asking me whether the clothes distract from the music. They're not separate; it's not one or the other. I dress the way I do to demonstrate my commitment to show business."
GaGa names as her inspirations people like Klaus Nomi and Andy Warhol, who she says saw themselves as living their roles. "There is no sense of duality when it comes to who I am. It's not a play-acting thing for me. When I did the Rolling Stone cover shoot, I said I wanted to be shot as the rock goddess I know I'd eventually be."
Though she doesn't speak to it directly, there is a sense that GaGa also is canny about using her wardrobe to keep her in the public eye. In the month of July alone, Perez Hilton's Web site mentioned her 13 times, almost always for her outrageous outfits. More recently, Hilton's Twitter messages have been breathlessly recounting the pair's Japanese escapades.
Such attention is usually reserved for starlets going through rehab, involved in public breakups or falling drunkenly out of limos-and GaGa does none of this. Though she's admitted to using cocaine in the past, she seems to have realized that she can get just as much attention by slapping on a hat made of hair, without all the nasty side effects.
"The Fame" will be rereleased in the fourth quarter, a year after it debuted. It originally arrived September 9, 2008, to a mostly positive critical reception, but didn't appear on the Billboard 200 until November. It bounced around the charts for the early part of 2009, but then cracked the top 10 in March upon the strength of her first U.S. hit, "Just Dance," and only built from there.
"We always just assumed we were going to sell records," GaGa says. "I have a sense of optimism and liberation, despite the state of the industry and the economy. We function like the industry is in full bloom, and that audacity works for us."
GaGa had to wait to hit those sales records in the United States, though, breaking first in Canada and then in Australia.
She has also toured nonstop, starting off opening for labelmates New Kids on the Block, then headlining her own Fame Ball tour. She opens for Kanye West later this year. And she can guarantee one thing-her closet will remain locked to the infamously stylish and demanding star. "If Kanye tries to wear my clothes, I'll kick his ass," she says with a laugh.
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