Lady Gaga
A New York songwriter who wrote for Britney and the Pussycat Dolls — and got dropped by Def Jam — reinvented herself as Lady Gaga and detonated across 2008–09. The Fame sent "Just Dance" and "Poker Face" to #1, and within a year she'd gone from songwriter-for-hire to the sound of pop.
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born in New York City on March 28, 1986, and studied at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in the Collaborative Arts Project 21 music program before betting everything on pop. Def Jam signed her in September 2006 — then dropped her. She kept grinding as a songwriter, with credits for Britney Spears, New Kids on the Block, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls, until Interscope signed her in 2007. There she built the Haus of Gaga, her own creative team modeled on Andy Warhol's Factory.
The Fame arrived on August 19, 2008, and its debut single "Just Dance" became one of pop's great sleeper hits: a #2 club-chart record in the summer of 2008 that spent almost five months on the Billboard Hot 100 before finally hitting #1 in January 2009. "Poker Face" went straight to #1 behind it. She spent March through September 2009 on The Fame Ball Tour, and closed the year with The Fame Monster reissue and "Bad Romance." In eighteen months, an unknown had become the most talked-about pop star on the planet.
The arrival stuck. "Just Dance," "Poker Face," and "Bad Romance" each went on to sell over 10 million copies globally, making her one of the few artists with three Diamond-certified singles — and the ride that started in 2008 never really ended; she simply kept being a superstar long after the decade closed.
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