Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter and actress.
140 Facts About Lady Gaga
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Lady Gaga is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility.
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Lady Gaga studied at Collaborative Arts Project 21, through the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, before dropping out to pursue a career in music.
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Lady Gaga had her breakthrough the following year with her debut studio album, The Fame, and its chart-topping singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face".
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Lady Gaga's five succeeding studio albums all debuted atop the US Billboard 200.
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Lady Gaga's second full-length album, Born This Way, explored electronic rock and techno-pop and sold more than one million copies in its first week.
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Lady Gaga ventured into acting, winning awards for her leading roles in the miniseries American Horror Story: Hotel and the musical film A Star Is Born.
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Lady Gaga returned to dance-pop with her sixth studio album, Chromatica, which yielded the number-one single "Rain on Me".
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Lady Gaga followed this with her second collaborative album with Bennett, Love for Sale, and a starring role in the biopic House of Gucci, both in 2021.
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Lady Gaga's accolades include 13 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, 18 MTV Video Music Awards, awards from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and recognition as Billboard Artist of the Year and Woman of the Year.
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Lady Gaga has been included in several Forbes power rankings and ranked fourth on VH1's Greatest Women in Music.
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Lady Gaga's philanthropy and activism focus on mental health awareness and LGBT rights; she has her own non-profit organization, the Born This Way Foundation, which supports the wellness of young people.
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Lady Gaga's parents are Cynthia Louise, a philanthropist and business executive, and Internet entrepreneur Joseph Germanotta, and she has a younger sister named Natali.
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Lady Gaga has described her high-school self as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but "a bit insecure".
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Lady Gaga considered herself a misfit and was mocked for "being either too provocative or too eccentric".
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Lady Gaga began playing the piano at age four when her mother insisted she become "a cultured young woman".
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Lady Gaga took piano lessons and practiced through her childhood.
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Lady Gaga's parents encouraged her to pursue music and enrolled her in Creative Arts Camp.
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Lady Gaga played the lead roles of Adelaide in the play Guys and Dolls and Philia in the play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Regis High School.
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Lady Gaga studied method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute for ten years.
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Lady Gaga unsuccessfully auditioned for New York shows, though she did appear in a small background role as a high-school student in a 2001 episode of The Sopranos titled "The Telltale Moozadell".
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Lady Gaga studied music there, and improved her songwriting skills by writing essays on art, religion, social issues and politics, including a thesis on pop artists Spencer Tunick and Damien Hirst.
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Lady Gaga has post-traumatic stress disorder which she attributes to the incident, and credits support from doctors, family and friends with helping her.
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In 2005, Lady Gaga recorded two songs with hip-hop artist Melle Mel for an audio book accompanying Cricket Casey's children's novel The Portal in the Park.
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Lady Gaga formed a band called the SGBand with some friends from NYU.
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Fusari collaborated with Lady Gaga, who traveled daily to New Jersey, helping to develop her songs and compose new material.
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The producer said they began dating in May 2006, and claimed to have been the first person to call her "Lady Gaga", which was derived from Queen's song "Radio Ga Ga".
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Fusari and Lady Gaga established a company called "Team Lovechild, LLC" to promote her career.
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Lady Gaga was dropped from the label three months later and returned to her family home for Christmas.
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Lady Gaga later credited Herbert as the man who discovered her.
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In late 2007, Lady Gaga met with songwriter and producer RedOne.
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Lady Gaga collaborated with him in the recording studio for a week on her debut album, signing with Cherrytree Records, an Interscope imprint established by producer and songwriter Martin Kierszenbaum; she wrote four songs with Kierszenbaum.
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The video for "Bad Romance" became the most watched on YouTube in April 2010, and that October, Lady Gaga became the first person with more than one billion combined views.
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Lady Gaga was the most nominated artist for a single year, and the first woman to receive two nominations for Video of the Year at the same ceremony.
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Lady Gaga performed songs from her albums at the 2009 Royal Variety Performance, the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, and the 2010 Brit Awards.
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Lady Gaga partnered with Polaroid in January 2010 as their creative director and announced a suite of photo-capture products called Grey Label.
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In February 2011, Lady Gaga released "Born This Way", the lead single from her studio album of the same name.
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Lady Gaga embarked on the Born This Way Ball tour in April 2012, which was scheduled to conclude the following March, but ended one month earlier when Gaga canceled the remaining dates due to a labral tear of her right hip that required surgery.
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Lady Gaga performed a concert at the Sydney Town Hall in Australia that year to promote Born This Way and to celebrate former US President Bill Clinton's 65th birthday.
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In 2012, Gaga guest-starred as an animated version of herself in an episode of The Simpsons called "Lisa Goes Gaga", and released her first fragrance, Lady Gaga Fame, followed by a second one, Eau de Gaga, in 2014.
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Lady Gaga began work on her third studio album, Artpop, in early 2012, during the Born This Way Ball tour; she crafted the album to mirror "a night at the club".
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Helen Brown in The Daily Telegraph criticized Lady Gaga for making another album about her fame and doubted the record's originality, but found it "great for dancing".
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Lady Gaga hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live in November 2013.
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In March 2014, Lady Gaga had a seven-day concert residency commemorating the last performance at New York's Roseland Ballroom before its closure.
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Lady Gaga briefly appeared in Rodriguez's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and was confirmed as Versace's spring-summer 2014 ambassador with a campaign called "Lady Gaga For Versace".
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In September 2014, Lady Gaga released a collaborative jazz album with Tony Bennett titled Cheek to Cheek.
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Lady Gaga won Billboard Woman of the Year and Contemporary Icon Award at the 2015 Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards.
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Lady Gaga had spent much of her early life wanting to be an actress, and achieved her goal when she starred in American Horror Story: Hotel.
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At the 73rd Golden Globe Awards, Lady Gaga received the Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film award for her work on the season.
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Lady Gaga appeared in Nick Knight's 2015 fashion film for Tom Ford's 2016 spring campaign and was guest editor for V fashion magazine's 99th issue in January 2016, which featured 16 different covers.
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Lady Gaga received Editor of the Year award at the Fashion Los Angeles Awards.
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Lady Gaga played a witch named Scathach in American Horror Story: Roanoke, the series' sixth season, which ran from September to November 2016.
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The album, titled Joanne, was named after Lady Gaga's late aunt, who was an inspiration for the music.
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Lady Gaga later released a piano version of the album's title track in 2018, which won a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance.
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Lady Gaga performed as the headlining act during the Super Bowl LI halftime show on February 5,2017.
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The performance led to a surge of 410,000 song downloads in the United States for Lady Gaga and earned her an Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Special Class Program category.
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Lady Gaga released a standalone single, "The Cure", which reached the top 10 in Australia.
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Four months later, Lady Gaga began the Joanne World Tour, which she announced after the Super Bowl LI halftime show.
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In March 2018, Lady Gaga supported the March for Our Lives gun-control rally in Washington, DC, and released a cover of Elton John's "Your Song" for his tribute album Revamp.
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Cooper approached Lady Gaga after seeing her perform at a cancer research fundraiser.
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An admirer of Cooper's work, Lady Gaga agreed to the project due to its portrayal of addiction and depression.
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Lady Gaga and Cooper co-wrote and produced most of the songs on the soundtrack for A Star Is Born, which she insisted they perform live in the film.
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Lady Gaga gave live performances of the song at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards and the 91st Academy Awards.
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In October, Lady Gaga announced her engagement to talent agent Christian Carino whom she had met in early 2017.
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Lady Gaga launched her vegan makeup line, Haus Laboratories, in September 2019 exclusively on Amazon.
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In February 2020, Lady Gaga began a relationship with entrepreneur Michael Polansky.
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At the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga won five awards, including the inaugural Tricon Award recognizing artists accomplished in different areas of the entertainment industry.
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Lady Gaga later offered a $500,000 reward for the return of her pets.
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The album's promotional rollout included the television special One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, released in November 2021, on CBS, which featured select performances from the duo's August 3 and 5 performances at Radio City Music Hall.
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Lady Gaga stayed in character for 18 months, speaking with an accent for nine months during that period.
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Lady Gaga's method acting approach took a toll on her mental wellbeing, and towards the end of filming she had to be accompanied on-set by a psychiatric nurse.
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Lady Gaga earned the New York Film Critics Circle Award, and nominations for the BAFTA Award, Critics' Choice Award, Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress.
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Lady Gaga co-wrote the song "Hold My Hand" for the 2022 film Top Gun: Maverick, and composed the score alongside Hans Zimmer and Harold Faltermeyer.
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Lady Gaga performed "Hold My Hand" live at the 95th Academy Awards, where it was nominated for Best Original Song.
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Lady Gaga is set to star with Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie a Deux, which will be released in 2024.
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Lady Gaga grew up listening to artists such as Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Queen, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Whitney Houston, Elton John, Prince, En Vogue, TLC, Christina Aguilera, Janet Jackson, and Blondie, who have all influenced her music.
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Lady Gaga has been compared to Madonna, who has said that she sees herself reflected in Gaga.
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Lady Gaga says that she wants to revolutionize pop music as Madonna has.
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Lady Gaga has cited heavy metal bands as an influence, specifically Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Marilyn Manson.
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Lady Gaga was inspired by her mother to be interested in fashion, which she now says is a major influence and integrated with her music.
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Stylistically, Lady Gaga has been compared to Leigh Bowery, Isabella Blow, and Cher; she once commented that as a child, she absorbed Cher's fashion sense and made it her own.
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Lady Gaga became friends with British fashion designer Alexander McQueen shortly before his suicide in 2010, and became known for wearing his designs, particularly his towering armadillo shoes.
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Lady Gaga considers fashion designer Donatella Versace her muse; Versace has called Lady Gaga "the fresh Donatella".
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Lady Gaga has been influenced by Princess Diana, whom she has admired since her childhood.
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Lady Gaga has called the Indian alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra a "true inspiration", and has quoted Indian leader Osho's book Creativity on Twitter.
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Lady Gaga says she was influenced by Osho's work in valuing rebellion through creativity and equality.
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Lady Gaga says the continual reinvention is "liberating" herself, which she has been drawn to since childhood.
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Lady Gaga combines a variety of music genres, particularly incorporating elements of rock into her pop and dance music.
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Lady Gaga has branched out into jazz and other non-pop musical genres.
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Lady Gaga is a contralto, with a range spanning from B2 to B5.
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Lady Gaga has changed her vocal style regularly, and considers Born This Way "much more vocally up to par with what I've always been capable of".
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Lady Gaga believes that "all good music can be played on a piano and still sound like a hit".
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Lady Gaga's songs have covered a wide variety of concepts; The Fame discusses the lust for stardom, while the follow-up The Fame Monster expresses fame's dark side through monster metaphors.
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Lady Gaga calls herself "a little bit of a feminist" and asserts that she is "sexually empowering women".
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Lady Gaga continued the blood-soaked theme during The Monster Ball Tour, causing protests in England from family groups and fans in the aftermath of the Cumbria shootings, in which a taxi driver had killed 12 people, then himself.
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At the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga appeared in drag as her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, and delivered a lovesick monologue before a performance of her song "You and I".
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When Lady Gaga met briefly with then-president Barack Obama at a Human Rights Campaign fundraiser, he found the interaction "intimidating" as she was dressed in 16-inch heels, making her the tallest woman in the room.
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When interviewed by Barbara Walters for her annual ABC News special 10 Most Fascinating People in 2009, Lady Gaga dismissed the claim that she is intersex as an urban legend.
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Lady Gaga's fans call her "Mother Monster", and she often refers to them as "Little Monsters", a phrase she had tattooed on herself in dedication.
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In July 2012, Lady Gaga co-founded the social networking service LittleMonsters.
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Scott Hardy, CEO of Polaroid, praised Lady Gaga for inspiring fans and for her close interactions with them on social media.
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In 2016, Lady Gaga was banned in China again after she publicly talked with the Dalai Lama.
103.
All profits from her online store that day were donated, and Lady Gaga announced that $500,000 was collected for the fund.
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Hours after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, Lady Gaga tweeted a link to Japan Prayer Bracelets.
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In June 2011, Lady Gaga performed at MTV Japan's charity show in Makuhari Messe, which benefited the Japanese Red Cross.
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In 2012, Lady Gaga joined the campaign group Artists Against Fracking.
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Lady Gaga contributes in the fight against HIV and AIDS, focusing on educating young women about the risks of the disease.
108.
In collaboration with Cyndi Lauper, Lady Gaga joined forces with MAC Cosmetics to launch a line of lipstick under their supplementary cosmetic line, Viva Glam.
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In 2012, Lady Gaga launched the Born This Way Foundation, a non-profit organization that focuses on youth empowerment.
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In October 2015, at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Lady Gaga joined 200 high school students, policy makers, and academic officials, including Peter Salovey, to discuss ways to recognize and channel emotions for positive outcomes.
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Lady Gaga partnered with Starbucks for a week in June 2017 with the "Cups of Kindness" campaign, where the company donated 25 cents from some of the beverages sold to the foundation.
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Lady Gaga appeared in a video by Staples Inc to raise funds for the foundation and DonorsChoose.
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Lady Gaga had been promoting it with a 21 days of kindness challenge on her social media, using the "BeKind21" hashtag.
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In 2021, Lady Gaga collaborated with the Champagne house Dom Perignon to release a limited edition of Rose Vintage 2005 bottles along with a sculpture designed by her.
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Lady Gaga spoke at the 2009 National Equality March in Washington, DC to support the LGBT rights movement.
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Lady Gaga attended the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards accompanied by four gay and lesbian former members of the United States Armed Forces who had been unable to serve openly under the US military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which banned open homosexuality in the military.
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Lady Gaga urged her fans via YouTube to contact their senators in an effort to overturn the policy.
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Lady Gaga appeared at Europride, an international event dedicated to LGBT pride, in Rome in June 2011.
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Lady Gaga criticized the poor state of gay rights in many European countries and described gay people as "revolutionaries of love".
120.
Rodemeyer's suicide prompted Lady Gaga to meet with then-President Barack Obama in order to address anti-gay bullying in American schools.
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In June 2016, during a vigil held in Los Angeles for victims of the attack at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Lady Gaga read aloud the names of the 49 people killed in the attack, and gave a speech.
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Later that month, Lady Gaga appeared in Human Rights Campaign's tribute video to the victims of the attack.
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Lady Gaga opposed the presidency of Donald Trump and his military transgender ban.
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Lady Gaga supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.
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Lady Gaga stated "I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice, and everybody is welcome".
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Lady Gaga made a congratulatory speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and the LGBTQ+ community's accomplishments at WorldPride NYC 2019 outside the Stonewall Inn, birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.
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Lady Gaga was named the "Queen of Pop" in a 2011 ranking by Rolling Stone based on record sales and social media metrics.
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Lady Gaga has often been praised for using controversy to bring attention to various issues.
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In 2015, Time noted that Lady Gaga had "practically invented the current era of pop music as spectacle".
130.
The name monstraparva alluded to Lady Gaga's fans, known as Little Monsters, since their symbol is the outstretched "monster claw" hand, which resembles a tightly rolled young fern leaf prior to unfurling.
131.
In Taichung, Taiwan, July 3 is designated as "Lady Gaga Day" marking the first day Gaga visited the country in 2011.
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Lady Gaga has won thirteen Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Brit Awards, sixteen Guinness World Records, and the inaugural Songwriters Hall of Fame's Contemporary Icon Award.
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Lady Gaga received a National Arts Awards' Young Artist Award, which honors individuals who have shown accomplishments and leadership early in their career, the Jane Ortner Artist Award from the Grammy Museum in 2016, and a National Board of Review Award for Best Actress in 2018.
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Lady Gaga has been recognized by the Council of Fashion Designers of America with the Fashion Icon award.
135.
Lady Gaga's album Born This Way featured on Rolling Stones 2020 revision of their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and the song "Bad Romance" and its music video were among Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and 100 Greatest Music Videos of All Time, respectively, in 2021.
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Lady Gaga is the fourteenth top digital singles artist in the US, with 87.5 million equivalent units certified according to Recording Industry Association of America, was the first woman to receive the Digital Diamond Award certification from RIAA, one of the few artists with at least three Diamond certified songs, and the first and only artist to have two songs pass seven million downloads.
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Lady Gaga was included on Forbes Celebrity 100 from 2010 to 2015 and then from 2018 to 2020, having topped the list in 2011.
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Lady Gaga appeared on their list of the World's Most Powerful Women from 2010 to 2014.
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Lady Gaga was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2010 and 2019, and ranked second in its most influential people of the past ten years readers' poll in 2013.
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Lady Gaga was the fourth highest-earning female musician on the list.