How Lady Gaga took Stefani Germanotta from New York’s Convent of the Sacred Heart to super stardom

BY Michael O’Keeffe
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, February 7th 2010, 4:00 AM

For a mega-sta full of surprises, it was no surprise Lady Gaga stole the show at this year’s way-over-the-top Grammy Awards.

For starters, she won two Grammys: “Poker Face” was best dance recording and “The Fame” earned the award for best electronic-dance album.

She wore three different outfits — each more bizarre than the previous, from a risque, heart-shaped stunner to a spiky silver headdress with matching gown.

And she wowed the audience by segueing from a powerful “Poker Face” to a duet with Elton John, with both looking like orphans out of a Dickens novel, and John tweaking the lyrics of “Your Song:” “How wonderful life is, with Gaga in the world.”

“It’s amazing, but not surprising that people have gravitated to her,” says Jeff Rabhan, a music industry executive who has worked with Jermaine Dupri and J.Lo, and heads NYU’s Clive Davis department of recorded music.

“Artists have not done a lot to differentiate themselves recently. If you look at Beyoncé or Alicia Keys, they’ve been very traditional in their approach. People are looking for something different.”

Lady Gaga certainly is different: a contradiction whose lyrics are X-rated, but who’s also a sweet Italian-American girl from the West Side who adores her parents.

She’s met Queen Elizabeth and been interviewed by Oprah, but says she misses the days when she played lower East Side dives and clubs like the Bitter End.

She coos on stage and on her records like a traditional sex kitten, but revels in her bisexuality and does nothing to dispel rumors she is a hermaphrodite.

Lady Gaga leans heavily on her influences — Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Grace Jones, David Bowie, Queen — but blends the past into something fresh and exciting.

“What makes Gaga different from Madonna is that she’s a performance artist operating in the mainstream,” says celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton. “She takes Grace Jones and Yoko Ono and makes it pop.”

In a world full of meteoric-rise stories, Gaga’s seems one of the most improbable.

It began in 2006, when New Jersey-based record producer Rob Fusari was looking for a sexy rock ‘n’ roll heroine with tousled hair, sleepy eyes and garage band chops to front a female version of the rock band The Strokes.

Instead, he got a chunky girl named Stefani Germanotta with a bouffant, dark eyeliner and a look more guido than grunge. She had taken a 40-minute bus ride to his studio in Parsippany, and he wanted to let her down easy.

“I’m thinking, ‘How can I cut this short and still make her feel like it was worth coming all the way out here?’ ” says Fusari, who has worked with Beyoncé, Will Smith and Whitney Houston. “She was bubbly and nice, but not what I was looking for at all.”

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source : feeds.nydailynews.com

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