Lady Gaga 'The Fame' album

There are no downsides to fame, said Lady Gaga, the singer and currently one of the hottest things in pop. For someone whose debut album called "The Fame" (Interscope) has reached No. 4 in the Billboard charts and has two of the year's biggest selling singles, it's not a surprising statement.

"I'm sort of a musical pop music misfit," says Gaga and "a relentless bitch" in response to how she had got to the top of the music industry.

She claims Lady Gaga is not a persona and it seems she is committed to living as closely to the wild fantasy shown in her videos. More at home on the stage than in the interview chair --"We could sit here and talk, but you will never know who I am unless you see me live" -- even Gaga's faithful make-up artist (in attendance throughout the interview) thought she was crazy because she sleeps in her wigs.

Was it to keep the persona up, stay in character? No, "I just like wigs," she said with an unintentional comic deadpan

She's gone from art school dropout performing in clubs in the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the edge of global stardom with her infectious dance tunes and an intriguing and outlandish image. It's an image that has been carefully concocted; part performance artist, part sexualized pop automaton who feeds on pop culture iconography, digests and adapts it.

"Tabloids were my text books, I'd tear out pages. I embrace pop culture; everything that people say is poisonous, ostentatious and shallow. It's like my chemistry book. I look though everything and make what I believe is art out of it," she said.

Assisting in her pop alchemy is the Haus of Gaga, her inner circle that encompasses designers, producers and those she's close to. As well as her make-up artist, her manager was also in close attendance during the shoot. While we weren't allowed a further glimpse into the "Haus," her coterie exhibited tendencies more like a support group than put-upon workers dealing with diva demands.

If fantasy has a prominent place in the world of Gaga, then the amorphous idea of fame is running the show. She name-checked pop artist Andy Warhol as an inspiration for the way he made commercial art as respected as fine art. No mention was made on his ideas on the fleeting nature of fame itself.

"Ambition and longevity are in my blood," she said, and having written the songs on "The Fame" as well as tunes for Britney Spears and The Pussycat Dolls, she has the musical talent to elevate her above the industry's disposable pop starlets.

"I must remain prolific and relevant... but equally irrelevant," she said as a gnomic strategy for maintaining success. But great anecdotes about how she came up with certain ideas for costumes that involved running around the woods naked in Hawaii sounded more like a real person and less arch.

Yet her contention that fame can do no wrong was shaken by one question at the end of the interview. Aware that more people wanted to know more about her the longer she's in the public eye -- "I find I'm being probed a bit more" -- Internet rumors have been spreading.

While helpful for fueling media interest and the enigma of Lady Gaga, among the most fantastic things circulating out there is that she's a brain-washed puppet of the Illuminati, another is that she is a hermaphrodite. The question was asked how does feel when she reads things like the latter.

The atmosphere changed.

"I'm not even going to answer that," was her response after a protracted pause, while off camera her manager expressed shock at the question, demanding it not be aired (a demand she later retracted only after plenty of discussion).

Gaga herself said the cameras should be turned off, the interview over. They weren't and it wasn't. Things were quickly, if uncomfortably, smoothed over for the sake of one more question to "end on a positive note," according to the manager.

Composure regained, "You can ask me about scrutiny, but I'd prefer if you didn't..." Gaga said.

Was the reaction a studied response to fuel more controversy? It didn't seem so, it was personal and had struck a nerve. Yet her response to the reworded question on scrutiny was like a switch had been flicked and she was back on message:

"There are no downsides," she said before launching into slightly an anecdote that involved getting advice from Grace Jones while she washed her feet.

moreLady Gaga information
It's no wonder that little girl from a good Italian New York family, turned into the exhibitionist, multi-talented singer-songwriter with a flair for theatrics that she is today: Lady GaGa.

"I was always an entertainer. I was a ham as a little girl and I'm a ham today," says Lady GaGa, 22, who made a name for herself on the Lower East Side club scene with the infectious dance-pop party song "Beautiful Dirty Rich," and wild, theatrical, and often tongue-in-cheek "shock art" performances where GaGa – who designs and makes many of her stage outfits -- would strip down to her hand-crafted hot pants and bikini top, light cans of hairspray on fire, and strike a pose as a disco ball lowered from the ceiling to the orchestral sounds of A Clockwork Orange.

"I always loved rock and pop and theater. When I discovered Queen and David Bowie is when it really came together for me and I realized I could do all three," says GaGa, who nicked her name from Queen's song "Radio Gaga" and who cites rock star girlfriends, Peggy Bundy, and Donatella Versace as her fashion icons. "I look at those artists as icons in art. It's not just about the music. It's about the performance, the attitude, the look; it's everything. And, that is where I live as an artist and that is what I want to accomplish."

That goal might seem lofty, but consider the artist: GaGa is the girl who at age 4 learned piano by ear. By age 13, she had written her first piano ballad. At 14, she played open mike nights at clubs such as New York's the Bitter End by night and was teased for her quirky, eccentric style by her Convent of the Sacred Heart School (the Manhattan private school Nicky and Paris Hilton attended) classmates by day. At age 17, she became was one of 20 kids in the world to get early admission to Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Signed by her 20th birthday and writing songs for other artists (such as the Pussycat Dolls, and has been asked to write for a series of Interscope artists) before her debut album was even released, Lady GaGa has earned the right to reach for the sky.

"My goal as an artist is to funnel a pop record to a world in a very interesting way," says GaGa, who wrote all of her lyrics, all of her melodies, and played most of the synth work on her album, The Fame (Streamline/Interscope/KonLive). "I almost want to trick people into hanging with something that is really cool with a pop song. It's almost like the spoonful of sugar and I'm the medicine."

On The Fame, it's as if GaGa took two parts dance-pop, one part electro-pop, and one part rock with a splash of disco and burlesque and generously poured it into the figurative martini glasses of the world in an effort to get everyone drunk with her Fame. "The Fame is about how anyone can feel famous," she explains. "Pop culture is art. It doesn't make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame. But, it's a sharable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle."

The CD's opener and first single, "Just Dance," gets the dance floor rocking with it's "fun, L.A., celebratory vibe." As for the equally catchy, "Boys Boys Boys," Gaga doesn't mind wearing her influences on her sleeve. "I wanted to write the female version of Motley Crue's ‘Girls Girls Girls,' but with my own twist. I wanted to write a pop song that rockers would like."

"Beautiful Dirty Rich" sums up her time of self-discovery, living in the Lower East Side and dabbling in drugs and the party scene. "That time, and that song, was just me trying to figure things out," says GaGa. "Once I grabbed the reigns of my artistry, I fell in love with that more than I did with the party life." On first listen, "Paparazzi" might come off as a love song to cameras, and in all honestly, GaGa jokes "on one level it IS about wooing the paparazzi and wanting fame. But, it's not to be taken completely seriously. It's about everyone's obsession with that idea. But, it's also about wanting a guy to love you and the struggle of whether you can have success or love or both."

GaGa shows her passion for love songs on such softer tracks as the Queen-influenced "Brown Eyes" and the sweet kiss-off break-up song "Nothing I can Say (eh eh)." "‘Brown Eyes' is the most vulnerable song on the album," she explains. "‘Eh Eh' is my simple pop song about finding someone new and breaking up with the old boyfriend."

For the new tour for this album, fans will be treated to a more polished version of what they saw (and loved) at her critically acclaimed Lollapalooza show in August 2007 and Winter Music Conference performance in March 2008. "This new show is the couture version of my handmade downtown performance of the past few years. It's more fine-tuned, but some of my favorite elements to my past shows – the disco balls, hot pants, sequin, and stilettos – will still be there. Just more fierce and more of a conceptual show with a vision for pop performance art."

It's been a while since a new pop artist has made her way in the music industry the old-fashioned/grass roots way by paying her dues with seedy club gigs and self-promotion. This is one rising pop star who hasn't been plucked from a model casting call, born into a famous family, won a reality TV singing contest, or emerged from a teen cable TV sitcom. "I did this the way you are supposed to. I played every club in New York City and I bombed in every club and then killed it in every club and I found myself as an artist. I learned how to survive as an artist, get real, and how to fail and then figure out who I was as singer and performer. And, I worked hard."

GaGa adds with a wink in her eye, "And, now, I'm just trying to change the world one sequin at a time."

Lady Gaga biography
“Why can’t we just have a good time like they did in the disco days?” This is Lady GaGa’s lament. Her debut album The Fame does just that. Blasting in like a shot from a sequin cannon, a living disco ball set against a dark sky, never descending, daring the sun to come up. It’s a fete, a Mardi Gras, a party out of bounds coming at you like a wobbly cocktail held high above a crowd dizzied by club life. It’s all hosted by GaGa, a bigger than life presence that’s all glamour and money and clouds of smoke and perfume. But it’s not meant to exclude. She’s singing about you with music that chases down a dance, pop, punk, burlesque hybrid and wrestles it to the floor. GaGa has the gift to grab you by the hand and pull you right into the spotlight along with her. It’s a shareable fame. The exclusion is gone. Isn’t this why they built dance floors in the first place? Lady Gaga - Changing the world one sequin at a time...

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Lady Gaga - The Fame