In case you somehow haven’t heard, American pop star Lady Gaga will be coming to Singapore and Singapore only (insofar as it comes to Asia) for four concerts. The shows will take place on 18, 19 21 and 24 May at the National Stadium.
The exclusivity to the Lion City in Asia almost guarantees Mayhem for any fans looking to catch “Mother Monster” live – though of course, scalpers will probably be on The Edge of Glory.
In any case, it’s probably a good time to start reading up about the Grammy Award-winning musician, and we’re not just talking about her eccentricities (remember her infamous meat dress at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards?).
It’s time to look behind her Poker Face and uncover the Million Reasons that make Gaga, well, Gaga, including her real name, heritage, acting career, beliefs and other lesser-known trivia.
Read on for everything you need to know about Lady Gaga ahead of her Singapore concerts in May, down to the boundary-pushing statements and oddball antics that make up the sometimes-controversial star.
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Before Lady Gaga, she was…
Obviously, Lady Gaga wasn’t Born This Way. Instead, the star’s real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta — so you can see why she decided to think of something shorter — and she was born into an Italian American family in New York City on 28 March 1986.
From the onset, Lady Gaga was comfortably well-off, having an internet entrepreneur (Joseph Germanotta) and a businesswoman-philanthropist (Cynthia Louise) as her parents. She was therefore able to discover her musical talent since the age of four, playing the piano and making occasional appearances at open-mic nights. She even got lessons from Christina Aguilera and Alicia Keys’ vocal coach, Don Lawrence.
Lady Gaga dropped out of school
The budding singer went on to attend the all-girls school the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan before enrolling to study music at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University as an early acceptance student.
However, Lady Gaga ended up dropping out pretty quickly before finding work as a waitress by day and stripper by night. Interestingly, that’s when she first adopted her now-iconic stage name.
Thank Queen for her iconic stage name
If you’re wondering how the singer came up with her unusual moniker, she credits its inspiration to Queen’s 1984 hit Radio Gaga – though the exact provenance of the nickname is a little murkier.
In some interviews, she says it was a childhood nickname that stuck. In others, she says her ex-boyfriend and former producer Rob Fusari stumbled into it. Either way, Lady Gaga is now one of the most recognisable names in music history.
According to trend-tracking platform Glimpse, Lady Gaga is the 9th most-searched person in 2025 with over 14 million hits thus far, losing out only to recent chart-toppers like, ahem, Donald Trump and Elon Musk among others.
Lady Gaga was certified diamond twice
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before reaching stardom, Lady Gaga started off by co-writing songs for other artists like Britney Spears, Fergie, The Pussycat Dolls, and New Kids on the Block.
Eventually, singer-producer Akon heard her sing and decided to sign her on himself. That’s when her musical career really took off. Her 2008 debut studio album, The Fame, catapulted her onto the number two spot on the Billboard 200. She went on to release several more award-winning albums with iconic hits such as Born This Way, Poker Face and Bad Romance.
The latter two ended up going diamond — a rare certification only given to songs that’ve gone platinum 10 times, passing 10 million sales and streams.
Lady Gaga is the first woman to win an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Grammy in just one year
Along the way, Lady Gaga also found time to grace the silver screen, and we’re not just talking about her bit role in The Sopranos at age 15 (yes, she appeared on season three, though under her real name Stefani Germanotta). She appeared in American Horror Story and then more notably alongside Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born.
In A Star Is Born, she showcased both her acting chops and preternatural musical ability with Shallow and Always Remember Us This Way.
Her performance in this movie led to her sweeping an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Grammy in one year — a feat last accomplished by composer Richard Rodgers in 1962.
So what exactly is Lady Gaga’s biggest hit?
Lady Gaga is one of the bestselling musical artists in history, having sold more than 27 million albums and 146 million singles. But what exactly is her biggest hit? It depends on what metric you’re using.
On Spotify, Shallow tops out with over 2.7 billion streams — yes, that’s with a B — followed by Die With A Smile (her 2024 track with Bruno Mars), Poker Face, Always Remember Us This Way and Bad Romance.
As you can see from above, this roughly tracks with the awards she’s been given. If you’re wondering, she’s racked up 14 Grammys, 18 MTV Video Music Awards and even 16 Guiness World Records for her discography.
But she’s had ups and downs too – here are all of Lady Gaga’s controversies
Sadly, many of us know Lady Gaga best for her many controversies. Here’s a quick rundown of all of them:
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Lady Gaga's infamous meat dress:
The singer's headline-grabbing outfit at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards was really made out of raw beef – some 22kg of it, in fact. It wasn't a statement about the meat industry (which was probably why vegans and animal rights group saw red) but rather, the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policies in the American military permitting gay soldiers to enlist so long as they keep their sexuality a secret.
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Lady Gaga's been in trouble with the church:
Ironically, Gaga's open and longstanding advocacy for the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community wasn't what got her into hot water with Christians. It was her song Judas, which referenced religious characters and events in its lyrics and music video. Born This Way's music video, in which the singer dons a nun’s habit to swallow a rosary, also caused controversy.
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Outrageous performances on the stage:
Apart from shocking music videos, Lady Gaga's been known to go bold and brash in live performances too. A year before the meat dress incident, she appeared on stage at the 2009 edition of the MTV Awards in a white outfit dripping with fake blood. In another divisive incident five years later, the star shared the spotlight with a so-called vomit artist who, yes, ingested some neon green liquid before inducing herself to puke on Lady Gaga.
The singer has an invisible Monster within
In her 2017 Netflix documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two, the star shared that she’d been grappling with another invisible monster within – fibromyalgia, a chronic condition known to cause crippling bouts of pain, fatigue, sleep difficulties, depression and anxiety. She’s even had to cancel shows because of it.
Gaga later revealed that she went public with the condition because she wishes “to help raise awareness and connect people who have it”.
Lady Gaga pioneered fandom names with “Little Monsters”
Sometime around the inception of Lady Gaga’s second album The Fame Monster in 2009, Gaga began exploring the monster theme as a way of grappling with her personal fears around drugs, alcohol and death.
In summer that year, she began referring to her fans as her “Little Monsters” during live shows, pioneering a schtick that would later be copied by other Western artists like Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. Yes, Lady Gaga, “Mother Monster” herself, came up with the idea of naming her fandom.
And her favourite food is…
Sashimi, because they serve it raw, raw, raw-raw-raw. Just kidding.
One of her favourites, according to her private chef, is a staple from her hometown of New York known as a chopped cheese (or sometimes chop cheese). It’s almost like a cheeseburger, except the patty gets chopped up on the griddle and served with melted American cheese, tomato and lettuce on a long hero roll.
The dish is available in more or less every street corner deli across the big city, just in case you’re thinking of trying out Lady Gaga’s favourite food for yourself.
