Lady Gaga: Dropped by Her First Label After Three Months, Back on Top
In September 2006 a 20-year-old Stefani Germanotta from Manhattan signed with Def Jam. Three months later the label dropped her. She went back to what she had been doing anyway: neo-burlesque shows and tiny stages in downtown New York. A year on she signed with Interscope, and the name Lady Gaga started to mean something.
“The Fame” arrived in 2008, and its first two singles, “Just Dance” and “Poker Face”, both reached No. 1 in the United States, the UK, Canada and Australia. “Poker Face” was the best-selling single in the world in 2009, with 9.8 million copies. Two years later “Born This Way” sold 1.1 million copies in the US in its first week.
Then she did something pop stars rarely manage: she became a convincing actress. In “A Star Is Born”, opposite Bradley Cooper, she sang “Shallow”, and the song won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Grammy. The girl who had been dropped in 2006 was now holding an Oscar.
In March 2025 she returned with “Mayhem”, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 219,000 units, the biggest week of 2025 by a woman up to that point. Her duet with Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile”, went to No. 1 around the world and won a Grammy.
Today she has more than 95 million monthly listeners on Spotify and an estimated 124 million records sold. You can hear her on the station “Exclusively Lady Gaga” in the Exclusive section of Kalisha.
— Kalisha 🎧
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