Recognized professionally by her stage name that she adopted early on in her career, Lady Gaga was born Stefanie Joanne Angelina Germanotta in 1986. Her hardworking Italian-American parents repeatedly emphasized the value of an education and enrolled both Gaga and her younger sister Natalie in the Convent of the Sacred Heart on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Her memories of her time there are tainted with the merciless bullying that continues to fuel her drive of success today. “I used to be called a slut, be call this, be called that. I didn’t even want to go to school sometimes,” admitted Gaga during an interview with Rolling Stone (Hiatt, 2011). While the bullying targeted her unusual style and vibrant personality, it is these characteristics …show more content…
The process of producing new music comes natural to Gaga, who has not only written her own pieces but also those performed by other celebrity artists. “I love songwriting. It’s so funny – I will just jam around in my underwear or I could be washing my dishes. I wrote the song ‘Dirty Rich’ and several songs just at the piano,” revealed Gaga in an interview (Blasco, 2008). It all begins with a 15-minute brainstorm session, or as Gaga prefers, vomiting. In those 15-minutes, Gaga spills all her creative ideas that manifest themselves in the forms of melodies, chord progressions and theme lyric ideas (Writer’s Write, 2011). This time spent writing down all the thoughts and ideas swirling around in her head is only the first step. “It all happens in approximately 15-minutes of this giant regurgitation of my thoughts and feelings and the I spend days, weeks, months, years fine tuning,” explained Gaga (Writer’s Write, 2011). Every musician can attest to the fact that there are a number of moments where the creative juices stop flowing and it seems as though they have hit a rut in their career. For Gaga, the source of the blockage can be her own trauma. “The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamors and interferes with the music I hear in my head. When I’m making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what is should be,” (Pinckney, 2016). Escaping the fog is impossible and finding the clarity within it is essential to moving forward and growing as a