Gaga also spent her free time writing new songs and recording. And then there was a brief fling with Tommy Kafafian, a musician who also worked with Fusari. According to Kafafian, “It wasn’t like we were in love at all. It was more like, we’d hang out hours and hours and days on end in the studio, and I’d drive her home.”
It may have just been a fling, but their collaboration was fruitful. It resulted in a handful of recordings that Fusari could send to record labels. Some of these early songs were Beautiful, Dirty, Rich, Paparazzi and Brown Eyes.
Fusari had also developed feelings for his charge. Upon learning of her relationship with Kafafian, he fired him. Soon, Kafafian and Gaga split, and it was a sad experience for her. To make matters worse, she didn’t know how to handle Fusari, whom she didn’t have romantic feelings for, and he was engaged. But she was more concerned about being cut loose if she didn’t go along with him. Out of fear, she began a relationship with him, something that she would regret later.
Gaga’s lucky break came in 2006 when she was scheduled for an audition with a label called Island Def Jam. Reportedly, it was Beautiful, Dirty, Rich that got the attention when Fusari was shopping around for a record deal. It wasn’t clear what really happened in that meeting, but a lot of people said that Lady Gaga sang Beautiful, Dirty, Rich on the piano for the label’s executives. Fusari played the song to Joshua Sarubin, Vice-President of A&R at the label and said, “I gotta get this girl in here next week.”
When Sarubin met Lady Gaga, he immediately observed that there was something unusual about her. He said, “She sat down at the piano in a showcase room and the way she played and the lyrics and the way she acted and sang was just so different and in your face, and you couldn’t turn away.”
Sarubin also recalled that Gaga was wearing white thigh-high boots and a black mini-dress. Her presence was saying, ‘I’m sexy and I don’t care what anybody has to say about it.’
At one point, Lady Gaga saw one of the executives stand up and leave the room. At first it was disappointing, assuming that it was a bad sign. As it turned out, the executive left the room not because he didn’t like her performance. He was actually arranging to sign Lady Gaga to his record label. They were that impressed with the 19-year-old singer-songwriter.
Gaga finished her audition and saw that chairman Antonio “L.A.” Reid was in the room, good-humoredly claiming that he could hear the budding artist all the way to his office. Gaga legend has it that Reid signed her on the spot for $850,000 with her first album scheduled in 9 months. The money was huge, especially for an unknown artist. But Gaga didn’t get all the money. Twenty percent would go to Fusari. Another 20 percent would go to Laurent Besencon, a new manager that Gaga hired. Starland got a share of the money, as did a production company that Gaga formed with her father and Fusari. Gaga only got a fraction of the money.
Nevertheless, Gaga was signed on to a major record label and began working with new producers, including Tom Lord-Alge and Nadir Khayat who went by the name RedOne.
Gaga found it difficult to schedule a meeting with Reid to discuss the future of her career. “I used to wait outside his office for hours,” she recalled, “hoping he’d take meetings with me about my songs, but it never happened.”
After barely 3 months, she was dropped from the record label. It was devastating, and it wasn’t even clear why the company severed her contract. Joshua Sarubin recalled the incident later, saying,
“She maybe could have stayed with the label a little while longer but I didn’t want her to be in a situation where people didn’t get it. She was too good. It was painful because I absolutely thought she was going to be my next big thing.”
That experience taught her a lot about being an artist struggling to make a career path for herself. “No matter how many times I was turned down, I kept coming back.” But she wasn’t always resilient. Looking back on that event a few years later, she said, “I was 19. I’m 23 now. I did feel like I would die if I wasn’t able to make music, because it was like everything was gone.”
Gaga recalled that the worst moment came when the label called and told her she’d been dropped. “I just cried,” she said. “I lost it. I called my mum and she cried and said to me, ‘I can’t even put into words how much I know you’re broken-hearted right now.’ Someone said to me, ‘You can’t take it personally.’ And I said, ‘Fuck you. What’s not personal about it? It’s totally fucking personal.’”
She couldn’t do anything about it, but she was resolved that nothing’s going to stop her from doing what she wanted.
Almost There
While Lady Gaga and Lady Starlight did shows, Fusari continued to work on the songs that he and Gaga created. He sent these songs to a friend, producer and record executive Vincent Herbert who helped create hits for Destiny’s Child and Toni Braxton, among others. Herbert quickly signed Gaga to his label Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records.
Lady Gaga credited Vincent Herbert as the one who discovered her
Gaga would call him the “industry love of my life”, crediting him as the one who discovered her. “He saw the artist I could become. He really helped develop and hone my skills by talking to me and introducing me to the right people.”
Fusari also introduced Gaga with another collaborator, Nadir Khayat, also known as Redone, a producer/songwriter who previously worked with Brandy, New Kids On The Block, Robyn and Lionel Richie. Gaga also met Laurent Besencon, co-head of New Heights Entertainment, Gaga’s own management company. He could have let her go after Def Jam did, but he decided to stick with her because he believed in her talent. He was also the one who brought Gaga and RedOne together, thinking that the latter could help Gaga in inventing a new sound for her new label.
RedOne remembered how he met Gaga. “My manager called me and said, ‘You have to meet this girl – she is the most incredible artist.’ If someone is good, it doesn’t matter to me if that person has a deal. The first day we worked together, we came up with a song called Boys Boys Boys and we just clicked.”
RedOne played the song to Akon, his partner in a production company called RedOneKonvict, the R&B entertainer in charge of Kon Live Distribution. He was thoroughly impressed by Gaga that he wanted her to be a writer for other artists on Universal Records such as Fergie, Nicole Scherzinger and New Kids On The Block.
Lady Gaga remembered this period in her life. She was the girl who was always bizarrely dressed and with an eccentric approach to lyric writing. She said, “I was like the weird girl who dressed like a zoo animal, the trash glamour in a roomful of urban hip hop cats. They’d be like, ‘Gaga, what do you think of this lyric?’ and I’d twist it all up and all of a sudden it was edgy.”
Akon was so impressed by Lady Gaga that he had made her his “franchise player” under his own label Kon Live
Akon then convinced Jimmy Iovine, chairman and CEO of Interscope-Geffen-A&M to have Gaga sign with his own label Kon Live, making her his “franchise player.” She also joined Cherrytree Records, an imprint of Interscope formed to develop new talent. Martin Kierszenbaum, a producer and songwriter, had set up Cherrytree and he and Gaga co-wrote four songs, including Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say), The Fame, and I Like It Rough for her album The Fame.
Lady Gaga also met record company executive Jody Gerson, who struck with her a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV. Gaga was hired to write songs for Britney Spears, one of Gaga’s teenage idols, and other pop singers. Gaga penned the song Quicksand, a bonus track in Britney’s 2008 album Circus.
Just Dance
Lady Gaga had to say goodbye to New York, and to Lady Starlight, and relocate to Las Angeles, California to be near Interscope, based in Santa Monica. The two ladies and their friend Darian Darling celebrated in a bar for a farewell party. It was such a wild affair that Gaga lost her keys and her mobile phone and spent the night with her shirt off. She had drunk heavily and felt the worse for wear on her way to the airport the following morning.
B
arely recovering from her flight to LA, Gaga met up with Akon and RedOne at The Record Plant in Los Angeles. The Record Plant had an impressive history, for this was where Fleetwood Mac recorded Rumours, where The Isley Brothers created 3+3 and where Kanye West produced his rap classic Late Registration.
That month, she would write songs for Tami Chynn, an artist who signed with Konvict Muzik in Atlanya. She collaborated with Space Cowboy, a DJ, musician and record producer who worked with Paul McCartney and The Darkness, among others. Space Cowboy met Gaga through Martin Kierszenbaum.
But it was the song that she wrote in just 10 minutes while suffering the effects of alcohol that would set the stage for the budding singer-songwriter. Gaga penned the song Just Dance, and she said that she wrote the song with the purpose of creating “a happy record.”
Lady Gaga’s first single, Just Dance, wasn’t an instant success; a lot of people thought it wasn’t going to be successful
Just Dance was upbeat and tells the edgy joy one experiences with being drunk. The song began with a machine beat from an Apple MacBook and words that were made up on the spot. The first line would go, “I’ve had a little bit too much.” Clearly, Gaga wanted the song to be about being drunk given the circumstances in which the song was written. The rest of the lyrics was plucked from her life experiences, including her last night in New York when she lost her keys and mobile phone.
Gaga explained the song to HX Magazine:
“I was taken very quickly out of my party lifestyle. I wrote it instantly – like it flew out of my body.”
RedOne was a collaborator on the track, judging by a ‘shout-out’ to the producer at the start of the song. There’s also one to Gaga, and this became a signature component of her songs. Akon’s proof on the track was an added verse sung on the final version by Colby O’Donis, a pop/R&B performer.
Gaga had revealed to the Artist Direct website that while Just Dance was the fruit of a lot of hard graft in the recording studio, it wasn’t well received by those who have heard it before its release. And not everybody believed that it would become successful. But Gaga didn’t care because she was proud of the song, which for her was a commercial pop music that would connect with a larger audience.
She said, “I definitely follow my heart but I would say the catalyst for making music and all art is to make something that’s beautiful. I’ve always believed that art is beauty, and beauty is art. I wanted to make a beautiful record. I think Just Dance is.” She added that people look for a song that makes them feel good inside, and Just Dance is one of those records.
But what did others think of Just Dance? The single received positive reviews. Matthew Chisling of Allmusic said that the song was galactic while Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as a “beguilingly compulsive tale of pulling a drug-induced whitey, with a combination of clipped marching beats, sawing electronics and mild R&B flavor that bears a vague resemblance to Nelly Furtado’s Maneater.” Ben Norman of About.com went as far as describing intro as “a Valkyrie leading the charge [and] riding triumphant ahead of her army.”
Although some claimed the song as “bland dance fodder,” many writers agreed that it was catchy enough for mainstream and noted Gaga’s strong vocal performance.
First Music Video
Just Dance was remixed several times with different rhythms and textures. And it was accompanied by a video directed by Melina Matsoukas who worked in the videos of various artists such as Kylie Minogue, Snoop Dogg and Jennifer Lopez. The people at Interscope expected that Lady Gaga would soon join these people in the world of pop.
In the music video of Just Dance, Lady Gaga’s face is adorned with a blue lightning flash reminiscent of David Bowie
The video of the song features Gaga arriving with her dancers at a house party. She was shown fingering a synth and dancing with a disco ball and frolicking in a pool with an inflatable killer whale. Her face was adorned with Gaga-via-Bowie’s trademark Aladdin Sane-era blue lightning flash sticker. Colby O’Donis appeared in the video as well as cameos from Akon and Space Cowboy.
For someone who hadn’t appeared in a video, the shoot for Just Dance was an exciting experience for Gaga. “Oh, it was so fun, it was amazing. For me it was like being on a Martin Scorsese set. I’ve been so low budget for so long, and to have this incredibly amazing video was really very humbling. It was really fun, but you’ll see if you ever come to a video shoot of mine one day – I’m very private about those things; I don’t really talk to everybody. I’m not like the party girl running around. I might even seem to be a bit of a diva. I’m sort of with myself, in my work head-space worrying about costumes, and if extras look right, and placement. I don’t just show up for things, you know. That video was a vision of mine. It was Melina the director who wanted to do something, to have a performance art aspect that was so pop but it was still commercial, but that felt like lifestyle. It was all those things, I love it.”
Gaga’s debut album The Fame, which contained the single Just Dance, was released on August 19, 2008. The question now was whether the song would prove popular.
Chapter 8 – Unstoppable Success
Even at the start, some people at Gaga’s record company who listened to Just Dance deemed it unsuitable for release. “They would say, ‘This is too racy, too dance-oriented, too underground. It’s not marketable.” Her response to those who would say words to that effect was this: “My name is Lady Gaga, I’ve been on the music scene for years, and I’m telling you, this is what’s next.”
But Gaga acknowledged that her song wasn’t the type that would quickly appeal to radio station programmers. Just Dance was released in America 3 months after it was recorded, and the radio stations were initially reluctant to play it. What Gaga did was to take the long cut to success. She sang the song on television program in the United States and appeared on all the main American talk shows such as The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. She also appeared on reality TV contest So You Think You Can Dance.
Gaga also appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show where Ellen interviewed her before she performed Just Dance. Gaga wore a very peculiar outfit: a futuristic leather jumpsuit open at the front to reveal a portion of her breasts and a headpiece that looked like a gyroscope.
Lady Gaga appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres show where she performed Just Dance after the brief interview
Gaga continued the TV campaign. She performed the single in front of more than a billion viewers around the world during the swimsuit section of the Miss Universe 2008 in Vietnam. Gaga also performed the song on Sunrise in Australia where she caused controversy for allegedly lip-synching. She vehemently denied it, knowing too well what happened to stars who failed to sing live. Gaga issued a statement where she stated: “I was sick the day of the show but I absolutely, 100 per cent, was singing live. I have never lip-synched and never will. Even on my worst day, I never will.”
Still, the radio didn’t play Just Dance, but TV programmers quickly liked the single. In fact, after the album The Fame was released, Just Dance was the most requested track. The single became popular in the clubs before it appeared in the regular charts.
In the United States, the single spent 5 months on the Billboard Hot 100. It took 22 weeks before it hit the top spot, becoming the second-longest climb to number one spot since Creed’s With Arms Wide Open. Just Dance, a sleeper hit, peaked at number two on Hot Dance Airplay and Hot Dance Club Play charts. Finally, on August 16, 2008, the single entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart, coming in at number 76.
By January 2009, the single was at number two and in one week, it sold 419,000 in downloads, thus making it the third biggest single-week sum of all time. Subsequently, the single became the second-bestselling digital song of all time. The song peaked at number one on the Pop 100, and in a week, it also became number one on the Hot 100. It earned Gaga her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Dance Recording and became one of the best-selling singles worldwide.
Just Dance became a success, top
ping the charts not only in the United States but also in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. The single reached Top 10 in some European countries and Top 20 in Belgium and France. In March 2009, the single was certified three-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for netting sales of 3 million. It had sold more than 5 million downloads in the United States alone and became the second song to reach the 5 million mark in paid downloads.
Just Dance’s success in the United Kingdom was special to Lady Gaga. The single reached number 3 in January 2009 before dominating the top spot for three weeks. Gaga was excited, saying that it was her dream to have a big hit in the UK. She said, “My fans there are so sexy and the people are so innovative and free in how they think about pop culture and music. I was in my apartment in Los Angeles getting ready to go to dance rehearsal when they called me and told me, and I just cried.”
Gaga was clearly in for a surprise when Poker Face, another sleeper hit in her album The Fame, reached number one in most music markets worldwide in 2009. It sold 9.8 million singles worldwide. Poker Face won the 52nd Grammy Awards nomination for Best Dance Recording.
Lady Gaga’s single Poker Face was also a success
The Fame, which Lady Gaga recorded between January and May 2008, refers to the notion that one can feel famous even if he has nothing. She was quoted as saying, “Basically, if you have nothing – no money, no fame – you can still feel beautiful and dirty-rich. It’s about making choices, and having references – things you pull from your life that you believe in. It’s about self-discovery and being creative.” In her website, Lady Gaga said, “The Fame is about how anyone can feel famous’, also saying that fame is sharable.
Modern Divas Boxed Set Page 11
