When we follow somebody who is famous, we often feel that we know almost everything there is to know about them. We might even know some facts and figures that make us feel as if we know them personally. Even though they may be celebrities and are in the public eye, however, many of them have secrets in their lives that we may not realize. The star of A Star Is Born, Lady Gaga is one of those individuals.
Lady Gaga had a personal life and quite a bit of adversity before she became famous. She was getting started with her career and she had a number of haters that were her peers at the University. They were so jealous of her advancements that they even started a Facebook group: “Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous.” this little secret came to life recently and before long, people were loving the irony.
Lauren Bohn was a freshman at NYC when she saw the group and brought it to the attention of the media in 2016. She said the following in an emotional Facebook post:
“When I was a freshman at NYU and Facebook was only a year old and people created/joined groups like “I have dimples, f*** me” and “Fake ID, please!,”
I remember coming across a Facebook group that broke my heart.
Its name: “Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous.” The page housed pictures of a pretty Norah Jones-esque young 18-year-old NYU student who sang and played piano at local bars. The group was peppered with comments, sharp as porcupine needles, vilifying the aspiring musician for being an “attention-whore.” Scores asked: “Who does she think she is?” I also remember one dude posting a flyer for one of her upcoming gigs at a local village bar. He had clearly stomped on the flyer, an outline of his muddy sole [soul] struggling to eclipse her name.
I couldn’t shake the raw feeling of filth while scrolling down that Facebook page
but I pretty much — and quickly — forgot about that group and that girl with the intense raven eyes. Until about five years later. I was on an Amtrak train from NYC to Philly, reading a Vanessa Grigoriadis New York Magazine profile on Lady Gaga. I floated somewhat mindlessly through the piece until I got to the first sentence of the second graf:
“Before the meeting, I assumed that someone with a stage name like “Lady” (her given name is Stefani Joanne Germanotta) was going to be a bit standoffish…” HOLY S**T, I screamed to an empty car (Those who hang with me will know that I actually shrieked). LADY GAGA IS STEFANI GERMANOTTA? STEFANI IS LADY GAGA? I was overcome with a dizzying emotional cocktail of stage-mom-at-a-beauty-pageant and nerd-revenge triumph. But also shame. Shame that I never wrote on that group
Shame that I never defended the girl with the intense raven eyes
— the girl whose brave flyers were stomped on, probably somewhere near my dorm. But again, I soon forgot about that revelation and that feeling. Feelings. They’re so fleeting. Even more so, revelations. We need to constantly re-discover them every damn day. Like last week, when I woke up to this meme. I saw the muddy sole eclipsing her name. The eye-rolls. The cowardly virtual-giggles. The “Who does she think she is?”
I’ve got a lot of feelings, but the easiest one to articulate: gratitude
Stefani, thank you. Thank you for always thinking you’re a superstar, for using your cracks to let the light come out more brightly. Humans, let’s follow suit.”
Her college experience wasn’t the first time that bullying was a problem. She had been enrolled by her parents at the Covenant of Sacred Heart, a private Catholic school on the upper East side. That is when she was bullied by some of her peers and it continued.
“I used to do these really big Evita brows,” Gaga told Rolling Stone in 2011. “I used to self-tan, and I had this really intense tan in school, and people would say, ‘Why the fuck are you so orange, why do you do your hair that way, are you a dyke? Why do you have to look like that for school?’ I used to be called a slut, be called this, be called that. I didn’t even want to go to school sometimes.”
Even though she was up against a lot of pressure, she remains strong. When she turned 11, she began taking voice lessons with Christina Aguilera’s voice coach and she continued, even as her career began to pick up steam. She not only learned how to sing, she began taking piano lessons and acting classes, both of which would lead to her Oscar nomination.
She enrolled at NYU Tisch School of the Arts but dropped out before long to get her first taste as a musician. “I left my entire family, got the cheapest apartment I could find and ate shit until somebody would listen,” she told New York Magazine.
She has developed considerably over the course of time. Even though her looks have changed, it was the foundation of music that really helped push her to the top. “I was classically trained as a pianist and that innately teaches you how to write a pop song,” Gaga told the Telegraph. “Because when you learn Bach inversions, it has the same sort of modulations between the chords. It’s all about tension and release.”
When Def Jam Records signed her at 19, she thought she had made but just three months later, they dropped her as quickly. She continued to be determined and then in 2008, her boyfriend took her to Interscope Records as a songwriter. She wrote hits for many famous artists, including the pussycat dolls and Britney Spears. It was when recording a demo for one of her songs that she was discovered.
Through all of the difficulties, Gaga has remained determined to be a singer and actress. She has already been nominated for 24 Grammys and has 19 of them. She even made her acting debut in 2018, starring in A Star Is Born.
She had some inspirational words in her Oscar nomination speech: “If you are at home, and you’re sitting on your couch and you’re watching this right now, all I have to say is that this is hard work. I’ve worked hard for a long time, and it’s not about, you know…it’s not about winning. But what it’s about is not giving up. If you have a dream, fight for it. There’s a discipline for passion. And it’s not about how many times you get rejected or you fall down or you’re beaten up. It’s about how many times you stand up and are brave and you keep on going.”
People were saying a lot about her situation:
