ABSTRACT
Sometime in 2008, the world entered the age of Lady Gaga. She seemed to spring from the Billboard charts fully formed, microphone in hand and razor-blade glasses at the ready. Details of her preGaga biography began filtering out: Her birth name is Stefani Germanotta, she grew up in New York and dropped out of NYU. Anyone with an Internet connection can see YouTube clips1 of the days before she commanded the attention of music critics and clubgoers alike, and her outfits turned into something from Coco Chanel’s nightmares. But the essence of Gaga remains mysterious: She is an enigma wrapped inside a glass-shard-studded suit, singing maddeningly catchy dance tunes about monsters. Perhaps it’s this disconnection between the Gaga of 2010 and the videos of conventionally pretty Germanotta sweetly playing piano that has led to so many theories about her, ranging from intensive speculation about her sex life to critical analysis of her epic music videos.
