Lady Gaga

“I always want to be remembered for being a real artist and someone that cares so much,” Lady Gaga told Apple Music in 2025. Born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (in New York in 1986), Gaga’s creative identity had crystallized by age 21; she’d been a child pianist, aspiring actor, and burlesque performer. Each of these facets powered her career’s most distinct parts: the celebrity fascination of her first two albums, 2008’s The Fame and 2009’s The Fame Monster; the subversive layering of 2011’s Born This Way and 2013’s ARTPOP; the sincere reverence of 2014’s Cheek to Cheek, her jazz standards album with Tony Bennett and its 2021 companion Love for Sale; the rootsier songwriting of 2016’s Joanne; 2020’s jubilant return to her neon-hued electro roots, Chromatica; and 2025’s dance fever dream MAYHEM, memorializing the era with Apple Music Live: MAYHEM Requiem. Appearing on the big screen, her roles are as varied as her catalog. She played out a simpler version of her path to fame in the Oscar-worthy 2018 remake of A Star Is Born; portrayed the murderous wife in 2021’s House of Gucci; and supervillain sidekick in 2024’s Joker: Folie à Deux (which produced its own jazz concept album, Harlequin, in honor of her character). In translating her diffuse identity into world-conquering art, Gaga has become a beacon to anyone else who’s felt like an outsider. Her loyal following of Little Monsters has affirmed a deep connection to her message of self-love and self-expression, despite pop’s fickleness and her chameleonic exterior.