‘The Fame’ at 15: What Lady Gaga’s iconic debut album means today
Lady Gaga’s The Fame (which celebrates its 15th anniversary later this week) seems like a brazen choice for a debut. The bisexual singer certainly wasn’t famous when the record dropped in 2008 –– the year of Obama’s election, Michael Phelps mania, and Twilight.
Outside of the New York club scene, she was relatively unknown, having been signed (and unceremoniously dropped) by Def Jam Records two years earlier.
But Herstory has proven that The Fame was not presumptuous; it was prophetic. Despite what the creators of the supposed “Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous” Facebook group said, Gaga believed in her stardom.
After dropping out of NYU to focus on music, she perfected her performance at venues across the city, singing piano ballads and ’70s burlesque at her own show “Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue” –– a stage name inspired by Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga.” Today THE FAME spends its 100th consecutive week on Billboard.
