Lady Gaga came to prominence following the release of her debut studio album The Fame (2008), which included the hits "Just Dance," "Poker Face," "Bad Romance" and sold over 15 million copies worldwide. The album earned her six Grammy nominations and two wins as well as a slew of other awards recognition, including a record setting thirteen MTV video Music Award nominations. Gaga is the first artist in history to claim four #1 hits from a debut album ("Just Dance," "Poker Face," "LoveGame" and "Paparazzi").

She is also the only artist in the digital era to top the 5 million sales mark with her first two hits. Gaga broke the record when her single "Poker Face" reached 5 million in sales after her debut single “Just Dance" accomplished the same feat the year before. She has over 1.3 billion combined views of all her videos online. She is also a staple in the social networking world - she's one of the biggest living people on Facebook with over 44 million 'likes' and is #1 on Twitter with over 9.5 million followers.

 

Her third studio album, Born This Way, was released on May 23, 2011. The first single from the album, title track "Born This Way", set a music industry record by becoming the fastest single in history to reach sales of 1,000,000 copies (five days after its February 11th release). Only the 19th single to ever debut at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (issue date February 26, 2011), the recording was Lady Gaga's third #1 on the chart. On iTunes, the song debuted at the top spot in 14 countries, including the U.S., and hit #1 in all 23 iTunes stores worldwide its first week out. "Born This Way" was Gaga's 7th single to hit #1 at top 40. The second single from the album, "Judas" has eclipsed 500,000 in sales and Lady Gaga's latest single, "The Edge of Glory," went straight to #1 on iTunes in its first day of release and stayed there for 3 days.

 Gaga is well-recognized for her outré sense of style as a recording artist, in fashion, in performance and in her music videos. Her contributions to the music industry have garnered her numerous achievements including five Grammy awards amongst twelve nominations, two Guinness World Records and the estimated sale of 15 million albums and 51 million singles worldwide. Billboard named her both the "2010 Artist of the Year" and the top selling artist of 2010, ranking her as the 73rd artist of the 2000s decade. Gaga has been included in Time's annual "The 2010 Time 100" list of the most influential people in the world as well as Forbes' list of the "The World's Most Powerful Celebrities" in the world. Forbes also placed her at number seven on their annual list of the world's "100 Most Powerful Women."