<POKER FACE(THE RISE AND RISE OF LADYGAGA)>: Everything is going wrong. This was suppased to be the big night, the unveiling of her first arena tour as a headliner, and props, costumes, and chunks of the entire stage set, which cost $1.5 million, are missing, stuck in a town just thirty-seven miles away. This stadium, the Manchester Evening News Arena in England, holds 21,000 people and is the largest in the UK; more people come in and out of here every year than any other venue in the world. Her show is sold out, and even though she hates the idea of canceling, she's so distraught over the chaos and lack of preparedness that she asks if it's possible. She's not just putting on a pop show; she's staging an elaborate five-act rock opera with some twenty costume changes, pyrotechnics, and a hydraulic lift that will elevate her about twenty feet above the crowd.

<POKER FACE(THE RISE AND RISE OF LADYGAGA)>: In little over a year, Stefani Germanotta, a struggling performer in New York’s Lower East Side burlesque scene, has become the global demographic-smashing pop icon known as Lady Gaga. She is a once-in-a-decade artist, a gifted singer, composer, designer, and performance artist who mixes high and low culture, the avant-garde with the accessible, authenticity with artifice.

Who is Lady Gaga She is a twenty-four-year-old woman whose stage mantra—“I’m a free bitch!”—is the polar opposite of who she is offstage: isolated, insecure, and unable to be alone. She is an outré artist who wanted to be a sensitive singer-songwriter, whose musical heroes include Britney Spears, Billy Joel, and Bruce Springsteen. She is a woman who says no man can ever compete with her career, but who still isn’t over the ex-boyfriend who said she was too ambitious. She claims not to care what people think, but spends her downtime online, reading what people have to say about her. She claims to be a con artist and utterly authentic. She is never less than compelling.

Based on over fifty original interviews with friends, employees, rivals, and music industry veterans, Poker Face is the first in-depth biography of the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that is Lady Gaga.

<POKER FACE(THE RISE AND RISE OF LADYGAGA)> is writted by MAUREEN CALLAHAN.

Acknowledgments

Prologue

One: Creation Myth

Two: Becoming Gaga

Three: Oueen af the Scene

Four: Art of the Steal

Five: Ditched

Six: One Sequin at a Time

Seven: "I Am Living for You Right Now"

Eight: The Fame

Nine: Offended Anatomy

Ten: Makeover

Eleven: Big in Japan

Bibliography

Index