The 2010s, pronounced "twenty-tens", "two thousand tens", or simply "the tens", is the current decade which began on January 1, 2010 and will end on December 31, 2019. The decade is also called the second decade of the 21st century and 3rd millennium.

The decade began amidst a global financial crisis, after approximately two decades of prosperity, economic growth as well as income inquality, and increased globalization Other economic issues such as inflation, and an increase in commodity prices, sparked immense unrest in many lower-income countries. In some countries this unrest evolved into socio-economic crises which set off numerous revolutions, such as in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, and Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in 2011. This trend continues at present, and is known as the Arab Spring.

21st century pronunciation debate

Among experts and the general public, there is a debate as to how specific years of the 21st century should be pronounced in English. The year 2010, for example, was referred to by some as "twenty-ten" and by others as "two thousand (and) ten".

Politics and wars

Wars

The prominent wars of the decade so far include:

International wars

War on Terrorism (2001–present) – refers to several ideological, military, and diplomatic campaigns ostensibly aimed at putting an end to international terrorism by preventing groups defined by the US and its allies as "terrorist" (largely Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas) from posing a threat to the US and its allies, and by putting an end to state sponsorship of terrorism. The campaigns were launched by the United States, with support from NATO and other allies, immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks which were carried out by al-Qaeda. Today the term has become mostly associated with US/UK-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

:*War in Afghanistan (2001–present) – In 2001, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada invaded Afghanistan seeking to oust the Taliban and find Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden. :* Iraq War (2003–2010) – On August 19, 2010, the last American combat brigade was moved out of Iraq after more than 7 years of warfare. However, there is still significant American military activity there as of 2011.

Arab–Israeli conflict (Early 20th century–present)

:*Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Early 20th century–present) - an ongoing armed conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The conflict is centered between the state of Israel and the Palestinians. One side is composed mainly of Israel's military forces and the other side is composed mostly of Palestinian militant or paramilitary forces such as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad Movement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Resistance Committees (which have all been designated by the United States and European Union, Israel and many other western countries as terrorist organisations). The conflict has escalated since the Second Intifada (September 2000) broke out, a period of intensified Palestinian-Israeli violence which has been taking place until the present day. The Second Intifada has caused thousands of victims on both sides, both among combatants and among civilians.

Civil wars and guerrilla wars

2011 Libyan Civil War (15 February 2011 – present) – a series of demonstrations and riots held against Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule. The widespread demonstrations, which erupted in response to the high unemployment rate in Libya and the lack of development in the country, rapidly escalated into a civil war as Gaddafi used his military force against the Libyan rebels. As a result, hundreds of Libyan civilians were killed and thousands have been injured so far.

Mexican Drug War (2006–present) – an armed conflict fought between rival drug cartels and government forces in Mexico. Although Mexican drug cartels, or drug trafficking organizations, have existed for quite some time, they have become more powerful since the demise of Colombia's Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market in the United States. Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, have led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States. Roughly more than 28,299 people in total were killed between December 2006 until November 2010.

War in North-West Pakistan (2004–present) – an armed conflict between the Pakistani Armed Forces and Islamic militants made up of local tribesmen, the Taliban, and foreign Mujahideen (Holy Warriors). It began in 2004 when tensions rooted in the Pakistani Army's search for al-Qaeda members in Pakistan's mountainous Waziristan area (in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas) escalated into armed resistance by local tribesmen. The violence has displaced 3.44 million civilians and to more than 7,000 civilians being killed.

Sa'dah insurgency (2004–2010) - a civil war in the Sa'dah Governorate of Yemen. It began after the Shī‘a Zaidiyyah sect launched an uprising against the Yemeni government. The Yemeni government has accused Iran of directing and financing the insurgency. Thousands of rebels and civilians have been killed during the conflict.

War in Somalia (2009–present) – involved largely the forces of the Somali Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) assisted by African Union peacekeeping troops, whom fought against various militant Islamist factions for control of the country. The violence has displaced thousands of people residing in Mogadishu, the nation's capital. 1,739 people in total were killed between 1 January 2009 until 1 January 2010.

Conflict in the Niger Delta (2004–present) – an ongoing conflict in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The conflict was caused due to the tensions between the foreign oil corporations and a number of the Niger Delta's minority ethnic groups who felt they were being exploited, particularly the Ogoni and the Ijaw. The competition for oil wealth has led to an endless violence cycle between innumerable ethnic groups, causing the militarization of nearly the entire region which was occupied by militia groups as well as Nigerian military and the forces of the Nigerian Police.

Civil war in Chad (2005–present) involved Chadian government forces and several Chadian rebel groups. The government of Chad estimated in January 2006 that 614 Chadian citizens had been killed in cross-border raids. The fighting still continues despite several attempts to reach agreements.

Insurgency in the Maghreb (2002–present) – Algeria has been the subject of an Islamic insurgency since 2002 waged by the Sunni Islamic Jihadist militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). GSPC allied itself with the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb against the Algerian government. The conflict has since spread to other neighboring countries.

Colombian Armed Conflict (1964–present) has changed substantially after the government of Alvaro Uribe. President Juan Manuel Santos took office in 2010 and seeks to continue Uribe's policy about terrorism. The FARC and ELN guerrillas are weaker than ever and divided, with the later calling for peace talks with the government. Meanwhile, paramilitary forces have demobilized, but irregular drug-trafficking forces called "Bacrim" have gained control over much of the areas that the AUC paramilitaries previously held. The "Bacrim" gangs have allied with guerrillas in some regions of the country like Chocó and Antioquia.

Coups

Terrorist attacks

The most prominent terrorist attacks committed against civilian population during the decade include:

2010 Moscow Metro bombings (40 killed)

10 May 2010 Iraq attacks (100+ killed)

May 2010 attacks on Ahmadi mosques in Lahore (86 killed)

Mohmand Agency attack (105 killed)

September 2010 Quetta bombing (73+ killed)

2011 Domodedovo International Airport bombing (at least 35 people killed and 180 injured)

2011 Norway attacks (two separate attacks; 70+ deaths)

Nuclear weapons controversies

Since 2005, Iran's nuclear program has become the subject of contention with the Western world due to suspicions that Iran could divert the civilian nuclear technology to a weapons program. This has led the UN Security Council to impose sanctions against Iran on select companies linked to this program, thus furthering its economic isolation on the international scene. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence said in February 2009 that Iran would not realistically be able to a get a nuclear weapon until 2013, if it chose to develop one.

The United States and Russia sign a treaty to cut nuclear weapons in either nation in Prague in April 2010, a week later U.S. President Barack Obama hosts a Nuclear Security Summit where the attending nations decides to lock onto their nuclear arms, to make sure no terrorists get hands on these weapons of mass destruction, also South Korea was selected to hold the second Nuclear Security Summit in 2012.

Political events

The prominent political events of the decade so far include:

WikiLeaks

The international new-media non-profit organization WikiLeaks published three massive sets of documents pertaining to the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and US diplomacy, which, respectively, were released in April, July, and November 2010. Each of these releases was accompanied by heavy and extensive weeks-long coverage in news media all over the world, and had a strong impact on the global political landscape, with strong reactions from leaders within many major countries.

Americas January 2010 - A trial determining the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in the United States is held in California.

The Obama administration's efforts to implement health care reform in the United States lead eventually to the House of Representatives voting in favor of enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010. Republicans are currently making efforts to repeal the bill, debating its constitutionality.

The late 2000s and early 2010s has seen the rise of the Tea Party movement, with figureheads like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, which has acquired a large following in the United States. The movement has become a dominant factor in the Republican Party and has provided a strong political polarization, promoting activism and protests with the goal to reduce federal spending, bailouts, taxes, and regulation.

The New START, a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation entered into force.

Europe

The 2010 United Kingdom election resulted in the first "hung parliament" since 1974. Labour, under Prime Minister Gordon Brown lost its overall majority in the House of Commons. The Conservatives led by David Cameron became the largest party. For five days, both major parties held negotiations with the Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats, resulting in the first peace-time coalition government since the 1930s. leading to talks for over a week between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. Cameron became Prime Minister upon Brown's resignation on May 11. Clegg also became Deputy Prime Minister.

The Scottish National Party win an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament at the 2011 Scottish Parliament election under Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond. The SNP's transition from a minority government to a majority government has allowed them to pledge to have a referendum on Scottish Independence from the United Kingdom.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is indicted for allegedly paying for sex with an underage nightclub dancer, and ordered to stand trial.

Africa

Between 9–15 January 2011 a referendum was held in Southern Sudan on whether the region should remain a part of Sudan or become independent. In the referendum a majority of 98.83% voted in favour of separation from Sudan and the creation of an independent state.

14 January 2011 - Amidst anti-government demonstrations, Tunisia's President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali dissolves the government, declares a state of emergency, and resigns from office.

January–February 2011 - Inspired by the Tunisian demonstrators, thousands of protesters in Egypt call for an resignation or ousting of Hosni Mubarak, longtime president of the nation, who many feel has been in power far too long and has no interests of the public. Mubarak resigns on February 11.

February–present: a popular revolt against Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule over Libya leads to thousands of deaths and UN sanctions against the nation's government following a brutal crackdown against protestors.

Oceania

June 2010 - Julia Gillard succeeds Kevin Rudd as the Prime Minister of Australia, thus becoming Australia's 27th and first female Prime Minister.

Assassinations and assassination attempts

Prominent assassinations and assassination attempts of the decade so far include:

Gabrielle Giffords, U.S. Representative from Arizona, was a victim of a shooting near Tucson on January 8, 2011 which was reported to be an assassination attempt on her, at a supermarket where she was meeting publicly with constituents. Giffords was critically injured by a gunshot wound to the head; 13 people were injured and six others were killed in the shooting, among them conservative federal judge John Roll.

Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of the militant Islamist group Al-Qaeda, was killed in a targeted assassination on May 2, 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan in an operation conducted by a team of United States Navy SEAL commandos from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command, in conjunction with U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives.

Disasters

The most prominent disasters of the decade so far include:

Non-natural disasters

Aviation disasters

On January 25, 2010, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crashes into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after take-off from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, killing all 90 people on board.

On April 10, 2010, Polish President Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and 94 other people, including dozens of government officials, are killed in a plane crash.

On May 12, 2010 Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashes on a runway at Tripoli International Airport in Libya, killing 103 of 104 on board. On May 22, 2010 Air India Express Flight 812 overshoots the runway at Mangalore International Airport in India, killing 158 and leaving 8 survivors.

On July 28, 2010 a Pakistan Airblue Flight 202 en route from Karachi to Islamabad crashes in the Margalla Hills near Islamabad, killing all 152 aboard.

Pollution disasters

On April 20, 2010 an explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, operating in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, left eleven crewmen dead and resulted in a fire that sank the rig and caused a massive-scale oil spill that became the worst environmental disaster in United States history. On June 18, 2010 oceanographer John Kessler said that the crude gushing from the well contains 40 percent methane, compared to about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits. Methane is a natural gas that could potentially suffocate marine life and create "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives. "This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," Kessler said. On June 20 an internal BP document was released by Congress revealing that BP estimated the flow could be as much as per day under the circumstances that existed since the April 20 blowout. On July 15, 2010, The BP Oil Spill is stopped for the first time, 86 days after oil started leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sendai caused a tsunami that severely damaged the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini nuclear power plants. The damage resulted in the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster, contaminating water, soil and crops in the area with Iodine-131 and Caesium-137.

Natural disasters

On January 12, 2010 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hits Haiti, causing widespread destruction in Port-au-Prince. Haitian authorities currently believe that the disaster killed between 200,000 and 250,000 people. Over 2 million people were affected and over 3 million in need of emergency aid. On February 27, 2010 an 8.8 magnitude earthquake occurs in Chile, triggering a tsunami over the Pacific and killing 497. One of the largest earthquakes in recorded history, this rare megathrust earthquake probably shifts Earth's axis and slightly shortens its days. Another earthquake, of magnitude 6.9, occurred on March 11 of the same year, minutes before President Sebastián Piñera was sworn in; it was centered in Pichilemu, Cardenal Caro Province.

In early 2010, eruptions of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano caused unprecedented disruption to international air travel, rendering transatlantic flight impossible and closing the airways over much of Europe.

On April 4, 2010 (Easter Sunday) a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico killing four and injuring a hundred. The neighboring United States border towns in Imperial Valley, California were also affected.

On April 14, 2010 a 6.9 magnitude earthquake occurs in western China, killing at least 2,200 and injuring more than 12,000.

Early November 2010 - Mount Merapi erupts in Indonesia, killing hundreds and grounding flights to Singapore, Jakarta and other Southeast Asian cities.

2010 Pakistan floods - Began in July 2010 after record heavy monsoon rains. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan was worst affected. At least 1,600 people were killed, thousands were rendered homeless, and more than thirteen million people were affected. Estimates from rescue service officials suggest the death toll may reach 3,000 victims.

On January 11 and 12, 2011, ocurred Brazil's worst natural disaster ever. The January 2011 Rio de Janeiro floods and mudslides killed more than 900 people in 7 cities os the state of Rio de Janeiro and left demages that costed more than US$ 1.2 billion dollars.

On February 22, 2011, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 181 and leaving 200 more missing.

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit near Sendai, Japan, creating a 10 meter (33 foot) tsunami, leaving over 15,000 now confirmed dead, possibly over 10,000 missing and over 150,000 people displaced into emergency shelters. The earthquake and tsunami also damaged several nuclear reactors in the region, leaving at least one in danger of melting down. This was recorded as the worst earthquake in Japan. Damages could exceed over $300 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster.

The 2011 Super Outbreak happened from April 25-28, 2011, killing 340+ people, injuring thousands and caused $10 billion of damage from the 332 confirmed tornadoes. April 27 was the worst tornado day since the "Tri-State" outbreak in 1925. It is now the deadliest tornado outbreak in the history of the United States of America. Before the disaster occurred, merely two weeks prior, the states affected in the outbreak had also been damaged from the April 14–16, 2011 tornado outbreak, leaving 43 people dead.

The May 21–27, 2011 tornado outbreak was over a span of seven days in which 183 people were confirmed dead from 180 confirmed tornadoes. After a record active April, May was relatively quiet during the first three weeks until that pattern changed abruptly as a strong low pressure area and associated dry line and cold front tracked eastward towards the Midwest of the United States in late May. More than a third of the deaths is contributed from the EF5 2011 Joplin tornado on May 22, which killed 159, injured 900+ and ranks as the seventh-deadliest single tornado in US history. Damages for the whole outbreak is between $4–7 billion.

Hurricane Irene wreaks havoc across the Caribbean, then makes several landfalls as a major Category 3 in the Bahamas and threatens over 65 million people in the US East Coast during late August.

Economics

The Great Recession, which began in the year 2007, officially ended in mid-2009, though unemployment has failed to recover. In America a Gallup poll found more than half think the U.S. is still in a recession or depression. There is an energy crisis in the world, partially due to the riots in the Middle East and North Africa, though prices had been rising beforehand. However there are concerns of a tightening oil market, given the relatively small output that was shut off during the Libya civil war, as well as the failure of releases from strategic reserves to stem high prices. One school of opinion attributes the high energy prices in the western world to government regulation. Another is more pessimistic, The International Energy Agency has found that global crude oil production reached its apex in 2006, meaning production from currently producing oil fields is forecast to drop and future oil supply projections are uncertain.

A sovereign debt crisis in Europe began in early 2010, and the Greek government admitted that it was having difficulties servicing its large sovereign debt. Speculation abounded that it would be unable to make required bond payments due in 2010. causing the Euro to drop in value versus the US dollar and pushing the Greek/German yield spread to almost 4%. In May 2010, Eurozone leaders agreed to a £110 billion euro three year rescue package. However, by the following year, the country's fiscal condition had not improved. In July 2011 Standard & Poor's announced that the second bailout package for Greece will be defined as a partial default. In the midst of this bond yields for Italy and Spain spike above 6 percent. China becomes the second largest global economy, surpassing Japan.

Debt struggles plague advanced countries. The crisis in Greece fuels growing fears of contagion. Beyond Greece, European countries such as Ireland and Portugal see their credit rating downgraded. In August 2011, the S&P; downgrades the United States' credit rating from triple AAA to AA-plus. Japan also sees a rating downgrade due to debt burden. From 2010 to 2011 gold prices rise from $1121.50 an ounce to $1,917.90.

Breakfast habits change: cereal, a very profitable and popular breakfast food throughout the 20th century, declines by the early 1990s and by the 2010s is not nearly as popular and profitable. Fast casual restaurants such as Five Guys and Chipotle also see an uptick in popularity.

Society

Society by the 2010s has become accustomed to the huge changes the Internet, globalization and digital technology made in everyday life, with many young people growing up spending their entire lives exposed to technology. At the same time, the world is grappling with the Great Recession that began in 2007 and continues into the '10s.

Environmentalism continues to become mainstream and with the economic crisis of the late '00s to present, increasingly profitable as well.

Acceptance of GLBT people slowly increases across the world with significantly higher levels of support among the younger generations than among older generations. 2011 is the first year in the United States when gay soldiers will be allowed to serve alongside straight soldiers in the military. For the first time, on June 17, 2011, the United Nations passes a motion in support of GLBT rights across the world.

In the United States, liberalism declines and more conservative/libertarian views, influenced heavily by the Tea Party Movement, occurs. Political polarization grows as conservatives and progressives clash over the role of government. Polls continue to show a sharply divided electorate on economics, taxation, and the national debt. The aging of the population in the developed countries continues, as the Baby boomers generation reach the age of retirement.

The world's major civilizations are now interacting more than ever in history, creating tensions but also bringing ideas to cultures that previously did not have them, and is radically changing the economy and social fabric in virtually every part of the world. China, considered an emerging power in the 1990s and 2000s, has increasingly been called a superpower in the early 2010s, such as at the 2011 meeting between Hu Jintao and Barack Obama.

Individuality continues to be in fashion, but not as strong as it was in the 1990s and 2000s, a well noted example of this being baby names, which have become far more individualized since the 1960s, but especially since the 1990s and the introduction of the Internet.

Long distance moves declined in the United States, reaching their lowest levels since information began being kept in 1948.

Youth culture such as skateboarding continues to spread to countries such as Afghanistan.

AIDS, a pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s, killing over 30 million people, largely Africans and homosexual men, becomes a treatable condition; though only one case has been cured, the disease is no longer a death sentence and with treatment victims can generally expect to live normal lives and lifespans.

Science and technology

Science

The Large Hadron Collider's first high power collisions took place in March 2010.

Scientists announced in May 2010 that they had developed a form of synthetic life.

Solar aircraft became increasingly popular during the decade spearheaded by the Solar Impulse Project and QinetiQ Zephyr in 2010.

NASA will launch the James Webb Space Telescope as early as 2014 and replace the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA's New Horizons probe will reach Pluto in 2015, completing its main mission, and continuing into the Kuiper Belt.

Both the International Linear Collider and ITER may be completed during the latter half of the decade.

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report is scheduled to appear in 2014.

On August 5, 2011 NASA announced that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons.

Technology

By February 2011, the IPv4 internet addresses officially run out. An early period of transition to IPv6 continues during 2011. Supercomputers are projected to reach exaflop scale in 2019. By March 2011, more than 2 billion people used the Internet. One billion mobile broadband users predicted by sometime in 2011, and 4.6 billion people worldwide were subscribed to mobile phones. On January 27, 2010, Apple Inc. launches its first tablet computer called the iPad which offers multi-touch interaction with multimedia formats including newspapers, magazines, ebooks, textbooks, photos, movies, TV shows videos, music, word processing documents, spreadsheets, video games. The iPad soon became an immediate bestseller and only months after its release became the best selling tech gadget in history. Multiple competing tablet computers are now on the market. Mobile phone apps, introduced in the later 2000s, explode in popularity; people in the United States now spend more time using apps than they use the World Wide Web, since June 2011.

Additional notable world-wide events

A series of major volcanic events occur at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland in April 2010. The eruptions led to widespread disruption of air travel across Europe grounding planes and affecting the travel plans of millions of passengers worldwide. This caused a knock-on effect to many events around the world. Scientists began recording volcanic activity there in 2009 which increased through March 2010 culminating in the second phase eruption in April 2010. It is considered the largest air traffic shut-down since World War II. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated that the airline industry worldwide would lose or a day during the disruption. October 13, 2010 - 2010 Copiapó mining accident: Thirty-three miners near Copiapó, Chile, trapped 700 metres (2,300 ft) underground in a mining accident in San José Mine, are brought back to the surface after surviving for a record 69 days. April 29, 2011 - A television audience of an estimated two billion people watch the wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London.

Popular culture

Film

Oscar winners: The King's Speech (2010)

On January 31, 2010, Avatar became the first film to cross the $2 billion mark in the worldwide box office. It is also one of the first in a trend towards high quality 3D movies.

In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to receive the Academy Award for Best Director for the 2009 movie The Hurt Locker.

In 2010, Toy Story 3 became the first animated film to gross more than $1 billion worldwide.

Music

The early 2010s have musically been dominated by a variety of styles and artists. Globalization and the internet have erased political borders providing musicians to have their material to be heard all over the globe. However, this ironically, has also localized music, as there are fewer artists who become big enough to be internationally famous due to the decline of the music industry. Musical paradigm shifts in the previous decade regarding how people obtain and listen to music including the rise of the MP3 format, televised national musical contests, and the declining influence of the recording industry have had major effects on the state of music globally in a relatively short time.

In terms of popular music, the heavy use of Auto-Tune has dramatically changed the landscape of the Top-40 charts. At the same time, electronic dance music and electropop have gained significant popularity; electronic in general became widespread in the early-2010s mixing elements of synthpop, Chiptune, Second Wave synthpop and other various electronic music into a sound that differentiates 2010s music from the popular music styles of the early 2000s. In the United Kingdom, Dubstep is rising in popularity, which is a style that mirrors the electronic-leaning musical trends elsewhere.

Architecture

Burj Khalifa becomes the tallest man-made structure ever built, standing at 828 m (2,717 ft), after it officially opened on January 4, 2010.

One World Trade Center, an environmentally integrated structure which is set to become the tallest building in the United States, is expected to open in April 2013. By December 2010, it had reached half of its designed height. After the attack of 9/11/2001, in 9/11/2011 it will be its one decade anniversary. China's Three Gorges Dam is scheduled to be fully operational in 2011.

The Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world's longest railway tunnel, is scheduled to be completed in 2017 or 2018.

Sports

Events held

2010 UEFA Champions League Final was held at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, Spain.

2010 FIFA World Cup was held in South Africa

2010 Commonwealth Games was held in New Delhi, India

2010 Summer Youth Olympics held in Singapore

2010 Asian Games held in Guangzhou, China

2010 Winter Olympics were held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

2010 Winter Paralympics were held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

2011 Super Bowl was held at Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, Texas

2011 Cricket World Cup was held in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

2011 UEFA Champions League Final was held at Wembley Stadium in London, England.

Planned

2011 FIBA EuroBasket to be held in Lithuania

2011 Pan American Games to be held in Guadalajara, Mexico.

2011 Rugby World Cup to be held in New Zealand

2012 Super Bowl to be held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana

2012 UEFA Champions League Final to be held at Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany.

2012 UEFA European Football Championship to be held in Poland, and Ukraine

2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London, England, United Kingdom

2012 Summer Paralympics to be held in London, England, United Kingdom

2012 Winter Youth Olympics to be held in Innsbruck, Austria

2013 Super Bowl to be held at Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana

2013 Rugby League World Cup to be held in England, United Kingdom

2013 FIFA Confederations Cup to be held in Brazil

2014 Super Bowl to be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey

2014 FIFA World Cup to be held in Brazil

2014 Winter Olympics to be held in Sochi, Russia

2014 Winter Paralympics to be held in Sochi, Russia

2014 Summer Youth Olympics to be held in Nanjing, China

2014 Commonwealth Games to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

2015 Super Bowl which as of 18 December 2010 is not yet final who will host the event.

2015 Cricket World Cup to be held in Australia and New Zealand

2015 Pan American Games to be held in Toronto, Canada.

2015 Rugby World Cup to be held in England, United Kingdom

2016 Super Bowl which as of 18 December 2010 is not yet final who will host the event.

2016 UEFA European Football Championship to be held in France

2016 Summer Olympics to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2016 Summer Paralympics to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2016 Winter Youth Olympics scheduled, location to be announced in May 2011

2017 Super Bowl which as of 18 December 2010 is not yet final who will host the event.

2017 FIFA Confederations Cup to be held in Russia

2018 Super Bowl which as of 18 December 2010 is not yet final who will host the event.

2018 FIFA World Cup to be held in Russia

2018 Winter Olympics to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea

2018 Winter Paralympics to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea

2018 Summer Youth Olympics scheduled, location to be announced.

2019 Super Bowl which as of 18 December 2010 is not yet final who will host the event.

2019 Cricket World Cup to be held in England and Wales, United Kingdom

2019 Rugby World Cup to be held in Japan.

Video gaming

The OnLive console is released becoming the first massively-produced cloud gaming-based gaming device. (2010) Nintendo released the Nintendo 3DS, the successor to the immensely popular Nintendo DS line of handhelds, and introduced a new interface that does not require special glasses to observe stereoscopic 3D visuals during gameplay. (2011)

The Playstation Network went down temporarily on April 21, 2011 due to a security breach caused by hackers, which received international attention.

Sony is set to release the handheld game console PlayStation Vita in fall 2011.

Nintendo's tablet based video game console, WiiU, is scheduled to be released in 2012.

Duke Nukem Forever is released in 2011, 15 years after development began in 1996.

Fashion

The early 2010s, so far, have seen many recycled fashions from the 1940s, 1950s and 1980s and 1990s such as skinny jeans, leggings, leg warmers, aviator sunglasses, western shirts, baseball jackets, nerd glasses, and high top sneakers. It is also very popular to wear neon colors such as neon pink, green, teal, black, purple, and yellow, and Military Shirts. At the same time new fashions such as color burn shirts and "boot sandal hybrids" emerged in Europe and the USA.

In Britain there has been a resurgence of Edwardian fashions among indie kids, sloane rangers, and college students, including suits with contrasting piping, boots based on US Civil War era Jeff Davis boots, Barbour jackets, bowler hats, tweed jackets, waistcoats, thin ties, Ascots, cricket-style sweaters and striped boating blazers, albeit in less loud colors than the type worn by the mod subculture in the 1960s.

See also

2010s in film

2010s in music

Timeline

The following articles contain brief timelines which list the most prominent events and predicted prominent events of the decade:

2010 • 2011 • 2012 • 2013 • 2014 • 2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019

References

Category:21st century

ar:ملحق:عقد 2010 an:Anyos 2010 ast:Años 2010 zh-min-nan:2010 nî-tāi be-x-old:2010-я bs:2010te br:Bloavezhioù 2010 ca:Dècada del 2010 cy:2010au da:2010'erne de:2010er et:2010. aastad es:Años 2010 eo:2010-aj jaroj eu:2010eko hamarkada fa:دهه ۲۰۱۰ (میلادی) fr:Années 2010 gd:2010an gan:2010年代 ko:2010년대 hr:2010-ih io:2010a yari id:2010-an os:2010-тæ is:2011-2020 it:Anni 2010 he:העשור השני של המאה ה-21 jv:2010-an ka:2010-იანები kk:2010 жж. sw:Miaka ya 2010 kv:2010-ӧд вояс la:Decennium 202 lv:2010. gadi lt:XXI amžiaus 2-as dešimtmetis lij:Anni 2010 hu:2010-es évek mr:इ.स.चे २०१० चे दशक ms:2010-an nl:2010-2019 ja:2010年代 nrm:Annaées 2010 oc:Ans 2010 uz:2010-lar pl:Lata 2010-2019 pt:Década de 2010 ro:Anii 2010 qu:2010 watakuna ru:2010-е sah:2010-с se:2010-lohku sq:Vitet 2010 scn:Anni 2010 simple:2010s sk:10. roky 21. storočia sl:2010. sr:2010е sh:2010-e fi:2010-luku sv:2010-talet ta:2010கள் tk:2010ýý uk:2010-ті vi:Thập niên 2010 yi:2010ער yo:Ẹ̀wádún 2010 zh-yue:2010年代 zh:2010年代

Nationality	British
Birth date	March 17, 1969
Birth name	Lee Alexander McQueen
Birth place	Lewisham, London, United Kingdom
Death date	February 11, 2010
Residence	Mayfair, London
Years active	1989 - 2010
Death place	Mayfair, London, United Kingdom
Education	Central Saint Martins
Label name	Alexander McQueen, McQ
Awards	British Fashion Designer of the YearCommander of the Order of the British Empire Council of Fashion Designers of America International Designer of the Year 2003
Parents	Ronald McQueenJoyce McQueen (deceased 1934-2010) }}

Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE (17 March 1969 11 February 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier best known for his in-depth knowledge of bespoke British tailoring, his tendency to juxtapose strength with fragility in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative fashion shows. He is also known for having worked as chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001 and for founding his own label under the name Alexander McQueen. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards (1996, 1997, 2001 and 2003), as well as the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award in 2003.

Early life and education

Born on 17 March 1969 in Lewisham, London, to Scottish taxi driver Ronald and social science teacher Joyce, McQueen was the youngest of six children. He grew up in a council flat in a tower block in Stratford. He attended Carpenters Road Primary School. He started making dresses for his three sisters at a young age and announced his intention to become a fashion designer.

McQueen attended Rokeby School and left aged 16 in 1984 with one O-level in art, going on to serve an apprenticeship with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard, before joining Gieves & Hawkes and, later, the theatrical costumiers Angels and Bermans. The skills he learned as an apprentice on Savile Row helped earn him a reputation in the fashion world as an expert in creating an impeccably tailored look.

Career

While on Savile Row, McQueen's clients included Mikhail Gorbachev and Prince Charles. At the age of 20 he spent a period of time working for Koji Tatsuno before travelling to Milan, Italy and working for Romeo Gigli.

McQueen returned to London in 1994 and applied to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, to work as a pattern cutter tutor. Because of the strength of his portfolio he was persuaded by the Head of the Masters course to enroll in the course as a student. He received his masters degree in fashion design and his graduation collection was bought in its entirety by influential fashion stylist Isabella Blow, who was said to have persuaded McQueen to become known as Alexander (his middle name) when he subsequently launched his fashion career.

Icelandic singer Björk sought McQueen's work for the cover of her album Homogenic in 1997. McQueen also directed the music video for her song "Alarm Call" from the same album.

right|thumb|Camilla Belle in a 2009 dress by Alexander McQueen, listed among "100 Best Dresses of the Decade" by InStyle Magazine. McQueen's early runway collections developed his reputation for controversy and shock tactics (earning the title "l'enfant terrible" and "the hooligan of English fashion"), with trousers aptly named "bumsters" and a collection entitled "Highland Rape". In 2004, journalist Caroline Evans also wrote of McQueen's "theatrical staging of cruelty," in 032c magazine, referring to his dark and tortured renderings of Scottish History. McQueen was known for his lavish, unconventional runway shows: a recreation of a shipwreck for his spring 2003 collection; spring 2005's human chess game; and his fall 2006 show "Widows of Culloden," which featured a life-sized hologram of supermodel Kate Moss dressed in yards of rippling fabric.

McQueen's "bumsters" spawned a trend in low rise jeans; on their debut they attracted many comments and debate. Michael Oliveira-Salac, the director of Blow PR and a friend of McQueen's said that "The bumster for me is what defined McQueen." McQueen also became known for using skulls in his designs. A scarf bearing the motif became a celebrity must-have and was copied around the world.

McQueen has been credited with bringing drama and extravagance to the catwalk. He used new technology and innovation to add a different twist to his shows and often shocked and surprised audiences. The silhouettes that he created have been credited for adding a sense of fantasy and rebellion to fashion. McQueen became one of the first designers to use Indian models in London.

McQueen also designed a range of dresses under the name of "manta", priced at around £2800. The line, named after the manta ray, was inspired by a holiday McQueen took in the Maldives in 2009. The designs have been worn by various models and celebrities, including Lily Cole. McQueen stayed with Givenchy until March 2001, when the contract he said was "constraining his creativity" ended.

Accomplishments

Some of McQueen's accomplishments included being one of the youngest designers to achieve the title "British Designer of the Year", which he won four times between 1996 and 2003; he was also awarded the CBE and named International Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers in 2003.

December 2000 saw a new partnership for McQueen, with the Gucci Group acquiring 51% of his company and McQueen serving as Creative Director. Plans for expansion included the opening of stores in London, Milan and New York, and the launch of his perfumes Kingdom and, most recently, My Queen. In 2005, McQueen collaborated with Puma to create a special line of trainers for the shoe brand. In 2006 he launched McQ, a younger, more renegade lower priced line for men and women.

McQueen became the first designer to participate in MAC's promotion of cosmetic releases created by fashion designers. The collection, McQueen, was released on 11 October 2007 and reflected the looks used on the Autumn/Winter McQueen catwalk. The inspiration for the collection was the Elizabeth Taylor movie Cleopatra, and thus the models sported intense blue, green, and teal eyes with strong black liner extended Egyptian-style. McQueen handpicked the makeup.

Company

By the end of 2007, Alexander McQueen had boutiques in London, New York, Los Angeles, Milan and Las Vegas. Celebrity patrons, including Nicole Kidman, Penélope Cruz, Sarah Jessica Parker and Rihanna, J-Pop Queens such as Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, and Koda Kumi have frequently been spotted wearing Alexander McQueen clothing to events. Björk, Ayumi Hamasaki and Lady Gaga have often incorporated Alexander McQueen pieces in their music videos. By wearing his designs, celebrities such as the above mentioned have further increased the notability of the McQueen brand.

Personal life

McQueen was openly gay and said he realized his sexual orientation when very young. He told his family when he was 18 and, after a rocky period, they accepted his sexuality. He described coming out at a young age by saying, "I was sure of myself and my sexuality and I've got nothing to hide. I went straight from my mother's womb onto the gay parade".

In the summer of 2000, McQueen had a marriage ceremony with his partner George Forsyth, a documentary filmmaker, on a yacht in Ibiza. The marriage was not official, as same-sex marriage in Spain was not legal then. The relationship ended a year later and McQueen and Forsyth maintained a close friendship.

McQueen received press attention after the May 2007 suicide of international style icon Isabella Blow. Rumours were published that there was a rift between McQueen and Blow at the time of her death, focusing on McQueen's under-appreciation of Blow. In response to these rumours, McQueen told an interviewer:

McQueen was an accomplished scuba diver and used his passion as a source of inspiration in his designs, including spring 2010's "Plato's Atlantis." Much of his diving was done around the Maldives.

Death and memorial

McQueen's death was announced on the afternoon of 11 February 2010. He was found hanged that morning in his wardrobe by his housekeeper at his home on Green Street, London W1. Paramedics were called and they pronounced him dead at the scene.

McQueen died days before London Fashion Week, though he was not scheduled to show, and nine days after the death of his mother, Joyce, 75, from cancer. David LaChapelle, a friend of the designer said that McQueen "was doing a lot of drugs and was very unhappy" at the time of his death.

McQueen left a note saying "Look after my dogs, sorry, I love you, Lee." The Metropolitan Police stated that the death was not suspicious, but did not confirm that the death was a suicide. On 17 February 2010, Westminster Coroner's Court was told that a post-mortem examination found that McQueen's death was due to asphyxiation and hanging. The inquest was adjourned until 28 April 2010, where McQueen's death was officially recorded as suicide. McQueen, who had been diagnosed with mixed anxiety and depressive disorder took an overdose prior to hanging himself. He had taken drug overdoses in May and July 2009. Prior to hanging himself with his "favourite brown belt", the inquest recorded that he had slashed his wrists with a ceremonial dagger and a meat cleaver. Coroner Dr Paul Knapman reported finding "a significant level of cocaine, sleeping pills, and tranquilisers in the blood samples taken after the designer's death."

On 3 February 2010, McQueen wrote on his Twitter page that his mother had died the day before, adding: "RIP mumxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx." Four days later he wrote that he had an "awful week" but said "friends have been great", adding: "now i have to some how pull myself together". His mother's funeral took place on 12 February 2010. McQueen is survived by his father, three sisters, and two brothers.

McQueen's funeral took place on 25 February 2010 at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, West London. His ashes were later scattered on the Isle of Skye.

A memorial was held for McQueen at Saint Paul's Cathedral on 20 September 2010. It was attended by Björk, Kate Moss, Sarah Jessica Parker, Naomi Campbell, Stella McCartney and Anna Wintour amongst 2,500 other invited guests. On 18 February 2010, Robert Polet, the president and chief executive of the Gucci Group, announced that the Alexander McQueen business would carry on without its founder and creative director.

The BBC reported that McQueen had reserved £50,000 ($82,000) of his wealth for his pet dogs so that they can live in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives. He also bequeathed £100,000 ($164,315) each to four different charities; these include the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in south London, and the Blue Cross animal welfare charity in Burford, Oxfordshire.

Tributes

On 16 February 2010, pop musician Lady Gaga performed an acoustic version of her pop hit Telephone and segued into Dance In The Dark at the 2010 Brit Awards. During the performance, Gaga honored McQueen, saying, "this is for Alexander McQueen." She also commemorated McQueen after accepting her award for Best International Artist, Best International Female and Best International Album.

Gaga dedicated a song on the special edition of her third album, Born This Way, to him entitled "Fashion of His Love".

Bjork sang her rendition of Gloomy Sunday at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. She wore an outfit created by McQueen where many mourners came to gather.

Various other musicians, who were friends and collaborators with McQueen, commentated on his death, including Kanye West, Courtney Love, and Katy Perry.

In March 2010, a visual tribute to McQueen and his "manta" design was organised featuring Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Annabelle Neilson, among others.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City hosted a posthumous exhibition of McQueen's work in 2011 titled Savage Beauty. Despite being open for only three months, it was one of the most popular exhibitions in the museum's history. The exhibition was so successful that Alexander McQueen fans and industry professionals worldwide began rallying at Change.org to "Please Make Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty a Traveling Exhibition" to bring honor to McQueen and see his vision become a reality: to share his work with the entire world.

The final show

Right before Alexander McQueen's death he had an eighty percent unfinished autumn/winter collection, 16 pieces, presented during Paris Fashion Week on March 8th 2010, to a select handful of fashion editors in a mirrored, gilded salon at the 18th-century Hôtel de Clermont-Tonnerre.

Fashion editors picked his final designs. Editors said the show was hard to watch because it showed how McQueen was obsessed with the afterlife. The clothes had a medieval and religious look. Basic colours that were repetitively used were red, gold and silvers with detailed embroidery. His models were accessorized to show his love for theatrical imagery. "Each piece is unique, as was he," McQueen's fashion house said in a statement that was released with the collection.

After company owner Gucci confirmed that the brand would continue, McQueen's long-term assistant Sarah Burton was named as the new creative director of Alexander McQueen in May 2010. In September 2010, Burton presented her first womenswear collection in Paris.

References

External links

Alexander McQueen's home page

Alexander McQueen – Daily Telegraph obituary

In pictures:Alexander McQueen exibition - The BBC- Entertainment and Arts - Around 100 examples of Alexander McQueen's work are to be displayed at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in May 2011 in a major celebration of the late British fashion designer.

Metropolitan Museum of Art retrospective

Category:1969 births Category:2010 deaths Category:Alumni of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design Category:English businesspeople Category:English fashion designers Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:LGBT businesspeople Category:LGBT fashion designers Category:LGBT people from England Category:People from Stratford, London Category:Suicides by hanging in England zh-min-nan:Alexander McQueen be:Аляксандр Маккуін br:Alexander McQueen bg:Александър Маккуин ca:Alexander McQueen cy:Alexander McQueen da:Alexander McQueen de:Alexander McQueen es:Alexander McQueen fr:Alexander McQueen gan:阿歷山德·麥琨 ko:알렉산더 맥퀸 id:Alexander McQueen it:Alexander McQueen he:אלכסנדר מקווין ka:ალექსანდრ მაკქუინი hu:Alexander McQueen nl:Alexander McQueen ja:アレキサンダー・マックイーン no:Alexander McQueen nn:Alexander McQueen pl:Alexander McQueen pt:Alexander McQueen ro:Alexander McQueen ru:Маккуин, Александр fi:Alexander McQueen sv:Alexander McQueen th:อเล็กซานเดอร์ แม็กควีน uk:Александр Макквін vi:Alexander McQueen zh:亞歷山大·麥昆

playername	Jonathan Agnew
country	England
fullname	Jonathan Philip Agnew
nickname	Aggers, Spiro
living	true
dayofbirth	4
monthofbirth	4
yearofbirth	1960
placeofbirth	Macclesfield, Cheshire
countryofbirth	England
heightft	6
heightinch	4
batting	Right-handed
bowling	Right-arm fast
role
international	true
testdebutdate	9 August
testdebutyear	1984
testdebutagainst	West Indies
testcap	508
lasttestdate	6 August
lasttestyear	1985
lasttestagainst	Australia
odidebutdate	23 January
odidebutyear	1985
odidebutagainst	India
odicap	77
lastodidate	17 February
lastodiyear	1985
lastodiagainst	Australia
club1	Leicestershire
year1	1979–1992
deliveries	balls
columns	4
column1	Tests
matches1	3
runs1	10
bat avg1	10.00
100s/50s1	0/0
top score1	5
deliveries1	552
wickets1	4
bowl avg1	93.25
fivefor1	–
tenfor1	–
best bowling1	2/51
catches/stumpings1	0/–
column2	ODI
matches2	3
runs2	2
bat avg2	–
100s/50s2	0/0
top score2	2*
deliveries2	126
wickets2	3
bowl avg2	40.00
fivefor2	–
tenfor2	n/a
best bowling2	3/38
catches/stumpings2	1/–
column3	FC
matches3	218
runs3	2108
bat avg3	11.51
100s/50s3	0/2
top score3	90
deliveries3	35388
wickets3	666
bowl avg3	29.25
fivefor3	37
tenfor3	6
best bowling3	9/70
catches/stumpings3	39/–
column4	LA
matches4	147
runs4	335
bat avg4	9.30
100s/50s4	0/0
top score4	26
deliveries4	6813
wickets4	158
bowl avg4	29.26
fivefor4	2
tenfor4	n/a
best bowling4	5/30
catches/stumpings4	19/–
date	5 August
year	2008
source	http://content.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/8501.html Cricinfo }}

Jonathan Philip Agnew (born 4 April 1960) is an English cricket broadcaster and former professional cricketer. He was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire and educated at Uppingham School. He is nicknamed "Spiro", and, more commonly, "Aggers".

Agnew had a successful first-class career as a fast bowler for Leicestershire, taking 666 wickets at an average of 29.25 and winning three Test caps for England. Since retiring as a player, Agnew has become a cricket journalist across a variety of media, but most notably on radio, as a Test Match Special commentator and as a BBC radio cricket correspondent. An on-air incident in tandem with Brian Johnston has been voted "the greatest piece of sporting commentary ever" in a BBC poll and he has been described as "one of the most highly regarded cricket ­commentators in the world."

Agnew was made an Honorary Doctor of Arts (Hon DArt) by De Montfort University, Leicester in November 2008, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters (Hon DLitt) by Loughborough University in July 2011.

Playing career

Early years

From the age of 16, Agnew attended Alf Gover's cricket school in Surrey as a right-arm fast bowler. That summer, he saw Michael Holding take 14 wickets in the Oval Test match, a memory he recalled more than 30 years later. He began playing for Surrey County Cricket Club's second XI in 1977, but Surrey made no move to sign the player.

Agnew signed for Leicestershire in time for the 1978 season. The county took note of impressive performances in local club cricket and for his school, Uppingham, for whom he took 37 wickets at a bowling average of 8 in 1977. On his first-class debut against Lancashire, Agnew, aged 18, found himself bowling to David Lloyd, a specialist batsman with nine England Test caps. Lloyd "was halfway through a forward defensive push when his off stump was despatched halfway towards the Leicestershire wicket-keeper." Agnew took one wicket in each innings of the match, and did not bat; Leicestershire won by an innings.

Agnew came to early attention, winning a Whitbread Brewery award at the end of his debut season, which gave him the opportunity to spend a winter in Australia developing his skills, alongside fellow winners Mike Gatting, Wayne Larkins and Chris Tavaré. All four went on to play Test cricket.|group="note"}} On that Australia tour, Agnew played his only youth Test, but made headlines when invited to bowl at the touring England team in the nets:

"He struck the captain, Mike Brearley, a nasty blow in the face. It was, Agnew recalls, merely a gentle delivery off two paces that flew off a wet patch; but it did not deter the headline writers. Such early publicity did him no favours, but when a bowler arrives who is young, fast and English, a quiet settling-in period to one of the more difficult apprenticeships in sport is often denied him."

Agnew's 1979 season was disrupted by injury. The Editor's Notes of the 1980 Wisden reported, under the heading "England's Promising Youngsters", that Agnew had strengthened himself: "he has undergone a winter of tree felling to build up his young muscles". Agnew's own account is that it was "the worst winter of his life", although he recalls it as "working as a lorry driver in Leicester."

Test cricketer

Agnew's career did not initially live up to his early promise. In his first six seasons as a first-class cricketer, his biggest haul of wickets was 31 in 1980, hampered by a mixture of injuries, poor form and lack of being selected.

The 1984 season was Agnew's breakthrough year. He played 23 first-class matches, taking 84 wickets at an average of 28.72. He had the perfect start, playing in the warm-up game against Cambridge University and achieving figures of 8–47 from 20.4 overs and guaranteeing himself a spot in the first team for the County Championship matches to come.

He was rewarded for his efforts by being selected for the fifth Test of England's home series that summer, versus West Indies. With the West Indies leading the series 4–0, Agnew and Richard Ellison were given debuts, replacing Norman Cowans and Paul Terry, in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to avoid the "blackwash". Wisden describes how in the first innings, "Agnew's line and length were affected by first-match nerves", but an improved display in the second innings resulted in figures of 2–51, with Agnew "claiming Greenidge and Richards as his first illustrious victims in Test cricket".

Agnew was retained for England's next match, a one-off home Test against Sri Lanka. At the time, Sri Lanka were regarded as the minnows of world cricket: this was only their 12th Test match and their first at Lord's, but they dominated the match, taking a 121 run lead on first innings and declaring twice. It was a disappointment for England and, in a batsman-friendly match in which the Sri Lankans racked up 785 runs for just 14 wickets, Agnew suffered, taking 2-177 off 43 overs, and Wisden described the "ineffectiveness" of England's pacemen.

England toured India and Sri Lanka that winter, and Agnew was included in the tour party, but did not win selection for a Test match, with England's decision to field two spinners (Pat Pocock and Phil Edmonds) in each Test playing a part in limiting his opportunities. He played just one first-class match, and achieved overall figures of seven wickets at an average of 29.

Agnew began the 1985 season vieing with the established England faster bowlers to get back into the Test side. Over the winter, the side had been settled, with Norman Cowans and Chris Cowdrey playing all five Tests, Neil Foster and Richard Ellison sharing the third bowling place with two and three Tests respectively. Cowdrey and Ellison had both struggled with the ball, both averaging more than 70. However, the side was extensively remodelled for the first Test of that summer's Ashes series: in Wisden's words, "England brought back Gooch, Emburey, Willey, Botham and Allott, all of whom had, for different reasons, been unavailable for the previous Test in Kanpur. They replaced Fowler, Pocock, Cowdrey, Edmonds and Foster." Of the bowlers who had played the last Test in India, only Norman Cowans had survived the cull. It set the tone for the series. England won the first Test, yet dropped Edmonds and Foster, replacing them with Cowans and Willey. Having lost the second Test, and struggled with the ball in the third Test (Australia made 539 all out in their only innings) England decided to ring the changes once more.

Agnew had performed consistently in county cricket through June and July, culminating in what was to be, statistically, his finest moment as a bowler. Playing against Kent, he took 9–70 in the first innings. His timing was perfect and he was called up for the Fourth Test, replacing xxxx. Agnew failed to take a wicket in the match and was relegated from an opening bowler in the first innings, to fifth bowler in the second, in which he only bowled nine overs. He was immediately dropped once more from the side, only for Richard Ellison to cement his place with match-winning performances that helped claim the Ashes for England.

Agnew took 101 wickets for his county in the 1987 season. He was selected as one of five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1988 as reward for a fine season for Leicestershire, although by this stage his England career had ended after a disappointing performance in the three Test matches and three One Day Internationals (ODIs) he had played in the mid-1980s. His last Test was only twelve months after his first, and his last ODI was only one month after his first. Cricket commentator, Colin Bateman opined, "his fleeting taste of Test cricket should have been added to in 1987 and 1988 when he was the most consistent fast bowler in the country, taking 194 wickets, but in 1989, when England were desperate for pace bowlers, his omission amounted to wanton neglect by a regime which questioned his desire".

Agnew's best first-class bowling figures were 9 for 70 and he took six ten-wicket hauls in 218 matches. His highest first-class batting score was 90, starting initially as nightwatchman in 1987 against Yorkshire, at North Marine Road Ground, Scarborough. Wisden commented, "Agnew hit a spectacular, career-best 90 from 68 balls, including six sixes and eight fours, and then took the first five Yorkshire wickets to fall". However, the match ended in a draw.

With his height and pace, Agnew had useful attributes for a fast bowler. In his book 8 Days a Week (1988), Agnew gave his opinion that it was the huge workload faced by county fast bowlers during the 1980s that limited his international appearances and ended his career early; Agnew retired at the age of 30.

In 1992, two years after Agnew retired, Leicestershire experienced an injury crisis before their NatWest Trophy semi-final against Essex. Agnew was called out of retirement and finished the match with figures of 12–2–31–1. Leicestershire won the match, but Agnew chose not to play in the final.

Broadcasting career

Agnew began to gain experience as a journalist in 1987, while still playing cricket, taking off-season employment with BBC Radio Leicester as a sports producer, at the invitation of John Rawling. It was during this period that he "fell in love with radio". After retiring at a relatively young age at the end of the 1990 season, he had a stint as cricket correspondent of Today, a short-lived national newspaper.

Agnew rose to fame as a commentator on BBC on Test Match Special, which he joined in 1990. Agnew was initially a junior member of the TMS team, learning at close quarters from figures such as Brian Johnston, Henry Blofeld and Bill Frindall. In 1991, he was appointed the BBC's cricket correspondent, taking over from Test Match Special colleague, Christopher Martin-Jenkins. In 2007, Martin-Jenkins cited Agnew as the sports journalist he most respects, because he "combines astute journalism with apparently effortless communication skills."

Agnew has also lent his commentary prowess to several computer games, including the International Cricket Captain and Brian Lara Cricket series. He is also a shareholder in TestMatchExtra.com Ltd, a company which runs the website of the same address and acquired The Wisden Cricketer magazine from BSkyB in December 2010. Agnew writes for both of these outlets.

Broadcasting controversies

In 2001, Agnew was part of the BBC team that was sent to Sri Lanka to cover England's Test match series there. As the result of confusion and a row over broadcasting rights, the BBC team found itself barred from the Galle International Stadium, where the first Test was to take place. Agnew and Pat Murphy refused to be defeated and "decamped to the fort ramparts overlooking the ground and broadcast their programme from there. With both team and equipment protected from the sun by an umbrella held by Mr Agnew's driver, Simmons, it made a colourful scene." The England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive, Tim Lamb became involved in discussions and the Test Match Special team were allowed to return to the ground.

The Daily Telegraph called Agnew and Murphy's effort, "new heights of ingenuity". Agnew's reaction to the event was, "It's a sad day for everyone involved in English cricket. Is it really that cricket is getting so greedy that everyone who wants to come and report on the game for the good of the game is going to have to be charged for it?" However, he remained upbeat about the situation: "Actually I get rather more of a panoramic view of it from up here than I did yesterday in my commentary box. There's a little road that runs round the back of the ground. All manner of people are trundling up and down – buses, bikes and little three wheeled tuk-tuks – it's rather fun."

In 2004, the Zimbabwe government banned media from following the England cricket team on tour of the country. The popular response from English fans was "They've banned Aggers." Agnew's reaction was combative:

In the summer of 2008, Michael Vaughan reacted testily to questions by Agnew about his batting form. When Vaughan resigned shortly thereafter, Michael Atherton, writing in The Times, commented that it had been an out-of-character outburst that was a portent of the resignation. When Atherton had himself been England captain, Agnew had led the calls for Atherton to resign over the "dirt in the pocket" affair. Agnew was involved in a minor controversy regarding an appearance by Lily Allen on Test Match Special in 2009. The Daily Telegraph reported that "The cricket-loving Allen struck up an instant rapport with Agnew, and the BBC received largely positive feedback for the 30-minute interview.", but Will Buckley, writing for The Observer, described Agnew's "amorous ambitions" as "positioned ... firmly on the pervy side of things". Agnew was furious, noting he "gave ... Will Buckley 24 hrs to apologise for calling me a pervert, and he has declined ... As you can imagine, I have taken being called a pervert quite badly." Allen herself supported Agnew: "[I] really think this Will Buckley guy should apologise to @aggerscricket, he was nothing but kind and gentlemanly to me during our interview. I don't know 1 person that agrees with The Observer on this one." Buckley eventually apologised, using the comments section below his article.

The leg-over incident

Agnew was commentating with Brian Johnston for an England v West Indies Test Match in August 1991 when they produced a piece of commentary which has been voted by listeners to BBC Radio 5 Live as the "greatest piece of sporting commentary ever".

In a review of the day, Johnston was describing how Ian Botham, while batting, had overbalanced and tried, but failed, to step over his stumps. Botham was consequently given out hit wicket. Agnew's comment on this action was: "He just couldn't quite get his leg over." Botham had attracted a number of headlines during his career for his sexual exploits and in British English, "getting one's leg over" is a euphemism for having sexual intercourse.

The innuendo led to "Johnston, a lover of schoolboy innuendo to rival Frankie Howerd, erupting in a Krakatoa of snorts, whimpers, sneezes and, finally, uncontrollable laughter. Listeners were similarly afflicted; motorists had to pull on to the hard shoulder to wipe away the tears." Johnston tried to continue his summary, despite being almost unable to speak for laughing. He did manage to say "Aggers, for goodness' sake, do stop it" between convulsions of mirth.

Another on-air giggling fit by Agnew was provoked by Eleanor Oldroyd's comment: "One good bit of news for England is that Ian Botham's groin is back to full strength."

In June 2011, Agnew caused yet another fit of giggles while commentating on England player Kevin Pietersen changing the rubber grip on his batting handle. Having described the difficulty of such an operation, he said to fellow commentator Michael Vaughan "it's not easy putting a rubber on". "Rubber" is a common British English euphemism for a condom. Vaughan burst out laughing and replied, "I was never good at that".

Personal life and personality

Agnew has written about the role cricket played in the collapse of his first marriage in 1992, a year after he became BBC cricket correspondent.

I had two young children, aged seven and five, but while there was no third party involved in the split, it was quickly evident that for me to have custody of my daughters – or even to form a relationship with them – was made impossible by my job. What chance do you have when, be it playing Test cricket or commentating on it, you are away for months at a time each and every winter? This is not a moan – it is a wonderful life, but it has a price ... There was one occasion when I did not recognise my eldest, Jennifer, when I returned from one tour ... after divorce, ... unless the father is there at the front door, week after week, doing his best, it is highly likely they will drift apart. Although I do see my girls on an ad-hoc basis, that is what happened to me ... although my children continue to ask me why I did not resign and take a job that would have kept me in the country and allowed me to see them more often. I find that one especially hard to answer."

Agnew has subsequently remarried: Emma Agnew is editor of BBC East Midlands Today. Agnew suffers from Dupuytren's contracture, a medical condition that affects many former cricketers. The condition is causing Agnew's right hand to contract into a claw-like position. He has had multiple operations, but it continues to degenerate and he finds the condition so upsetting he has considered having one of his fingers amputated, a course of action fellow-sufferer Graham Gooch took. However, Agnew enjoys playing the piano and amputation would make worse his already impaired ability on the instrument.

Agnew is known for his humour. Derek Pringle, who describes Agnew as "hysterical", visited Sri Lanka with Agnew on England B's 1986 tour. One hot day when England were in the field, Agnew came in for lunch: "It's ****ing [sic] red hot on the field, and when you come off it's ****ing red hot in the dressing-room," Agnew screamed. "Then, what do you get for lunch, ****ing red hot curry?"

Bibliography

Over to you, Aggers (1997)

8 Days a Week: Diary of a Professional Cricketer (2004)

Thanks Jonners: An Affectionate Tribute to a Broadcasting Legend (2010)

Aggers' Ashes (2011)

Notes

References

External links

Test Match Special official site

Cricinfo player profile of Jonathan Agnew

HowSTAT! statistical profile on Jonathan Agnew

Jonathan Agnew at Internet Movie Database

Category:BBC sports presenters and reporters Category:Cricket commentators Category:English cricketers Category:England One Day International cricketers Category:English sportswriters Category:England Test cricketers Category:Leicestershire cricketers Category:Old Uppinghamians Category:Wisden Cricketers of the Year Category:People from Macclesfield Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:People with Dupuytren's contracture

de:Jonathan Agnew

Name	Lady Gaga
Alt	Portrait of Lady Gaga
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta
Birth date	March 28, 1986
Birth place	New York City, New York, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals, piano, keyboards
Genre	Pop, dance
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, performance artist, record producer, dancer, businesswoman, activist
Years active	2005–present
Label	Def Jam, Cherrytree, Streamline, Kon Live, Interscope
Website	}}

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (; born March 28, 1986), better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in New York City, she primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts before withdrawing to focus on her musical career. She began performing in the rock music scene of Manhattan's Lower East Side, and by the end of 2007, was signed with Streamline Records. Employed as a songwriter for the record company, her vocal abilities captured the attention of recording artist Akon, who signed her to his label Kon Live Distribution.

Lady Gaga came to prominence as a recording artist following the release of her debut album The Fame (2008), which was a critical and commercial success that topped charts around the world and included the international number-one singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". After embarking on the Fame Ball Tour, she followed the album with The Fame Monster (2009), which spawned the worldwide hit singles "Bad Romance", "Telephone" and "Alejandro" and allowed her to embark on the eighteen-month long Monster Ball Tour, which later became one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time. Her most recent album Born This Way (2011) topped the charts of most major markets and generated more international chart-topping singles that include "Born This Way", "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory". Beside her musical career, she involves herself with humanitarian causes and LGBT activism.

Influenced by such acts as David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Queen, Lady Gaga is well recognized for her flamboyant, diverse and outré contributions to the music industry through fashion, performance and music videos. She has sold an estimated 23 million albums and 64 million singles worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time and her singles some of the best-selling worldwide. Her achievements include four Guinness World Records, five Grammy Awards and thirteen MTV Video Music Awards. Lady Gaga has consecutively appeared on Billboard magazine's Artists of the Year (scoring the definitive title in 2010), is regularly placed on lists composed by Forbes magazine, and was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine.

Biography

1986–2004: Early life

Lady Gaga was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986, in New York City. Brought up in the family home in Manhattan's Upper West Side, Lady Gaga is of Italian and more distant French-Canadian descent, and is the daughter of Cynthia (née Bissett) and Joseph Germanotta, an internet entrepreneur. The elder of two children, Lady Gaga has one sister, Natali, a fashion student, who was born in 1992. Lady Gaga has stressed that – despite her seemingly affluent upbringing – she did not come from a wealthy background, stating that her parents "both came from lower-class families, so we've worked for everything—my mother worked eight to eight out of the house, in telecommunications, and so did my father."

From the age of 11, Lady Gaga – who was raised Roman Catholic – attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school on Manhattan's Upper East Side. She described her academic life in high school as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure" as she told in an interview, "I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down. I didn't fit in, and I felt like a freak." Acquaintances dispute that she did not fit in at school. "She had a core group of friends; she was a good student. She liked boys a lot, but singing was No. 1," recalled a former high school classmate.

A keen musician, left-handed Lady Gaga began playing the piano at the age of four, went on to write her first piano ballad at 13, and started to perform at open mike nights by the age of 14. Her passion for musical theatre brought her lead roles in high school productions, including Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. She also appeared in a very small role as a mischievous classmate in the television drama series The Sopranos in a 2001 episode titled "The Telltale Moozadell" in addition to unsuccessfully auditioning for parts in New York shows. When her time at the Convent of the Sacred Heart came to an end, her mother encouraged her to apply for the Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21), a musical theatre training conservatory at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. After gaining early admission at 17, she eventually lived in an NYU dorm on 11th Street.

Being part of such a prestigious performance course, she sharpened her songwriting skills while composing essays and analytical papers on art, religion, social issues and politics including a thesis on pop artists Spencer Tunick and Damien Hirst; such research prepared her for her future career focus in "music, art, sex and celebrity." She also tried out for and won auditions while at CAP21, including the part of an unsuspecting diner customer where MTV's Boiling Points – a prank reality television show – was being filmed. Notwithstanding these achievements, she felt that she was more creative than some of her classmates. "Once you learn how to think about art, you can teach yourself," she said. By the second semester of her sophomore year, she withdrew from the school to focus on her musical career. Her father agreed to pay her rent for a year, on the condition that she re-enroll at Tisch if unsuccessful. "I left my entire family, got the cheapest apartment I could find, and ate shit until somebody would listen," she remembers.

2005–07: Career beginnings

Settled in a small apartment on Rivington Street towards the summer of 2005, Lady Gaga recorded a couple of songs with hip-hop singer Grandmaster Melle Mel, for an audio book accompanying the children's book The Portal in the Park, by Cricket Casey. She also began a band called the Stefani Germanotta Band (SGBand) with some friends from NYU – guitarist Calvin Pia, bassist Eli Silverman, drummer Alex Beckham and booking manager Frank Fredericks – in September of that year. The band played a mixture of songs: some self-penned alongside classic rock numbers like Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er". Playing in bars like the Greenwich Village's The Bitter End and the Lower East Side's the Mercury Lounge, the band developed a small fan base and caught the eye of music producer Joe Vulpis. Soon after arranging time in Vulpis' studio in the months that followed, SGBand were selling their extended plays Words and Red and Blue at gigs around New York while becoming a local fixture of the downtown Lower East Side club scene.

SGBand reached their career peak at the 2006 Songwriters Hall of Fame New Songwriters Showcase at The Cutting Room in June where Wendy Starland, a singer and model, appeared as a talent scout for music producer Rob Fusari. Starland informed Fusari – who was searching for a female singer to front a new band – of Lady Gaga's ability and contacted her. With SGBand disbanded, Lady Gaga traveled daily to New Jersey to work on songs she had written and compose new material with the music producer. While in collaboration, Fusari compared some of her vocal harmonies to those of Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen. It was Fusari who helped create the moniker Gaga after the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga". Lady Gaga was in the process of trying to come up with a stage name when she received a text message from Fusari that read "Lady Gaga." He explained, "Every day, when Stef came to the studio, instead of saying hello, I would start singing 'Radio Ga Ga'. That was her entrance song" and that the text message was the result of a predictive text glitch that changed "radio" to "lady". She texted back, "That's it," and declared, "Don't ever call me Stefani again." The New York Post, however, has reported that this story is incorrect, and that the name resulted from a marketing meeting.

Although the musical relationship between Fusari and Lady Gaga was unsuccessful at first, the pair soon set up a company titled Team Lovechild in which they recorded and produced electropop tracks and sent them to music industry bosses. Joshua Sarubin, the head of A&R; at Def Jam Recordings, responded positively and vied for the record company to take a chance on her "unusual and provocative" performance. After having his boss Antonio "L.A." Reid in agreement, Lady Gaga was signed to Def Jam in September 2006 with the intention of having an album ready in nine months. However, she was dropped by the label after only three months – an unfortunate period of her life that would later inspire her treatment for the music video for her 2011 single "Marry the Night". Devastated, Lady Gaga returned to the solace of the family home for Christmas and the nightlife culture of the Lower East Side. She became increasingly experimental: fascinating herself with emerging neo-burlesque shows, go-go dancing at bars dressed in little more than a bikini in addition to experimenting with drugs. Her father, however, did not understand the reason behind her drug intake and could not look at her for several months. "I was onstage in a thong, with a fringe hanging over my ass thinking that had covered it, lighting hairsprays on fire, go-go dancing to Black Sabbath and singing songs about oral sex. The kids would scream and cheer and then we'd all go grab a beer. It represented freedom to me. I went to a Catholic school but it was on the New York underground that I found myself." It was then when she became romantically involved with a heavy metal drummer in a relationship and break-up she likened to the musical film Grease: "I was his Sandy, and he was my Danny, and I just broke." He later became an inspiration behind some of her later songs.

During this time, she met performance artist Lady Starlight, who helped mold her on-stage persona. Starlight explained that, upon their first meeting, Lady Gaga wanted to perform with her to songs she had recorded with Fusari. Like SGBand, the pair soon began performing at many of the downtown club venues like the Mercury Lounge, The Bitter End, and the Rockwood Music Hall. Their live performance art piece was known as "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue" and, billed as "The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow", was a low-fi tribute to 1970s variety acts. Soon after, the two were invited to play at the 2007 Lollapalooza music festival in August that year. The show was critically acclaimed, and their performance received positive reviews. Having initially focused on avant-garde electronic dance music, Lady Gaga had found her musical niche when she began to incorporate pop melodies and the glam rock of David Bowie and Queen into her music.

While Lady Gaga and Lady Starlight were busy performing, producer Rob Fusari continued to work on the songs he had created with Lady Gaga. Fusari sent these songs to his friend, producer and record executive Vincent Herbert. Herbert was quick to sign her to his label Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, upon its establishment in 2007. Lady Gaga later credited Herbert as the man who discovered her, adding "I really feel like we made pop history, and we're gonna keep going." Having already served as an apprentice songwriter under an internship at Famous Music Publishing, which was later acquired by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Lady Gaga subsequently struck a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV. As a result, she was hired to write songs for Britney Spears and labelmates New Kids on the Block, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls. While Lady Gaga was writing at Interscope, singer-songwriter Akon recognized her vocal abilities when she sang a reference vocal for one of his tracks in studio. He then convinced Interscope-Geffen-A&M; Chairman and CEO Jimmy Iovine to form a joint deal by having her also sign with his own label Kon Live Distribution, making her his "franchise player." As 2007 came to a close, her former management company introduced her to songwriter and producer RedOne, whom they also managed. The first song she produced with RedOne was "Boys Boys Boys", a mash-up inspired by Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls" and AC/DC's "T.N.T.". Lady Gaga continued her collaboration with RedOne in the recording studio for a week on her debut album; making the chart-topping singles "Just Dance", "Poker Face" and "LoveGame" together. Lady Gaga also joined the roster of Cherrytree Records, an Interscope imprint established by producer and songwriter Martin Kierszenbaum, after co-writing four songs with Kierszenbaum including the singles "Christmas Tree" and "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)". Despite her secure record deal, she admitted that there was fear about her being too "racy", "dance-orientated" and "underground" for the mainstream market. She responded, "My name is Lady Gaga, I've been on the music scene for years, and I'm telling you, this is what's next."

2008–10: The Fame and The Fame Monster

By 2008, Lady Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles, where she worked extensively with her record label to complete her debut album in addition to setting up her own creative team – modeled on Andy Warhol's Factory – Haus of Gaga. Intensive work continued on the album, combining genres "from Def Leppard drums and hand claps to metal drums on urban tracks" while drawing inspiration from 1980s synthpop and incorporating dance music with clear hooks. The Fame, described as an exploration of her obsession with fame and the intricacies of a rich and famous lifestyle, was first released on August 19, 2008, preceded by lead single "Just Dance" four months earlier. Due to radio play being slow, Lady Gaga supported the releases by performing in the backwaters of Malta and Vietnam in addition to small gay clubs around the United States. She was also billed as a supporting artist on the North American leg of New Kids on the Block's reunion concert tour.

A sleeper hit, "Just Dance" hit the summit of the charts in six countries – Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States – in January 2009. The Grammy Award-nominated song provoked the instant success of The Fame. Receiving positive reviews from contemporary critics who commended Lady Gaga's ability to discover a melodious hook and compared her vocal abilities to those of Gwen Stefani, the album went to number-one in countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Ireland while appearing in the top-five in Australia, the United States and fifteen other countries. On Billboard's Dance/Electronic Albums chart, it stayed at the top spot 106 non-consecutive weeks. Since its release, The Fame has sold over 12 million copies worldwide. Lady Gaga achieved an even greater unexpected success when "Poker Face", another sleeper hit, reached number-one in almost all major music markets in the world including the United Kingdom and the United States in early 2009. The follow-up single won the award for Best Dance Recording at the 52nd Grammy Awards over nominations for Song of the Year and Record of the Year, while The Fame was nominated for Album of the Year and won the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronica Album. Lady Gaga was the recipient of many other honors in 2009 including the accumulation of 3 of 9 MTV Video Music Awards nominations – she won Best New Artist while the video for her single "Paparazzi" gained the awards for Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects – and Billboard magazine's Rising Star award. In addition to being an opening act on the Pussycat Dolls' Doll Domination Tour during the first half of 2009 on their legs in Europe and Oceania, she also embarked on her own six-month critically appreciated worldwide concert tour The Fame Ball Tour which ran from March to September 2009.

While she traveled the world on tour, she wrote The Fame Monster, a collection of eight songs, which was released in November 2009. Each song, dealing with the darker side of fame from personal experience, is expressed through a monster metaphor. Its first single "Bad Romance" topped the charts in eighteen countries, while reaching the top-two in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It made Gaga the first artist in digital history to have three singles (along with "Just Dance" and "Poker Face") to pass the four million mark in digital sales and accrued the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance while its accompanying music video won the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video at the 53rd Grammy Awards The album's second single "Telephone", which features singer Beyoncé, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals and became Lady Gaga's fourth UK number-one single while its accompanying music video, although controversial, received a more positive reception from contemporary critics: praising her for "the musicality and showmanship of Michael Jackson and the powerful sexuality and provocative instincts of Madonna." Her following single "Alejandro" paired Gaga with fashion photographer Steven Klein for a music video similarly as controversial – critics complimented its ideas and dark nature but the Catholic League attacked Gaga for her alleged use of blasphemy. Despite the controversy surrounding her music videos, they made Lady Gaga the first artist to gain over one billion viral views on video-sharing website YouTube. Musically, The Fame Monster has also received abundant success. Equating to the amount of Grammy nominations her debut received, The Fame Monster garnered a total of six nominations; the album won for Best Pop Vocal Album and earned her a second-consecutive nomination for Album of the Year at the 53rd annual awards ceremony.

The success of the album allowed Lady Gaga to start her second worldwide concert tour, The Monster Ball Tour, just weeks after the release of The Fame Monster and months after having finished The Fame Ball Tour. Upon finishing in May 2011, the critically acclaimed and commercially accomplished tour ran for over one and a half years and, according to Billboard, grossed $227.4 million, making it one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time and the highest-grossing for a debut headlining artist. Lady Gaga also performed songs from the album at international events such as the 2009 Royal Variety Performance where she sang "Speechless", a power ballad, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II; the 52nd Grammy Awards where her opening performance consisted of the song "Poker Face" and a piano duet of "Speechless" in a medley of "Your Song" with Elton John; and the 2010 BRIT Awards where a performance of an acoustic rendition of "Telephone" followed by "Dance in the Dark" dedicated to the late fashion designer and close friend, Alexander McQueen, supplemented her hat-trick win at the awards ceremony. Other performances may have included her participation in Michael Jackson's This Is It concert series at London's O2 Arena. "I was actually asked to open for Michael on his tour," she stated. "We were going to open for him at the O2 and we were working on making it happen. I believe there was some talk about us, lots of the openers, doing duets with Michael on stage." A realized collaboration with Polaroid started in January 2010. Excited about combining the company with the digital era, Lady Gaga was named Chief Creative Officer for a line of imaging products for the international optic company with the intent of creating fashion, technology and photography products.

Despite a successful debut, Mermaid Music LLC – her production team – was sued in March of 2010 by past producer Rob Fusari who claimed that he was entitled to a 20% share of its earnings. Lady Gaga's lawyer, Charles Ortner, described the agreement with Fusari as "unlawful" and declined to comment. Five months later, the New York Supreme Court dismissed both the lawsuit and a countersuit by Lady Gaga. In addition to such strife, Lady Gaga has been tested borderline positive for lupus, but claims not to be affected by the symptoms. The revelations caused considerable dismay amongst her fans, leading to Lady Gaga addressing the matter in an interview with Larry King, saying she hopes to avoid symptoms by maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

2011–present: Born This Way

Lady Gaga's second studio album and third major release Born This Way was released on May 23, 2011. Described as "a marriage of electronic music with major [...] metal or rock 'n' roll, pop, anthemic style melodies with really sledge-hammering dance beats" and referred to as an album "about what what keeps us up at night and what makes us afraid", she stated. Lady Gaga characterized her new music as "something so much deeper than a wig or lipstick or a fucking meat dress" and upon hearing it, Akon remarked that she is taking music to the "next level". Its arrival followed the release of its eponymous lead single "Born This Way" on February 11, 2011, which was performed live for the first time at the 53rd Grammy Awards two days after its release. The song, dealing with self-acceptance regardless of race or sexual orientation, debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the 19th number-one debut and the 1,000th number-one single in the history of the charts, while selling more than 3 million digital copies in the United States by October 2011, becoming her eighth consecutive single to exceed the sales of two million. A music video was released for the song, showing Lady Gaga giving birth to a new race amidst surrealistic images; critics noted artistic and cultural references and praised its concept. Lady Gaga lent her vocals elsewhere, pairing with Elton John to record an original duet for the animated feature film Gnomeo & Juliet. The song, titled "Hello, Hello", was released on February 11, 2011, without Lady Gaga's vocals. The duet version was only featured in the film. In February, Lady Gaga's concerts of her then-ongoing tour at Madison Square Garden in New York City, were filmed for an HBO special aired in May. The special was nominated for five Emmy Awards.

Two other singles, "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory", as well as a promotional single, "Hair", were eventually released before the album. The music video for "Judas", in which Gaga portrays Mary Magdalene, and Biblical figures such as Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot are also featured, was criticized for its religious references; the video, nonetheless, received acclaim for its overall delivery and praise from others who claimed that there was nothing offensive about it. "Judas" additionally peaked within the top ten in several major musical markets. "The Edge of Glory" was intended as a promotional single; nevertheless, due to commercial success in digital outlets, the song was released as a single to critical appreciation, accompanied by a music video. Gaga also undertook a job as a fashion columnist for V, where she wrote about her creative process, her studying of the world of pop culture, and her ability to tune into the evolution of pop-culture meme. Upon release, Born This Way sold 1.108 million copies in its first week in the United States, debuting atop the Billboard 200, and topping the charts in more than 20 other countries. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics, who praised its range of different styles as well as her vocals. Later, Lady Gaga went to Sydney to promote Born This Way with a one-of-a-kind concert at the Sydney Town Hall on July 13, 2011.

She continued her musical endeavors, releasing "You and I" and "Marry the Night" as succeeding singles from Born This Way, as well as recording songs with veteran artists like Cher and Tony Bennett. The song recorded with Bennett is a jazz version of "The Lady Is a Tramp", while Lady Gaga described her duet with Cher as a "massive" and "beautiful" track, which she "wrote a long time ago, and I've never put it on one of my own albums for, really, no particular reason." On August 28, at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga won two awards out of four nominations, and attended the event dressed as Jo Calderone, her male alter-ego. For the 2012 edition of the Guinness World Records, Lady Gaga was listed for Most Followers on Twitter, with over 13 million followers, and "Poker Face" was listed for Most Weeks on US Digital Hot Songs, with 83 weeks. Lady Gaga continued her live appearances, and performed at the celebration of former US president Bill Clinton's 65th Birthday alongside Bono, Stevie Wonder and Usher, among others. She wore a blond wig as a nod to the famous performance of Marilyn Monroe for John F. Kennedy and changed the lyrics to her song "You and I" specifically for the performance. Later on, Lady Gaga won four awards out of six nominations in the main categories at the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards in November, for Best Female, Biggest Fans, Best Song and Best Video; the latter two with "Born This Way". On November 14, 2011, Lady Gaga and her choreographer and creative director Laurieann Gibson parted ways, after working together for four years. Gibson's assistant Richard Jackson replaced her as Lady Gaga's choreographer.

Artistry

Influences

Lady Gaga's parents, who exposed her to artists like The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Elton John, had significant influence on her childhood and, presently, still do. "I am a real family girl. When it comes to love and loyalty, I am very old-fashioned. And I am quite down-to-earth for such an eccentric person," she insists. "I'm quite traditional in the family sense. I've always been that way." According to Lady Gaga, Joanne Germanotta – her aunt who tragically died of lupus aged 19 – lives on through her and inspires all of her music and art. Joanne's date of death is tattooed on Gaga's body and, despite dying 12 years before her birth, Gaga commented, "I really believe I have two hearts. I think I actually carry two souls in my body, and that I'm living out the rest of her life and her goodness – she died a virgin, she died never having experienced all these things that we all get to love and experience in our lives." Another spiritual influence on Lady Gaga has been the Indian physician, public speaker and writer Deepak Chopra. Labeling him a "true inspiration", she stated that "he's always reminded me to work in a life of service to my fans and to fulfill my vision and my destiny" in addition to thinking about Chopra when it comes to her work as a musician: "I want so much for it to go beyond the music for my fans."

Musically, Gaga takes influence from numerous musicians from dance-pop singers like Madonna and Michael Jackson to glam rock artists like David Bowie and Queen whilst employing the theatrics of artists like Andy Warhol and of her musical theatre roots in performance. The Queen song "Radio Ga Ga" inspired her stage name, "Lady Gaga": "I adored Freddie Mercury and Queen had a hit called 'Radio Gaga'. That's why I love the name [...] Freddie was unique—one of the biggest personalities in the whole of pop music," she commented. Lady Gaga receives regular comparisons to recording artist Madonna. The 53-year-old singer admits that she sees herself reflected in Lady Gaga. In response to the comparisons, Lady Gaga has stated, "I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I've made it my goal to revolutionize pop music. The last revolution was launched by Madonna 25 years ago" in addition to commenting that "there is really no one that is a more adoring and loving Madonna fan than me. I am the hugest fan personally and professionally." Like Madonna, Gaga has continued to reinvent herself and, over the few years her career has spanned, Lady Gaga has drawn musical inspiration from a diverse mix of musicians including Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, Grace Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Blondie singer Debbie Harry, Scissor Sisters, Prince, Marilyn Manson and Yoko Ono.

Lady Gaga has identified fashion as a major influence and has been stylistically compared to American recording artist Cher and English eccentrics Leigh Bowery and Isabella Blow. She has considered Donatella Versace her muse and the late British fashion designer and close friend Alexander McQueen as an inspiration, admitting that "I miss Lee every time I get dressed" while channeling him in some of her work. Modeled on Andy Warhol's Factory, Lady Gaga has her own creative production team, which she handles personally, called the Haus of Gaga, who create many of her clothes, stage props, and hairdos. Her adoration of fashion came from her mother, who she stated was "always very well kept and beautiful." "When I'm writing music, I'm thinking about the clothes I want to wear on stage. It's all about everything altogether—performance art, pop performance art, fashion. For me, it's everything coming together and being a real story that will bring back the super-fan. I want to bring that back. I want the imagery to be so strong that fans will want to eat and taste and lick every part of us." The Global Language Monitor named "Lady Gaga" as the Top Fashion Buzzword with her trademark "no pants" a close third. Entertainment Weekly put her outfits on its end of the decade "best-of" list, saying, "Whether it's a dress made of Muppets or strategically placed bubbles, Lady Gaga's outré ensembles brought performance art into the mainstream."

Musical and performance style

Lady Gaga's musical and performance style has been the subject of much analysis and scrutiny of critics. She professes that she is "liberating" herself by constantly reinventing her image and sound, insisting that it is a practice she has been drawn to since her childhood. Her career has been a continuous experimentation with new musical ideas and images in constant quest for new heights of fame and acclaim.

Vocally, Lady Gaga has drawn frequent comparison to the ranges of Madonna and Gwen Stefani. Possessing the range of a contralto, Lady Gaga exhibits "overwhelming expression, instinctive vocal phrasing, '80s rock reminiscent chest belts and animalistic vocal ticks" while being able to move through 2.4 octaves. Lady Gaga, who refuses to lip sync, has manipulated her vocal style over the course of her career yet considers Born This Way (2011) "much more vocally up to par with what I've always been capable of." In summation of her voice, Entertainment Weekly wrote, "There's an immense emotional intelligence behind the way she uses her voice. Almost never does she overwhelm a song with her vocal ability, recognizing instead that artistry is to be found in nuance rather than lung power."

Although her early lyrics have been criticized for lacking intellectual stimulation, "[Gaga] does manage to get you moving and grooving at an almost effortless pace." She admits that her songwriting has been misinterpreted; her friend and blogger Perez Hilton articulated her message in a clearer way: "you write really deep intelligent lyrics with shallow concepts." Lady Gaga opined, "Perez is very intelligent and clearly listened to my record from beginning to end, and he is correct." "I love songwriting. It's so funny – I will just jam around in my underwear or I could be washing my dishes. I wrote several songs just at the piano," she confesses. Gaga believes that "all good music can be played at a piano and still sound like a hit." She has covered a wide variety of topics in her songs: while The Fame (2008) meditates on the lust for stardom, The Fame Monster (2009) expresses fame's dark side through monster metaphors. Born This Way (2011) is sung in English, French, German and Spanish and includes common themes in Lady Gaga's controversial songwriting like love, sex, religion, money, drugs, identity, liberation, sexuality, freedom and individualism.

The structure of her music is said to echo classic 1980s pop and 1990s Europop. Her debut album The Fame (2008) provoked The Sunday Times to assert "in combining music, fashion, art and technology, [Lady Gaga] evokes Madonna, Gwen Stefani circa 'Hollaback Girl', Kylie Minogue 2001 or Grace Jones right now" and a critic from The Boston Globe to comment that she draws "obvious inspirations from Madonna to Gwen Stefani... in [her] girlish but sturdy pipes and bubbly beats." Music critic Simon Reynolds wrote that "Everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just ruthlessly catchy naughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B;-ish beats." The follow-up The Fame Monster (2009), saw Gaga's taste for pastiche, drawing on "Seventies arena glam, perky ABBA disco and sugary throwbacks like Stacey Q" while Born This Way (2011) also draws on the records of her childhood and still has the "electro-sleaze beats and Eurodisco chorus chants" of its predecessor but includes genres as diverse as opera, heavy metal, disco, and rock and roll. "There isn't a subtle moment on the album, but even at its nuttiest, the music is full of wide-awake emotional details," wrote Rolling Stone, who concluded: "The more excessive Gaga gets, the more honest she sounds."

Her performances are described as "highly entertaining and innovative"; the blood-spurting performance of "Paparazzi" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards was described as "eye-popping" by MTV. She continued the "blood soaked" theme in The Monster Ball Tour, in which she wore a revealing leather corset and is "attacked" by a performer dressed in black who gnaws on her throat, causing "blood" to spurt down her chest, after which she lies "dying" in a pool of blood. Her performances of that scene on tour in England triggered protests from family groups and fans in the aftermath of a local tragedy, in which a taxi driver had murdered 12 people. "What happened in Bradford is very fresh in people's minds and given all the violence which happened in Cumbria just hours earlier, it was insensitive," said Lynn Costello of Mothers Against Violence. Her unconventionality continued at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards when she performed in drag as her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, and delivered a lovesick monologue before a performance of her song "Yoü and I". Chris Rock has defended her flamboyant and provocative behavior. "Well, she's Lady Gaga," he said. "She's not 'Lady Behave Yourself.' Do you want great behavior from a person named Gaga? Is this what you were expecting?"

Public image

While Rolling Stone named Lady Gaga the "Queen of Pop" in 2011, public reception of Lady Gaga's music, fashion sense and persona are mixed. Her status as a role model, self-esteem booster for her fans, trailblazer and fashion icon who breaths new life into the industry is by turns affirmed and denied. Lady Gaga's albums have received mostly positive reviews and critics have pointed out her unique place in pop music, the need for new movements in popular culture, the attention Lady Gaga brings to modern social issues, and the inherently subjective nature of her art. In view of her influence on modern culture and her rise to global fame, sociologist Mathieu Deflem of the University of South Carolina has organized a course titled "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame" since the spring of 2011 with the objective of unravelling "some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga".

Contrary to her outré style, the New York Post described her early look as like "a refugee from Jersey Shore" with "big black hair, heavy eye makeup and tight, revealing clothes." Lady Gaga is a natural brunette; she bleached her hair blonde because she was often mistaken for Amy Winehouse. She has nine tattoos on the left side of her body (her father has banned etchings on her right): a unicorn; a little heart with "DAD" inside it; a white rose; a treble clef; a bunch of daises; a heart saying "Tokyo Love"; a tiny swan; a peace symbol, which was inspired by John Lennon, who she stated was her hero; and a curling German script on her left arm quoting the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, her favorite writer, commenting that his "philosophy of solitude" spoke to her. Towards the end of 2008, comparisons were made between the fashions of Lady Gaga and recording artist Christina Aguilera that noted similarities in their styling, hair, and make-up. Aguilera stated that she was "completely unaware of [Gaga]" and "didn't know if it [was] a man or a woman." Lady Gaga released a statement in which she welcomed the comparisons due to the attention providing useful publicity, saying, "She's such a huge star and if anything I should send her flowers, because a lot of people in America didn't know who I was until that whole thing happened. It really put me on the map in a way."

When interviewed by Barbara Walters for her annual ABC News special 10 Most Fascinating People in 2009, Lady Gaga dismissed the claim that she is intersex as an urban legend. Responding to a question on this issue, she stated, "At first it was very strange and everyone sorta said, 'That's really quite a story!' But in a sense, I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny." In addition to Aguilera's statement, comparisons continued into 2010, when Aguilera released the music video of her single "Not Myself Tonight". Critics noted similarities between the song and its accompanying music video with Lady Gaga's video for "Bad Romance". There have also been similar comparisons made between Lady Gaga's style and that of fashion icon Dale Bozzio from the band Missing Persons. Some have considered their respective images to be strikingly parallel although fans of Missing Persons note that Bozzio had pioneered the look more than thirty years earlier. Nonetheless, Lady Gaga was named one of Vogue.com UK's Best Dressed people of 2010 while her stylist, Dazed & Confused creative director Nicola Formichetti, won the Fashion Creator of the Year Award at the British Fashion Awards.

Part of the reasoning for Lady Gaga's Best Dressed achievement was her attire worn to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards: a dress supplemented by boots, a purse and a hat – each fabricated from the flesh of a dead animal. The dress, named Time magazine's Fashion Statement of 2010 and more widely known as the "meat dress", received divided opinions – evoking the attention of worldwide media but invoking the fury of animal rights organization PETA. Lady Gaga denied any intention of causing disrespect to any person or organization and wished for the dress to be interpreted as a statement of human rights with focus upon those in the LGBT community. In addition to this unconventionality, in a question posed about the necessary procedure to attach the prosthetics to give the appearance of recent horn-like ridges on her cheekbones, temples, and shoulders, Lady Gaga responded, "They're not prosthetics, they're my bones." She also clarified that they were not the result of plastic surgery, believing such surgery to only be the modern byproduct of fame-induced insecurity to which she does not subscribe. The interviewer's further probing brought Lady Gaga to the conclusion that they are an artistic representation of her inner inspirational light and part of the "performance piece" that is her musical persona: an inevitability of her becoming who she now is. When Lady Gaga briefly met with US president Barack Obama at a Human Rights Campaign fundraiser, he described the interaction as "intimidating" as she was dressed in 16-inch heels making her undoubtedly the tallest woman in the room.

Lady Gaga often refers to her fans as "Little Monsters" and in dedication, has had that inscription tattooed on "the arm that holds my mic." Her treatment of her "Little Monsters" has inspired criticism, due to the highly commercial nature of her music and image. To some, this dichotomy contravenes the concept of outsider culture. Camille Paglia in her 2010 cover story "Lady Gaga and the death of sex" in The Sunday Times asserts that Lady Gaga "is more an identity thief than an erotic taboo breaker, a mainstream manufactured product who claims to be singing for the freaks, the rebellious and the dispossessed when she is none of those." Writing for The Guardian, Kitty Empire opined that the dichotomy "...allows the viewer to have a 'transgressive' experience without being required to think. At [her performance's] core, though, is the idea that Gaga is at one with the freaks and outcasts. The Monster Ball is where we can all be free. This is arrant nonsense, as the scads of people buying Gaga's cunningly commercial music are not limited to the niche worlds of drag queens and hip night creatures from which she draws her inspiration. But Gaga seems sincere."

Philanthropy

Besides her career in music, Lady Gaga has also contributed to various charities and humanitarian works. In 2011, she launched her own non-profit organization, the Born This Way Foundation, which focuses on youth empowerment and issues like self-confidence, well-being, anti-bullying, mentoring, and career development. "My mother and I have initiated a passion project. We call it the Born This Way Foundation," Gaga said in a statement about the foundation, which takes its name from the eponymous 2011 single and album. "Together we hope to establish a standard of Bravery and Kindness, as well as a community worldwide that protects and nurtures others in the face of bullying and abandonment." The foundation will work with a number of partners, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The California Endowment and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

For natural disasters, Gaga has also helped various relief efforts. Although declining an invitation to appear on the single "We Are the World 25" to benefit victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she donated the proceeds of her January 24, 2010 concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall to the country's reconstruction relief fund. All profits from her official online store on that day were also donated. Lady Gaga announced that an estimated total of $500,000 was collected for the fund. Hours after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on March 11, 2011, Gaga tweeted a message and a link to Japan Prayer Bracelets. All revenue from a bracelet she designed in conjunction with the company was donated to relief efforts. As of March 29, 2011, the bracelets raised $1.5 million. However, attorney Alyson Oliver filed a lawsuit against Lady Gaga in Detroit in June 2011, noting that the bracelet was subject to a sales tax and an extra $3.99 shipping charge was added to the price. She also believed that not all proceeds from the bracelets would go to the relief efforts, demanding a public accounting of the campaign and refunds for people who had bought the bracelet. Lady Gaga's spokesperson called the lawsuit "meritless" and "misleading". On June 25, 2011 Lady Gaga performed at MTV Japan's charity show in Makuhari Messe, which benefited the Japanese Red Cross.

Lady Gaga also contributes in the fight against HIV and AIDS with the focus upon educating young women about the risks of the disease. In collaboration with Cyndi Lauper, Lady Gaga joined forces with MAC Cosmetics to launch a line of lipstick under their supplementary cosmetic line, Viva Glam. Titled Viva Glam Gaga and Viva Glam Cyndi for each contributor respectively, all net proceeds of the lipstick line were donated to the cosmetic company's campaign to prevent HIV and AIDS worldwide. In a press release, Lady Gaga declared, "I don't want Viva Glam to be just a lipstick you buy to help a cause. I want it to be a reminder when you go out at night to put a condom in your purse right next to your lipstick." The sales of Gaga-endorsed Viva Glam lipstick and lipgloss have raised more than $202 million to fight HIV and AIDS.

With the performance of the bilingual song "Americano" from her second studio album Born This Way (2011), Lady Gaga jumped into the debate surrounding SB 1070, Arizona's immigration law. She premiered the tune for the first time on the Guadalajara, Mexico stop of her Monster Ball tour telling the local press that she could not "stand by many of the unjust immigration laws" in the United States.

LGBT advocacy

Lady Gaga attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered to be a gay icon. Early in her career she had difficulty getting radio airplay, and stated, "The turning point for me was the gay community. I've got so many gay fans and they're so loyal to me and they really lifted me up. They'll always stand by me and I'll always stand by them. It's not an easy thing to create a fanbase." She thanked FlyLife, a Manhattan-based LGBT marketing company with whom her label Interscope works, in the liner notes of The Fame, saying, "I love you so much. You were the first heartbeat in this project, and your support and brilliance means the world to me. I will always fight for the gay community hand in hand with this incredible team." One of her first televised performances was in May 2008 at the NewNowNext Awards, an awards show aired by the LGBT television network Logo, where she sang her song "Just Dance". In June of the same year, she performed the song again at the San Francisco Pride event.

After The Fame was released, she revealed that the song "Poker Face" was about her bisexuality. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she spoke about how her boyfriends tended to react to her bisexuality, saying "The fact that I'm into women, they're all intimidated by it. It makes them uncomfortable. They're like, 'I don't need to have a threesome. I'm happy with just you'." When she appeared as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in May 2009, she praised DeGeneres for being "an inspiration for women and for the gay community". She proclaimed that the October 11, 2009 National Equality March rally on the National Mall was "the single most important event of her career." As she exited, she left with an exultant "Bless God and bless the gays," similar to her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech for Best New Artist a month earlier. At the Human Rights Campaign Dinner, held the same weekend as the rally, she performed a cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" declaring that "I'm not going to [play] one of my songs tonight because tonight is not about me, it's about you." She changed the original lyrics of the song to reflect the death of Matthew Shepard, a college student murdered because of his sexuality.

Lady Gaga attended the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards accompanied by four service members of the United States Armed Forces (Mike Almy, David Hall, Katie Miller and Stacy Vasquez), all of whom, under the United States military's "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy, had been prohibited from serving openly because of their sexuality. In addition, Lady Gaga wore a dress fabricated from the flesh of a dead animal to the awards ceremony. Lady Gaga wished that the dress, more widely known as the "meat dress", was interpreted as a statement of human rights with focus upon those in the LGBT community adding that "If we don't stand up for what we believe in and if we don't fight for our rights, pretty soon we're going to have as much rights as the meat on our own bones." She later released three YouTube videos urging her fans to contact their Senators in an effort to overturn the policy. In late September 2010 she spoke at the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network's "4the14K" Rally in Deering Oaks Park in Portland, Maine. The name of the rally signified the number – an estimated 14,000 – of service members discharged under the DADT policy at the time. During her remarks, she urged members of the U.S. Senate (and in particular, moderate Republican Senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) to vote in favor of legislation that would repeal the DADT policy. Following this event, editors of The Advocate commented that she had become "the real fierce advocate" for gays and lesbians, one that Barack Obama had promised to be.

Lady Gaga appeared at Europride, a pan-European international event dedicated to LGBT pride, held in Rome in June 2011. In a nearly twenty-minute speech, she criticized the intolerant state of gay rights in many European countries and described homosexuals as "revolutionaries of love" before performing acoustic renderings of "Born This Way" and "The Edge of Glory" in front of thousands at the Circus Maximus. She stated that "Today and every day we fight for freedom. We fight for justice. We beckon for compassion, understanding and above all we want full equality now". Lady Gaga revealed that she is often questioned why she dedicates herself to "gayspeak" and "how gay" she is, to which, she told the audience: "Why is this question, why is this issue so important? My answer is: I am a child of diversity, I am one with my generation, I feel a moral obligation as a woman, or a man, to exercise my revolutionary potential and make the world a better place." She then joked: "On a gay scale from 1 to 10, I'm a Judy Garland fucking 42."

Discography

The Fame (2008)

The Fame Monster (2009)

Born This Way (2011)

Filmography

Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden (2011)

A Very Gaga Thanksgiving (2011)

Concert tours

;Headlining

The Fame Ball Tour (2009)

The Monster Ball Tour (2009–11)

;Supporting

New Kids on the Block: Live (2008)

Take That Presents: The Circus Live (2009)

Doll Domination Tour (2009)

;Co-headlining

Fame Kills: Starring Kanye West and Lady Gaga (cancelled)

See also

List of awards and nominations received by Lady Gaga

Honorific nicknames in popular music

List of best-selling music artists

References

Further reading

Monster Anthems (2011) by Robert Christgau

External links

Slide show Vanity Fair

Category:1986 births Category:American contraltos Category:American dance musicians Category:American electronic musicians Category:American female pop singers Category:American musicians of Italian descent Category:American performance artists Category:American pop singer-songwriters Category:American Roman Catholics Category:Androgyny Category:Bisexual musicians Category:Brit Award winners Category:English-language singers Category:Feminist musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Interscope Records artists Category:Keytarists Category:LGBT Christians Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:LGBT rights activists Category:Living people Category:People from Manhattan Category:Pseudonymous musicians Category:Singers from New York City Category:Sony/ATV Music Publishing artists Category:Synthpop musicians Category:Tisch School of the Arts alumni Category:Wonky Pop acts

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