Lady Gaga sets Billboard female record, went bankrupt to pay for crazy costumes

Last month, we covered the story that Forbes placed Lady Gaga at the #1 position (ousting Oprah Winfrey) on the Celebrity 100 list, and it’s seemingly been nonstop Gaga ever since then. Due to the release of her second full album, Born This Way, Gaga’s been seriously working her publicity machine through such obstacles as a sanctimonious Rolling Stone interview, a morning show appearance, and an SNL three way, not to mention many other instances of assault on the general media.

Gaga’s efforts have paid off, for Born This Way went platinum in less than a week, which makes her the fifth female artist to do so as quickly. (The other four artists: Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Norah Jones, and Taylor Swift. Sadly, no Madonna.) Even more amazing is that Gaga has now set the record for female record sales in the first week with an inexplicable 1,108,000 copies sold. Although I will admit to contributing one of those units that were sold, at least I only spent 99 cents during the Amazon one-day sale, which might very well be cheating to sell more albums that way, right? Still, Gaga made the sales and duly crashed Amazon’s servers in the process.

Strangely enough, this news comes with a renewed admission from Gaga herself that she had went bankrupt a few years ago while spending tons of cash on her notoriously bizarre costumes:

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Lady Gaga has admitted she was left bankrupt after spending millions on crazy outfits for her Monster’s Ball tour.

The 25-year0old singer said she was left £1.82million in debt after the production, which ran for 18 months and 200 shows.

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However, Gaga – famed for her unique fashion sense, including the now infamous meat dress she wore to last year’s MTV Video Music Awards – revealed she had no idea about the extent of her financial problems.

She said: “Other than that I put everything in the show, and I actually went bankrupt after the first extension of the Monster Ball. And it was funny because I didn’t know! And I remember I called everybody and said, ‘Why is everyone saying I have no money? This is ridiculous, I have five No. 1 singles’ — and they said, ‘Well, you’re $3m in debt.’ ”

It was the rejigging at the beginning of the tour, which eventually brought in £138million, that cost the most money.

But Gaga said the reason she didn’t know about the bankruptcy was because money isn’t that important to her.

In an interview with Stephen Fry in the Financial Times, Gaga said: “It’s honestly true that money means nothing to me. The only big things I’ve purchased are my dad’s heart valve and a Rolls-Royce for my parents, for their anniversary. And that was only because my dad had a Lady Gaga license plate on our old car and it was making me crazy because he was getting followed everywhere, so I bought him a new car.”

[From Daily Mail]

While it’s obviously admirable that Gaga lavishes money on her parents (particularly for the sake of her father’s health), I sincerely doubt that all of her non-tour spending has been otherwise frugal. After all, there was that diamond-studded whip she gave Beyonce for her birthday as well as her own diamond encrusted lobster headpiece that she wore just for show. However, it’s Gaga’s money, and her team made an amazing return on investment with the continuation of the Monster Ball tour. That, and she buys pizza for her fans while they wait in line to buy her tickets (who else does that?), so even as much as I’d like to dislike her, it’ll probably never happen. Still, some of her costumes are completely ridiculous, and I can’t believe that anyone would spend millions just to look like that.

Photos courtesy of Fame Pictures