Notorious Celebrity Photoshoots: Lady Gaga for Rolling Stone 2009 & 2010
Welcome back to another installment of Notorious Celebrity Photoshoots. Previously, we looked at Rihanna for Vogue and Brad and Angelina for W.
Today, we will revisit Lady Gaga's two Rolling Stone covers that helped cement her as a pop icon.
Lady Gaga: New York Doll
Rolling Stone, June 2009
Photographed by David LaChapelle
It's not hard to see why this was a smart choice for her first Rolling Stone cover. Beloved celebrity photographer David LaChapelle created a hot-pink wonderland filled with bubbles cascading over a lushly decorated interior. Gaga wore some signature weird makeup and posed with some sexy yet weirdly posed models. It was a great move PR-wise to establish herself as a glossy, sexy, yet bizarre pop idol.
The Broken Heart and Violent Fantasies of Lady Gaga
Rolling Stone, July 2010
Photographed by Terry Richardson
Gaga had released The Fame/The Fame Monster and was preparing to release her much-anticipated second album, Born This Way. There was an incredible amount of pressure riding on her not to have a sophomore slump after the stratospheric success of TFM.
It was a very controversial cover, as Gaga chose to wear a bra made of two rifles. It's dubious whether this move would ever fly today, in the sensitive atmosphere of mass shootings. Some liberal fans of hers even criticized the move. Showing her butt on the cover was also controversial.
Surprise, surprise, it was photographed by Terry Richardson, why by then already had at least nine allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
But the controversy worked, as this was Rolling Stone's highest-selling issue of 2010.
Surprisingly, she has only appeared on RS one other time-- a kind of boring cover in 2011 shot by Ryan McGinley.
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