Sour Grapes or Legit Gripe?

There's supposedly a heterosexual male out there (hmmm, maybe he's bi?) who wants to claim the Lady Gaga character as his own. By that I mean he's claiming he helped create the character, even coming up with the name.

Now, I happen to think that the woman playing Lady Gaga can put on a show. Sometimes I dig heavily theatrical musical performers, going back to Alice Cooper, who is still doing a great job. It isn't always about the music – it is about the whole image, the whole experience. As for the music – I generally don't like most of today’s Top 40/pop.

What I can't stand about the character is the name. Lady Gaga. Yuck. And yet this guy is claiming to have come up with it. Fine. Uhm, hey, you over there. I'm going to name you Lord KooKoo. Now if you make it big, you owe me. Well, it is a little more than that, as Christie D'Zurilla reported at the Los Angeles Times website.

Rob Fusari, a songwriter and music producer who co-wrote some of Lady Gaga's first records -- and was her boyfriend before breaking up with her in 2007 -- is suing the pop star for more than $30 million, saying she squeezed him out of her career once success hit.

Says the lawsuit: "All business is personal. When those personal relationships evolve into romantic entanglements, any corresponding business relationship usually follows the same trajectory so that when one crashes, they all burn. That is what happened here."

Fusari's suit says he came up with the "Lady Gaga" name and helped her get her first record deal...

You know, when you mix dating and business, this kind of thing can happen. This is one good reason why...

1. Someone working a job they want to keep should never date coworkers.
2. Someone with high career goals should reach them or be well on the way to reaching them before locking in to a relationship.
3. Especially with creative and entrepreneurial endeavors, there should be a clear distinction made between a dating relationship and working one, and written agreements about any work involving your boyfriend or girlfriend.
4. Pre-nups that protect intellectual property in so far as a court will honor the pre-nup.

Fusari, who co-wrote songs including "Paparazzi" and "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich," says he had a contract for 20% of royalties, 15% of merchandising revenue and more, the Washington Post reports. The suit says a friend steered the singer to his New Jersey studio in March 2006 when she was still going by Stefani Germanotta.

He could end up getting a lot of money. Whether or not he's telling the truth, a settlement could be made for the sake of avoiding risk.

To become a pop music superstar these days, especially as a woman, it seems to me that you have to be very young and either 1) make it far on American Idol; 2) be physically attractive in the Hollywood sense (and, usually, show it off), or; 3) be a character who hides behind costumes, wigs, theater makeup, etc. From what I can tell, the woman playing Lady Gaga doesn't quite have the face for option 2. That is not to say she's unattractive – just that she doesn't have a model's face. There are plenty of women I find very attractive who don't have a model's face. So option 3 has served her well... a character name, wild costumes, crazy choreography and antics, masks... the whole works.