Starstruck
by Lady Gaga (featuring Flo Rida)

Album: The Fame (2008)
Charted: 107
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • One of the earliest Lady Gaga songs, "Starstruck" is part of her debut album, The Fame, released in 2008. It's a club banger where Gaga is starstruck by the DJ, using his tools of the trade for innuendo:

    Put your hands on my waist, pull the fader
    Run it back with original flavor
  • The vocal is drenched in Auto-Tune, which was all the rage in 2008 but something Gaga avoided because she wanted fans to know she wasn't lip-synching or hiding behind pitch correction software. She performed the song at many of her shows in 2008, including a stretch where she opened for New Kids On The Block, but hasn't brought it back since that year.
  • Flo Rida gets a feature on "Starstruck" with a rapid-fire verse where he manages to rhyme "stuck" with "Starbucks." Flo had a huge hit in 2007 with "Low" and collaborated with another little known but big-voiced singer when Kesha belted out the hook for his 2009 hit "Right Round." Kesha broke out later that year with her song "TiK ToK," which rode techno dance wave Gaga set off with The Fame.
  • "Starstruck" wasn't released as a single but did crack the Hot 100, going to #107 in November 2008 before dropping off the next week. This was during the rise of Gaga's first single, "Just Dance," which rose to #1 in January 2009.
  • Got your Dre headphones with the left side on

    This line is not-so-subtle product placement for the Beats By Dre headphones, which were introduced soon before the song was released. Dr. Dre's partner in the venture was Jimmy Iovine, Lady Gaga's boss at Interscope Records.
  • The producers on "Starstruck" are Space Cowboy (Nicolas Jean-Pierre Patrick Dresti), and Cherry Cherry Boom Boom (Martin Kierszenbaum). They both get shout-outs in the intro. They're both writers on the song along with Gaga and Flo Rida. Gaga's main producer on The Fame album was RedOne.

    Space Cowboy returned to work on two songs from Gaga's next album, The Fame Monster: "Monster" and "So Happy I Could Die." Cherry Cherry Boom Boom founded Cherrytree Records.
  • The song plays in the 2009 "Bad Dreams" episode of Fringe in a scene where Olivia Dunham visits a strip club while inside Nick Lane's mind.

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