Lady Gaga Enthroned as Most Highly Paid Young Star

Lady Gaga recently was named to the top of Forbes list of highest paid entertainers under 30. The magazine estimates that the $80 million she earned from June 2012 to June 2013 would have been even more had she not had to sideline her "Born This Way Ball Tour" to undergo hip surgery. The tour grossed $168 million through January and could have gone to over $200 million had it continued, according to Forbes.

According to media reports, the pop star in February suffered a tear in the cartilage surrounding the right hip and severely inflamed joints, attributed to strenuous repetitive movement -- that is, she was performing and rehearsing too hard.

Making all that money in the current recording industry climate is not easy and requires pretty much constant touring, even for someone of such elevated visibility. Even someone who has a knack for turning even bad luck into good PR: Following her surgery, for instance, she appeared in public in a gold-plated wheel chair with a black leather seat and a removable leather canopy. Because she's Lady Gaga and she can. The press cameras ate it up.

But even shy the extra cash she could have hauled in had she completed the tour, Gaga's $80 mil was more than enough to make her the top breadwinner for celebrity income. It is a repeat performance for the young star, who was the most highly paid celebrity on Forbes 2011 list.

She was also ranked No. 2 on Forbes' list of the top 100 most powerful celebrities, outranking Stephen Spielberg, Beyonce and Madonna. Tops on the list for the fifth year in a row is non-musician Oprah Winfrey, $3 million shy of Gaga's income bracket. Gaga's No. 2 spot also means she is the most powerful musician on that list of celebrities.

As I noted last week, Lady Gaga has an ambitious new album and app in the works, calledARTPOP, that she intends as a multimedia, all-art extravaganza, collaborating with serious visual artists, fashion designers and software engineers as well as musicians and producers.

The ARTPOP drop is set for Nov. 11, with a single scheduled for release Aug. 19. Pre-orders of the album will be possible beginning Sept. 1.