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The former Island Def Jam exec -- he signed megastars like Mariah Carey, P!nk, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Kanye West, Avril Lavigne, Usher, OutKast and more -- welcomed the pop music hopeful to his record label while she was still an unknown, only to drop her from his roster a few months later.
Gaga, of course, went on to sign with Interscope and become one of the biggest pop stars in the world, and Reid is now kicking himself over his poor judgment. He told Access Hollywood, "This artist came to my office ... she played piano, she had on white go-go boots -- like, all the way up to here, thigh-high boots -- she sat down at that piano, she played and she sang. When she was done, I said, 'You are an amazing artist, a true star, and you will change music,' and I signed her. Her name was Lady Gaga."
"Then, a few months later, I got her demos, and it was a work in progress, and I was having a bad day. I'm telling you, I was having a bad day. And I said, 'You know what? I really don't like it. Let her have her freedom, let her go find her career.' It was the worst thing I've ever done."
Reid wasn't in the dog house for long, however, revealing that a month after his big blunder he "redeemed" himself by signing a teenage YouTube sensation named Justin Bieber. "I felt bad, but I swear to you, like a month later Justin Bieber came and redeemed me, so, you know, I survived it all. But I'm a little bit jealous, because the Twitter following, for example, the biggest ones are Bieber and Lady Gaga, so I would have felt like the king of the world! Instead I felt like half the king."
Watch Lady Gaga's 'You and I' Video
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