ABC spent the past several weeks encouraging us to watch the Academy Awards so we could see Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper perform ‘Shallow.’ Without a host to promote, the commercials focused largely on the Best Song frontrunner, a top ten hit from one of the biggest movies of the year.
The performance lived up to the hype. It was, like the movie from which it came, both epic and intimate. It made the entire audience have feelings that perhaps they hadn’t known since last summer, when the trailer for A Star Is Born first dropped and launched roughly 8,385,075 “I just wanted to take another look at you” memes. For everyone who thought A Star Is Born had been ripped off this awards season by thunder stealers like Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book, which somehow won Best Picture, this moment was the highlight of the 2019 Academy Awards. (Well, that and Olivia Colman blowing a raspberry in the middle of her acceptance speech.)
After all that promotion, though, the Oscar producers snuck the ‘Shallow’ performance on us. No one introduced Cooper and Gaga. A piano, some mics, and a guitarist playing those signature opening chords just appeared all of a sudden, like the A Star Is Born version of Janet from The Good Place. Then Gaga and Cooper walked onstage from their front-row seats, casually while in formal wear, like they’d been called up to do fancy Oscars karaoke. Read more