Bradley Cooper Wanted Lady Gaga’s ‘Joanne’ for ‘A Star Is Born,’ but Mark Ronson Turned Him Down
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Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born” could have sang a very different tune.
Music producer Mark Ronson revealed to NME that director-actor Cooper requested that Lady Gaga’s song “Joanne” be part of the 2018 “A Star Is Born” soundtrack; Ronson, however, turned Cooper down.
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“We were working on Gaga’s album ‘Joanne’ and Bradley Cooper stopped by the studio one afternoon. I like his films. He showed up looking like a movie star. So we hung out,” Ronson said. “He was really sweet, talking about this new script that they were both doing. I played him the song called ‘Joanne’ and he’s like, ‘That’s great, can I have it?.'”
Ronson continued, “I know he’s a big star and everything, but I really liked that song. And I kind of needed it for Gaga’s record.”
Legendary producer Ronson, who has worked with powerhouse vocalists ranging from Gaga to Bruno Mars and Amy Winehouse, wrote his first film music for 2015’s “Mortdecai” starring Johnny Depp. Since then, Ronson has produced a slew of film tracks, including “Get Ghost” with Passion Pit and A$AP Ferg for the 2016 “Ghostbusters” remake and the recent “Barbie the Album” soundtrack for Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film “Barbie.”
“You know, I’ve been asked to do songs for movies before. And they just say, like, ‘Hey, we’re doing a “Ghostbusters” reboot! Just make a song!’ Like, sure, you can go make a song but your brain goes 1000 different ways,” Ronson said. “No offense to the ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot, but they ended up with, like, 11 interpolations of the original ‘Ghostbusters’ song on that movie…”
While Ronson did not mention how “Joanne” would fit into “ASIB,” the track could have been a song for Gaga’s character Ally to belt out as part of her budding pop star singing career. Instead, it became the title track on her 2016 country-inspired album. Cooper’s directorial debut with the Oscar-winning film, which is best known for the breakout song “Shallow,” led to Cooper being tapped by Steven Spielberg to helm the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro.”
Meanwhile, Gaga allegedly stayed in character for “ASIB” for years. Former “A Star Is Born” actress Barbra Streisand also weighed on the feature and publicly rescinded her approval of the remake. “I don’t care so much about success as I do originality,” Streisand, who led the 1976 film, said.
Cooper, who later portrayed Streisand’s hairdresser ex in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza,” had previously noted that Streisand “gave her blessing” on the reimagined “A Star Is Born.”
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