Lady Gaga wins her first Academy Award for Best Original Song at 2019 Oscars
There are over 9,000 people in the Academy, and most of them believed in Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s smash hit “Shallow.”
A Star Is Born‘s signature tune — co-written by Gaga, her Joanne collaborator Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, and Miike Snow’s Andrew Wyatt for the Cooper-directed romance’s soundtrack — won the Oscar for Best Original Song at Sunday night’s ceremony, capping a long awards season haul as one of the most-decorated soundtrack cuts in history.
Through tears, Gaga expressed love for her family before thanking Cooper for duetting with her on the song.
“Bradley, there’s not a single person on the planet that could’ve sang this song with me but you,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Thank you for believing in us.”
Gaga then credited her own tenacity and dedication to her craft for contributing to her first Academy Award victory.
“If you’re at home and you’re sitting on couch and watching this right now, all I have to say is that this is hard work. I’ve worked hard for a long time, but it’s not abut winning; what it’s about is not giving up,” she said. “If you have a dream, fight for it. If there’s a discipline or passion, it’s not about how many times you get rejected or fall down or beaten up; it’s about how many times you stand up and are brave and keep going!”
Earlier in the evening, Gaga and Cooper took to the Dolby Theatre stage to perform “Shallow” for the first time together on television, staring into each other’s eyes from across a piano before finishing the number in a soft embrace.
“Shallow” from A Star is Born took the Oscar over nominated original songs from Black Panther, Mary Poppins Returns, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and the documentary RBG. It is Lady Gaga’s first Academy Award win, and she is also nominated in the Best Actress category for her role as a budding pop star who falls for a fading country crooner in A Star Is Born. The song previously won Best Original Song honors at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards before winning two Grammys earlier this month.
After first appearing in the film’s debut trailer last summer, “Shallow” rose to the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming Gaga’s 15th top-10 hit in the United States. The single’s parent album also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 following its Oct. 5 release, making Gaga the only woman to have five No. 1 albums this decade.
“It’s an integral part of the entire story,” Cooper previously told EW of the impact the song’s first performance has on A Star Is Born‘s plot. “Even the lyrics and where the songs fall in the movie — all have to do with the story. It’s a major artery of the entire film.”
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