Shallow

“Shallow” is a folk pop track primarily written by American pop star Lady Gaga (real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) and British music producer, songwriter and DJ Mark Ronson. Written for the 2018 remake of the 1937 film “A Star Is Born”, where the plot of the film consists of an alcoholic country musician Jackson “Jack” Maine (played by Bradley Cooper) who falls in love with a younger singer (played by Gaga).

“It’s two people talking to each other about the need and the drive to dive into the deep end and stay away from the shallow area”, Gaga told Zane Lowe on Beats 1Radio, the day of the “Shallow” premiere. “…we made this song for Ally and Jack”. The track consists of both Gaga’s and Cooper’s vocals, asking one another questions such as “are you happy in this modern world, or do you need more?” and “aren’t you tired tryna fill that void?”. Mark Ronson spoke to Billboard about the track, telling them that “originally it was just an Ally, it was just for Gaga to sing, and I never realized it was a duet. I certainly never realized it was going to be part of the plot, the narrative in the parking lot, which is really such a beautiful scene. I think taking anything personal out of the film, like my involvement, you really get that first part of falling in love or having a crazy crush on someone in the moment. It does it really well without being cheesy.”

The music video for “Shallow” consists of clips from the film. Uploaded to Lady Gaga’s YouTube channel on 27th September 2018, the video has almost 400 million views and over 3 million likes as of March 2019.

On the 24th February 2019, the duo performed the track at the 2019 Oscars, where Cooper sung the track in his own voice, rather than his character’s in the film. In Gaga’s acceptance speech, she told the audience that “there is not a single person on the planet that could sing this song but you”, in regards to Cooper. The duo made performance history at the Oscar’s, receiving a standing ovation from almost every single celebrity and audience member in the venue. The pair also got extremely close at the end of the performance, where they were sat together at the piano leaning against each other very close to one another’s faces, looking at each other with adoring and loving expressions. This led to fans and users on Twitter to speculate about the duo and their relationship and whether it was purely platonic. One user on Twitter by the name of @kellyoxford tweeted: “I’m still sitting here thinking about how close Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s face were at the piano.” Both Cooper and Gaga have not yet commented on the rumours from the performance.

Release Date: 27th September 2018

Songwriter/s: Lady Gaga, Andrew Wyatt, Anthony Rossomando & Mark Ronson

Producer/s: Lady Gaga & Benjamin Rice

Label/s: Interscope Records

Music Video Release Date: 27th September 2018

Chart Rankings, Certifications & Awards: The song went to #1 in the charts of the following countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US. The song also received Gold certification in both Belgium and Denmark, Platinum in Austria, France, Italy, Spain the UK and the US. The track went double Platinum in Canada and New Zealand, and triple Platinum in Australia. The track won the “Best Original Song – Feature Film” at the 2018 Hollywood Music in Media Awards, as well as winning “Best Original Song” at the 23rd Satellite Awards in 2018, “Best Song” at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards as well as “Best Original Song” at the 76th Golden Globe Awards. The track received four nominations at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards for: “Record of the Year”, “Song of the Year”, “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance” and “Best Song Written for Visual Media”, winning the last two awards.