Bradley Cooper is great, don't get me wrong, but I spent a decent part of last year completely furious at him. Look, Cooper is handsome, he's rich, he's dating a Russian supermodel in Irina Shayk, but I can't stand that he's super talented too.
He's already a great actor, and making his directorial debut in A Star Is Born, I slowly filled with rage as I realised he was a great director. The cherry on top? Hearing him burst into song in the film, where he plays a country singer, and realising that's actually his voice too.
I mean, come on.
Between himself and Donald Glover, there's barely any talent for the rest of us to scrounge over. The furore around A Star Is Born had started to die down, but it's picked up once again as the Oscar nominations rolled around, and Cooper was on hand to remind us just how stupid talented he is.
Of course, with all of Cooper's talent, Lady Gaga was the breakout star from 2018's rendition of A Star Is Born, and picked up a Best Actress nomination for the 91st Academy Awards for her troubles. But in her day job, she's just a lowly Grammy-winning musician, but at her latest show, she welcomed surprise appearance.
Performing at Las Vegas’ Park Theater on Saturday night, Lady Gaga is currently coming to the end of her Enigma tour - which kicked off back in early December - and whoever was at her show got to enjoy something quite special from an artist who's known for producing things out of the ordinary.
Toward the end of her show, Lady Gaga started to play the chords to Shallow - the song from A Star Is Born that's nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars, and then she thought to introduce the crowd to a friend of hers.
“So a really good friend of mine… I don’t know if you know him but his name is Bradley. He made that movie, umm, A Star Is Born. So I’m gonna be a little chance-y… Yo Bradley, you wanna come up and do this one?”
Turns out that yep: Bradley Cooper fancied reprising his role as tragic musician Jackson Maine, just one more time to rub in just how talented this guy really is. It proved to be a storming success, as you might imagine, as the pair's onscreen chemistry translated pretty handily to the stage.
Twitter, naturally, went wild for the performance, with many people waxing lyrical on the performance, and reiterating their desire for A Star Is Born to receive critical acclaim at the Oscars later on this year:
If you needed any more convincing, this isn't the last time you'll hear this song being performed live; Shallow will also be played at the Oscars, alongside the other Best Original Song Nomination from Black Panther, Kendrick Lamar and SZA's All The Stars from Black Panther.
But, based on this performance, Kendrick Lamar's got his work cut out to beat Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper to the award.
