The Lady Gaga Song That Bradley Cooper Was Banned From Using in “A Star Is Born”

Part of the huge success achieved by the most recent remake of A Star Is Born, released in 2018, it focused on the soundtrack. The film won one Oscar for Best Original Song per “Shallow”, main song of the work performed by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

But if it depended on the latter, who also signed the direction of the feature, another composition also signed by Gaga would be used. In an interview with NME, the producer Mark Ronson, who worked on the track, revealed that Cooper wanted to bring the song “Joanne” to the work.

fell to Ronson say “no” to the actor and filmmaker. The studio professional wanted to preserve the track for the album of the same name, released by Lady Gaga in 2016.

“We were working on the album of Gaga, Joanne, and Bradley Cooper stopped by the studio one afternoon. I like his movies. He showed up looking like a movie star. It was very sweet, he talked about this new script that the two of them were working on. I played him the song called ‘Joanne’ and he said, ‘that’s great, can I have it?’ I know he’s a big star and everything, but I really liked that song. And I kind of needed her for the record Gaga.”

“Shallow” and “Joanne”

It is difficult to say whether the decision to mark was the best, or if Bradley could attract even more success to A Star Is Born if “Joanne” was the theme song of the film. The fact is that, in addition to Oscar, “Shallow” it reached the top of the charts in more than 20 countries, in addition to reaching the top 20 of many others – including Brazil, on the União Brasileira de Compositores (UBC) chart. It is, by far, the song of Gaga most performed in Spotify, with 2 billion streams – the artist’s other standout tracks on the platform reach half of that, 1 billion.

On the other hand, the title track of the album Joanne it even came out as a single, but it was not among the main working songs on the album. On the other hand, it served to set the tone of the album, more country-oriented and today cited as one of the best moments of the career of Gaga.

Mark Ronson and the cinema

In addition to Lady GagaMark Ronson worked with other music giants such as Bruno Mars and Amy Winehouse. In 2015, he began to get involved with cinema by composing the soundtrack for the film Mortdecai, starring Johnny Depp. Other of their collaborations can be heard in the remake of The ghost hunters (2016) and in the live-action version of Barbie (2023).

In the latter feature, he even managed to bring together two rock stars to participate in a song: Slash, guitarist of Armas e Rosas, It is Wolfgang Van Halen, multi-instrumentalist Mammoth WVH and son of Eddie Van Halen. The two collaborated with “I’m Just Ken”, song performed by the actor Ryan Gosling as the Ken doll.

In an interview with Variety (via the Igor Miranda website), the producer specifically commented on the participation of Slash:

“slash is my hero. I was in seventh grade when the album Appetite for Destruction it went out. He is my all time hero. I had pictures of slash on the wall. So, when we were finishing the song, I thought, ‘it doesn’t hurt to ask’. I sent it to him and he said it was a good song and he would play it. I wasn’t really close with him before and he was so nice. He did very well. He plays the solo at the end and the rhythm parts.”