Lady Gaga Gets Intimate For Her Performance at the Oscars 2023

Let no one say that Lady Gaga doesn’t know how to make an entrance. After not confirming she would perform her Oscar-nominated song “Hold My Hand” until just hours before the ceremony began, the Oscar winner took the stage dressed down in a black T-shirt, in a remarkably dramatic transformation from her red-carpet look.

The performance, too, was significantly stripped down, performed almost entirely in a close-up on Gaga, who sang a cappella at the beginning before being joined by a piano, and then after the first chorus a full band. She introduced the song with a brief tribute to heroes in her life. “I think we all need each other. We need a lot of love to walk through this life. And we all need a hero sometimes. There’s heroes all around us in unassuming places. But you might find that you can be your own hero even if you feel broken inside.”

Gaga has been performing “Hold My Hand” throughout her current Chromatica Ball Tour, so even though it was a last-minute performance decision, she had the song well rehearsed. 

She had a tough act to follow: herself. Gaga’s performance with Bradley Cooper of A Star Is Born’s “Shallow” was an instantly iconic Oscar moment, and was followed soon after by her first Oscar win. She’s been nominated one time previously, for “’Til It Happens to You” from the documentary The Hunting Ground, which she performed onstage with songwriter Diane Warren in another iconic Oscar moment. You may be noticing a trend. 

This year Gaga had serious competition in the spectacle department. Her fellow pop icon Rihanna, fresh off her Super Bowl halftime performance, was nominated alongside Tems, composer Ludwig Göransson, and director Ryan Coogler for the song “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The song “Naatu Naatu” from the Indian epic RRR featured hundreds of people in a dance-off onscreen, and was one of the more highly anticipated performances of the night. The best-original-song category was rounded out by “This Is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once, cowritten by David Byrne, Mitski, and Ryan Lott, and Gaga’s former collaborator Diane Warren with “Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman.