One of the biggest songs of 2018 featured that guy from The Hangover movies and the entertainer better known as Mother Monster. By now, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve belted out Lady Gaga’s iconic lead-up to the chorus of “Shallow,” the infectious duet from Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star Is Born.
The song has enjoyed one hell of a ride during awards season, picking up a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, two Grammys (Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Song Written for Visual Media), and an Oscar for Best Original Song. (Honestly, it’s fared better than the movie and even Bradley himself, who was surprisingly left out of the Best Directors nominees list by the Academy. Sorry, Bradley.)
“Shallow” also effortlessly made it big in the meme world, spawning everything from a Muppets parody to, well, this:
Basically, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, and I’ll be weeping for months now that Gaga and Bradley’s performance of the song at the Oscars is a thing of the past. In the meantime, here’s a breakdown of the lyrics because it will be a while before we’re blessed with such beautiful music again.
Right away, the song points out the obvious: Ally needs to share her gift with the world.
And Jackson is the first person to show her that she’s got a real shot at a music career. “Tell me somethin’, girl / Are you happy in this modern world?” could be a dig at her dead-end job as a waitress (and by extension, her meaningless routine of picking up after her father and his driver friends). He continues, “Or do you need more? / Is there somethin’ else you’re searchin’ for?” referencing a life she could have, one that could get as big as his.
There’s some foreshadowing in his words.
When he sings, “I’m fallin’ / In all the good times / I find myself longing for change / And in the bad times, I fear myself,” one can’t help but think of the first time the film shows the singer with a bottle of alcohol in the backseat of his car after a show. He’s falling into darkness, one that will eventually consume him. And as the folks at Genius point out, he’s fallen in love with the girl who’s about to join him onstage.
Ally can easily see through Jackson and his rock-star life.
The verse “Tell me something, boy / Aren’t you tired tryin’ to fill that void? / Or do you need more? / Ain’t it hard keepin’ it so hard-core?” was written in the parking lot, not long after Ally’s bar brawl. It doesn’t take long for Ally to see the real Jackson: someone who’s desperately trying to numb whatever inner demons he’s fighting all while maintaining his music career, one alcohol-induced show at a time.
The chorus, written by Ally “the other day,” right before she meets Jackson, reveals she’s only just getting comfortable with the idea of going for it.
As she belts in the parking lot, frozen peas and all, “I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in / I’ll never meet the ground / Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us / We’re far from the shallow now.” Their shared space, whether that’s a stage, a recording studio, or an empty parking lot in the middle of the night, is where they are the safest, far away from those critical of Ally’s looks and far away from Jackson’s addiction to alcohol.
“Shallow” wasn’t supposed to be a duet.
As both Bradley and “Shallow” cowriter Mark Ronson have said, the emotional ballad was originally submitted as a solo by Gaga and company. It didn’t take long for Bradley the director to realize a duet was “the best way to utilize it in the movie” and have the stage performance be the first time Jackson hears Ally sing a song she’s written on the spot.
Another solo Ally performance would’ve been great and all (shout out to “Hair Body Face”), but it’s hard to imagine A Star Is Born without what Bradley calls the “anchor for the whole movie.”
It’s a love song at heart, but it’s also about communication.
In an interview with Variety in November 2018, Gaga said, “To me, that conversation is what makes the song successful and beautiful and why people cry when they hear it. It’s because that man and woman connect, and they are listening to each other.”
And it’s this listening that gives “Shallow” a deeper meaning in wake of the #MeToo movement.
“We are living in a time where there’s so much conversation about women’s voices being heard,” Gaga told Variety in the same interview. “Men listening to those voices. And also, men not listening to those voices. Women being silenced in very public ways, like Dr. [Christine Blasey] Ford with Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh. Judge Kavanaugh being appointed is basically like telling every single woman in the country that’s been assaulted, ‘We don’t care. Or we don’t believe you.’”
She echoed these sentiments in an Actors on Actors segment with Lin-Manuel Miranda one month later:
On a related note, “Shallow” is also about our relationship with cellphones.
This, according to Gaga after her big Oscars night, where she won Best Original Song and delivered the steamiest performance of “Shallow” to date. Backstage, she told reporters, “I really believe in my heart that the unfortunate truth is that our cell phones are becoming reality. It’s become reality for the world. And in this song we provide not just a conversation, but also a very poignant statement: I wish not to be in the shallow, but I am. I wish to dive off the deep end, but watch me do it.”
She continued, “I think this is something that speaks to many people, and during, I think, a very shallow time, it’s a chance for us to grab hands and dive into the water together and swim into the deepest depths of the water that we can.”
