On Sunday, Lady Gaga will go head-to-head with Glenn Close, Melissa McCarthy, Yalitza Aparicio, and Olivia Colman at the Academy Awards, where she's nominated for Best Actress. While the odds seem slightly stacked against her, it's almost a given that she'll end the night with an Oscar for best original song -- "Shallow" cannot be stopped.
While Gaga's current incarnation as a celebrated movie star seems like an unshakable fact of life, it's an incredibly recent development and, more than anything, a reinvention. When Lady Gaga burst onto the scene with "Just Dance" in 2008, she rode a wave built of outlandish outfits, undeniable talent, and a commitment to conquering fame at all costs. Her star power seemed to peak with Born This Way, and her place as pop's weirdest princess was seemingly written in stone.
But her infamous hip injury during the Born This Way Ball tour, and the lukewarm critical response to her ambitious, avant garde album Artpop, all but plateud Mother Monster's meteoric rise. In the wake of "Artflop," how did this Italian girl from New York reinvent herself as an Oscar-nominated actress? Let's take a journey through herstory.
'Artpop' (2013)
Following the success of Born This Way, it seemed like Gaga could do no wrong. She hyped her next album Artpop endlessly, even getting the title as a tattoo before its release. But while the album was a commercial success, it debuted to mixed reviews from critics who seemed more interested in taking the famously bizarre pop star down a peg.
'Cheek to Cheek' (2014)
Before Artpop's release, Gaga had recorded a cover of "The Lady Is a Tramp" with Tony Bennett, and in 2014 the duo released a collection of jazzy standards that allowed the singer's voice to shine. Cheek to Cheek was even awarded a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
'Sound of Music' Oscars tribute (2015)
When Lady Gaga walked onstage to perform a tribute to Julie Andrews and the Sound of Music at the 87th Academy Awards, you could almost feel the audience's derision through the TV screen. But Gaga, looking elegant in a silver Azzadine Alaia and matching hair, brought the house down with a medley of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most iconic songs, arguably the kind of music her voice was made for. You could tell that by the end of the last soaring note, Gaga was aware of how she had captivated an audience prepared to write her off.
'American Horror Story: Hotel' (2016)
Before pivoting to music, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta said she had always wanted to be an actress. She finally got her chance (in this house, we do not speak of Machete Kills) in the fifth season of Ryan Murphy's horror anthology, playing the vampiric Countess. Hotel is one of the more slept on seasons of AHS but honestly, Gaga kills it (pun intended). But despite her compelling performance, it was still shocking when the newly minted actress won a Golden Globe for her portrayal. You can even see the smirks and half-hearted applause during her acceptance speech -- Leonardo Dicaprio is particularly shady. But there's no denying a star was born that night.
“Til it Happens to You” (2016)
When Lady Gaga wrote an emotional original song for Dianne Warren's 2015 documentary The Hunting Ground, she made herself extremely vulnerable, opening up about her own experience with sexual assault. The song was the clear favorite to win at the Academy Awards but was robbed when Sam Smith's Bond theme "Writing's on the Wall" won instead. Still, Gaga was now officially an Oscar nominee and the writing was, in fact, on the wall.
'Joanne' (2016)
For her first solo studio album since Artpop, Gaga reinvented herself once again as a country pop chanteuse, mining her family history to honor her dearly departed aunt (who she never actually met). Joanne was low on bops but endlessly accessible, turning pop music's biggest freak into something your mom would sing along during carpools.
Super Bowl LI Halftime Show (2017)
Opening her Super Bowl halftime show with "This Land Is Your Land" before descending into the arena on a wire was about as political as Gaga's performance got -- anyone expecting stunt queen antics from the woman who was once vomited on at SXSW was sadly disappointed. But the artist tore through her hits with ruthless efficiency before taking a moment to belt out "Million Reasons" at the piano, sending the song to the top of the charts and making herself a household name once again.
'Gaga: Five Foot Two' (2017)
Everyone focuses on the Madonna shade, but more than anything this documentary is about Gaga finally opening up about her chronic pain. It was another instance of humanizing an artist who had once been an untouchable, larger-than-life figure obsessed with achieving fame at all costs. Five Foot Two was, more than anything, about the cost of Gaga's fame.
'A Star Is Born' (2018)
And here we are. When it was first announced that Lady Gaga would star alongside Bradley Cooper in the latest reimagining of this classic Hollywood tale, saying that people were skeptical would be an understatement. But as I wrote in my review, Gaga captures Ally's' "journey to superstardom with an earnestness and innocence that's shocking for an icon whose career has been built around being unattainable." While her endlessly memed Oscar campaign may hurt her chances for taking home the Best Actress trophy, there's no denying that Gaga has reinvented herself as one of the biggest stars on the planet. Cherry cherry, and I cannot emphasize this enough, boom boom!
