Why Lady Gaga Won’t Perform ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Song at the Oscars

Lady Gaga won’t sing at one of the year’s biggest award shows. According to Oscarcast director Glenn Weiss, Lady Gaga will not perform her Best Song nominee “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick at Sunday’s 95th annual Academy Awards. She plans to attend the ceremony as a nominee but won’t be able to prepare a musical performance since she is filming Joaquin Phoenix’s Warner Bros. DC sequel Joker: Folie à Deux, Deadline reported. It is expected that the other four tunes up for the Best Original Song Oscar – “Applause” (from Tell It Like a Woman), “Lift Me Up” (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), “Naatu Naatu” (RRR), and “This Is a Life” (Everything Everywhere All at Once) – will be performed at the awards ceremony. The Oscarcast producer Ricky Kirshner said in an interview this week with Deadline’s Awards Columnist Pete Hammond about confirmation that Lady Gaga will perform on the show, “We’ve announced some of the performances, and there are still more announcements to come.

 So I will say that the ones we’ve announced, very creatively, have taken to make their song very performance-based and very visual. Obviously, as you can imagine, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Very visual. David Byrne [who co-wrote and performed that film’s song “This Is a Life”] had a lot to say about what it’ll look like, so that’ll be cool. So we’re excited about all the performances that we have.” Lady Gaga has performed at the Oscars twice before, for the Diane Warren collaboration “Til It Happens to You” from the doc The Hunting Ground in 2016 and for “Shallow” from A Star Is Born, which won the Oscar in 2019. She also was featured in a 2015 Oscars tribute to The Sound of Music and appeared last year, aiding Liza Minelli in presenting the Best Picture prize to CODA. However, last year, she lost out on a spot in the Best Actress field for her performance as Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci. Gaga chose to recognize the one Oscar nomination her movie did receive, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, on Instagram to share a photo with hairstylist Frederic Aspiras, who has been working with the “Born This Way” singer for 15 years. 

“Frederic was magical, precise, and dedicated months leading up to shoot and during filming,” Gaga wrote. “He prepared dozens of wigs for months and months and did at least a year of preparation. He’s a living genius and Freddie, we are all so grateful to just even be near your talent, creativity, and generosity of spirit. You continue to show your artistic DNA, your plan, your vision, and your deep connection to your family that drives you to excellence at all times. I love you, I’m rooting for you.”

Gaga then shared a message for the rest of that year’s nominees. “And to all the nominees this year, congratulations on all your hard work, dedication, your nomination, and YOUR magic-you all deserve major recognition for what was a truly beautiful landscape of performances and accomplishments this past year,” she wrote. “Your dedication during Covid, your huge hearts, and your ability to tell amazing stories is a gift to the whole world during what is for many a very hard time. Congratulations my friends. Bravo!”