Almost nothing was right in the musical section of the gala. It is true that the bulk of the songs this year nominated for best song were not great and that the melodies suffered from a certain lack of inspiration, but it is that the way in which their artists defended them on the stage of the Dolby theater sinned in tibia.
And that the thing did not start badly. Sofia Carson launched into singing ‘Applause,’ accompanied by the song’s composer Diane Warren, for the movie ‘Tell it Like a Woman.’ Aware that tonight the composer was not going to take the statuette either -it is the fourteenth time that she has gone empty, despite the fact that on November 19 she was recognized with an honorary Oscar-, Carson gave herself body and soul with a sober but resounding performance.
Then came disaster. David Byrne and Stephanie Hsu performed ‘This is a Life’, a song featured in the multi-oscar winner -you can already say- ‘All at once everywhere’. The staging was fun and a little daring, with Byrne’s fingers extended with sausages, like in the film of martial arts, multiverses and madness. But between the fact that the one from the Talking Heads was hardly heard, that Stephanie Hsu was beautifully out of tune and that the song is a bit scary, well, one just wanted to be taken away to another reality.
The great performance of the night and the well-deserved Oscar for best song went to ‘Naatu Naatu’ by Kala Bhairava, MM Keeravani & Rahul Sipligunj, for the ‘RRR’ soundtrack. The performance, with a spectacular and powerful corps de ballet, turned the Dolby theater into a Bollywood movie set. It wasn’t a surprise because she had already triumphed at the Golden Globes, but it did show that going off the ballad sometimes has its rewards.
The most naked Lady Gaga
The evening still had a very special moment reserved. It had been rumored that, despite being nominated, Lady Gaga was not going to attend the ceremony. That is why the surprise was great when she was seen on the champagne-colored carpet and, towards the middle of the gala, she appeared on the tables. The artist herself presented her song, ‘Hold my Hand’, composed together with BloodPop, for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.
She explained the reasons that led her to write the song in front of the entire audience. “We all need love and sometimes we need a hero, but that hero is within us,” she recounted. The very close-ups of the realization were discovering a different Lady Gaga from the one she had allowed herself to be photographed by the cameras minutes before. She sitting on a stool, with her face freshly washed, with barely a trace of makeup and in a T-shirt.
It was his way of surprising the public and the spectators, with a more intimate performance -piano, bass, drums and guitar- that brought shine to a rather mediocre song. His interpretation put the theater on its feet, but not so much because of the song but because just when it finished, ‘In memory of Tony Scott’ could be read on the huge screen, over an image of the filmmaker during the filming of ‘Top Gun’.
For her part, Rihanna, extremely pregnant, opted for a much more complex performance, full of string instruments and chorus girls to interpret ‘Lift Me Up’, the piece with which ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ pays homage to Chadwick Boseman, the protagonist of the first installment, who died in August 2020 as a result of colon cancer.
The night had one more performance. She was introduced by John Travolta, her face wet with tears and her voice cracking, perhaps because her heart and head were with Olivia Newton-John and Kirstie Alley. Both had been her film partners in ‘Grease’ or ‘Look who’s talking’, both passed away last year. Lenny Kravitz performed a heartfelt ‘Calling All Angels’. Just a bass, a piano, a rhythmic base and his voice were enough to say goodbye and pay tribute to those who left last year.
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