Bradley Cooper Doesn’t Actually Hate “Why Did You Do That?” From A Star Is Born
A Star Is Born is a very serious film, and Bradley Cooper handled his job as a writer, director, and actor with the utmost importance—something he has taken every opportunity to remind the world of in his subsequent interviews. Despite the seriousness of the film, though, there was one moment that catered to even a 5-year-old’s sense of humor: the butt song, aka the musical track “Why Did You Do That?” which Lady Gaga’s character, Ally, sings on Saturday Night Live to cement her transition into a pop star.
In the film, Cooper’s character, Jackson Maine, hates it. Upon hearing it, he walks away in search of a bottle of alcohol, and later he drunkenly and aggressively shames Ally for singing a song with lines like “Why do you look so good in those jeans?/Why’d you come around me with an ass like that?” and “Boy, could you please stop being so fine?/When I stare at you I wish I were blind.” Until now, though, Cooper and Gaga have not weighed in on that divisive moment.
As it turns out, they are just as divided on it as the rest of the audience. In a new interview with Variety, Gaga shaded the moment in a subtle way, saying, “When we see her on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and she’s singing a song about why do you look so good in those jeans, it’s almost the antithesis of where we started.” She didn’t call out the song for being a joke or empathize with Maine, who thought Ally was wasting her talent on it. Nor did she acknowledge that, in music, there’s a certain machinery that’s necessary to submit to if you want to ascend to pop-star status. Though she did say, “I feel Ally inside of me. I wonder how long she’ll stay. Or if she’ll be in there forever.”
Cooper, on the other hand, actually defended the song that may be the biggest throwaway on the soundtrack. “That is relatively shallow,” he said in response to Gaga. “I don’t necessarily view her music as superficial. I think she’s performing with all her heart.” That much is certainly true. Too bad it’s “Shallow” that Cooper and Gaga decided to perform at the Oscars and not the butt song.
