Lady Gaga’s “We Didn’t Say That” Meme is the New “Suddenly I Can’t Read”
On Sunday, Lady Gaga attended the 2019 Golden Globes—where she took home the Best Original Song statuette for A Star Is Born‘s “Shallow”—in a strapless lavender gown by Valentino that featured a dramatically long train and oversized puffy sleeves positioned near her elbows. She wore her icy blue hair pulled back in a sleek bun, and accessorized with $5 million worth of gorgeous diamond jewelry from Tiffany & Co.
Almost immediately after Gaga stepped onto the red carpet, classic film buffs noticed a striking similarity between her gown and one that Judy Garland wore in her own 1954 adaptation of A Star Is Born. That dress, by Oscar-winning costume designer Jean Louis, was also a strapless purple number, though Garland’s featured a sweetheart neckline and came in a dusty eggplant shade. She, too, pulled her hair back in a bun during that cinematic moment, and while Garland didn’t have a pair of arm warmer-like detached sleeves like Gaga’s, she did cover up her bare arms with black elbow-length gloves and a dark shawl.
Though the resemblance is undeniably uncanny, when a red carpet reporter pointed it out to Gaga, the pop star denied that she’d purposely paid homage to her predecessor, and did so in such an amusingly flustered fashion that it has, predictably, sparked a multitude of memes. In the clip, Gaga stares, shocked, at an image of Garland’s ballgown and stammers, “You know what? I—I don’t…N—We didn’t say that, uh, no, but it—it looks an awful lot like that, doesn’t it?” The video is hilarious enough on its own, but add a caption like “Me after accidentally sending a text ABOUT someone TO that person and getting confronted,” and you’ve got the perfect 2019 update to that unforgettable GIF of meme queen Mariah Carey claiming that, “I can’t read suddenly. I don’t know,” while shaking out her hair and putting on a pair of oversized sunglasses, circa sometime in the early 2000s.
For the record, Gaga’s initially flustered reaction to the comparison seems to be due to genuine shock, and quickly turned to excitement. After that much-memed part of the interaction, she went on to offer an exaggerated wink and say that, although her dress was a custom Valentino Couture creation made just for her, she’d happily go along with the homage theory. “Oh my gosh, that’s special,” she said, unable to look away from the photo. “Thank you so much for showing me that. That made my night! Oh, wow, I love Judy Garland.”