Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga: How an Unlikely Pair Soared Together – The New York Times

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Critic’s Notebook
The crooner and the pop star seemed like unlikely collaborators when they joined up in 2014. But the two masters of reinvention inspired and bolstered each other’s careers.
By Lindsay Zoladz
It’s still one of the most impressive flexes I’ve ever seen a musician pull off live — and at the age of 88, no less.
In 2015, during the third of four sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall, Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga were sharing a bill, promoting their chart-topping, cross-generational 2014 duets album, “Cheek to Cheek.” They had a light, snappy chemistry on the songs they sang together, but the best parts of the night were their solo sets, each inviting their respective fan bases — Bennett’s tasteful traditionalists and Gaga’s sartorially zany but spiritually sincere Little Monsters — into the other’s world.
For most of the concert, they’d been playing with a full band and orchestra, but for one number during his own set, Bennett summoned a single guitarist to join him in the snug radius of a spotlight. He told us the song was dedicated to his “best friend, Frank Sinatra,” and launched into a velvety rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon,” holding the microphone down at his side rather than bringing it to his lips. A few lines in, he set the mic down atop a piano and sang the rest without any amplification at all. The entire venue was suspended in a hush stillness, and Bennett’s voice was so strong and clear that you could hear every crystalline note, every enunciated lyric, even in the cheap seats.
It was spellbinding, and so quintessentially Tony Bennett: the unshowy elegance, the inevitable name-dropping and, above all, the ease with which he suddenly transformed from the rat-a-tat every-crooner into a phenomenally gifted belter who could project like an opera singer.
In August 2021, while battling Alzheimer’s disease, Bennett, who died on Friday at 96, made his final public appearance on that very same stage, again with Lady Gaga. He once again demonstrated strength and resilience, this time by simply performing at all. A poignant “60 Minutes” segment captured Bennett’s struggles in rehearsals but his ultimate triumph when he took the stage. In run-throughs, Gaga said, “He called me ‘sweetheart.’ But I wasn’t sure he knew who I was.” She witnessed a startling transformation, though, anytime the band struck the opening notes of another song and Bennett began to sing.
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