Lady Gaga Appeared Makeup-Free During Her Oscars Performance

The biggest night in Hollywood: full of snubs and unexpected surprises, emotional acceptance speeches, and super-sweet family moments on the Champagne carpet, all brought to you by the Academy Awards. Leave it to the pop star up for Best Original Song, Lady Gaga, to take to the stage for an unexpected performance, where she sang her powerful ballad "Hold My Hand."

The Oscar winner, nominated again this year for her Top Gun: Maverick anthem, gave an emotional and raw performance in a dramatic wardrobe transformation. Just hours before the show began, she arrived on the white carpet in a sheer, drop-waist gown from Versace and a sweeping black skirt, and then took the stage by dressing down in a black t-shirt, torn black jeans, and black canvas Chucks. Sporting a sleek french braid, the pop star seemingly appeared makeup free and ditched her red lip and heavy glam from the white carpet.

While introducing her stripped-down version of "Hold My Hand," Gaga shared, “It’s deeply personal for me. We all need each other. We need a lot of love to walk through this life. We need heroes sometimes. There’s heroes all around us ... You might find that you can be your own hero, even if you feel broken inside.”

Gaga is the first artist to receive three nominations in the best original song category with “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick following “Shallow” from A Star Is Born in 2019 and “Til It Happens to You” from The Hunting Ground in 2016. 

At the 95th Academy Awards, Gaga joined fellow best original song nominees Rihanna (“Lift Me Up”), Sofia Carson and Diane Warren (“Applause”), Stephanie Hsu, David Byrne and Son Lux (“This Is a Life”), and Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava (“Naatu Naatu”) as performers on the Oscars stage.