Lady Gaga brought a welcoming – and moving – touch of razzmatazz to Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration when she sang the national anthem in his presidential inauguration on Wednesday morning.
Wearing a fluffy red dress and a navy blue jacket with a large dove brooch, the pop star summoned his most convincing Broadway vibe while singing the famous complicated melody, playing softly with time and notes folded in unexpected directions.
Her voice? Large and sharp. Your expression? Flickering slightly. Her arms? Waving with intensity.
The singer’s accompaniment by the United States Marine Band had a cool, jazzy cadence – especially since she was slow to deliver the lyrics about how the “flag was still there” – which made you wish they would play with the showboating pop stars more often . (And given Gaga’s long friendship with Biden, whom she campaigned for, perhaps they will.)
Still, Gaga did not lose the gravity of the moment: at the end of the song, she turned her gaze in awe at Stars and Stripes – the same emblem billowing on the National Mall in place of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who couldn’t be there personally due to COVID-19 – and it seemed to claim for patriots the place where two weeks ago the insurgents organized their horrific attack on the Capitol.
Then she went to her seat and put on a mask.