' was about to kill himself doing research. (Their writing sessions even spilled over onto both Nelson’s 2017 self-titled POTR LP, where Gaga is featured as a backing vocalist on multiple songs, and Gaga’s 2017 Coachella-debuted track ' The Cure,' which Nelson co-wrote.) Early last year, they recruited Nashville super-producer Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson) to come out to Los Angeles for a meeting.

“Her and I really connect in a deep way that way,” says Nelson of Gaga. Promise of the Real even became the on-screen backing band for Maine. 'We’d talk about the soul of performance,' remembers Nelson, 'and what it really means to connect to an audience how to connect the way the heroes he was trying to emulate did.' The list of greats fueling them included many names Nelson has known intimately his entire life: grizzled vets like his father, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson (who starred in the 1976 iteration of A Star is Born), Jim Morrison, and, of course, Neil Young.Īs Nelson and Cooper, and more particularly Nelson and Gaga, hit it off writing songs together, Nelson’s role expanded and the three began to hammer out the backbone of the soundtrack together. Rather than have the actors lip-syncing to tracks during filming, the vocal performances in Star were almost exclusively recorded live-which meant that honing Cooper-as-Maine’s thrashing, devil-may-care performance style was imperative. They enlisted a murderer’s row of favorite producers and songwriters like Mark Ronson, Dave Cobb, Lori McKenna, Jason Isbell, Natalie Hemby, Hillary Lindsey, and more, to collaborate. And when it came to the soundtrack, he, along with Gaga and Lukas Nelson (frontman and bandleader of Promise of the Real, and Willie Nelson’s son), were being equally ambitious. Cooper spent four years in research for the role, co-wrote the script, and even lowered his vocal register a full octave to sound like the raspy drifter he hoped to embody. Surrounded by some of the most accomplished musicians in the industry, Gaga was emphatically discussing her character in the film, Ally, a young singer so far rebuked by the industry on the account of her looks.ĭown the hall, handfuls of other writers were working on more songs-some for Ally, others for the world-weary, addiction-addled Jackson Maine played tenderly by Bradley Cooper for his directorial debut and the fourth iteration of the fabled Hollywood tale.

More than a year before it would become a viral Internet phenomenon via the trailer for A Star is Born, Lady Gaga was holed up in a Los Angeles studio presenting 'Shallow' to a group of songwriters.

A star is born soundtrack