Lady Gaga shares touching moment Tony Bennett remembered her name amid Alzheimer’s battle
A clip on TikTok shows the moment that Tony Bennett remembered Lady Gaga’s name onstage. (TikTok/@ universalmusicbe)
Lady Gaga opens up about the emotional moment when Tony Bennett remembered her name amid his battle with Alzheimer’s.
A TikTok video captured the heartwarming event from Lady Gaga and Bennett’s collaborative performance at the Radio City Music Hall in August. The clip began with Gaga strolling onto the stage in a gorgeous gold outfit and greeting the legendary crooner.
When he saw the singer onstage, Bennett exclaimed: “Wow, Lady Gaga!”
The “Bad Romance” singer was incredibly delighted by his response, gasping and bending over in laughter.
@universalmusicbe “I had to keep it together”?? #ladygaga #gaga #fyp #foryou #foryoupage
The TikTok video then cut to a recent interview Gaga had with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. In the interview, she revealed that the onstage moment was the “first time that Tony said my name in a long time”
“I had to keep it together because we had a sold-out show, and I have a job to do,” she admitted. “But I’ll tell you, when I walked out on that stage and he said ‘it’s Lady Gaga’, my friend saw me, and it was very special.”
Earlier this year, Bennett revealed that he has been living with Alzheimer’s disease since 2016 in an article for AARP magazine. He told fans in an Instagram post about the article that “life is a gift – even with Alzheimer’s”.
In her interview with Cooper, Gaga revealed that Bennet didn’t call her by her name during rehearsals leading up to their two final shows.
“For the first couple of weeks that I saw Tony since COVID, he called me ‘sweetheart’, but I wasn’t sure he knew who I was,” she recalled.
She explained that she would ask Bennett simple questions during rehearsals like if he wanted to practice a specific song. Gaga said he would easily respond to those kinds of questions and would be able to perform.
“When that music comes on, something happens to him,” she explained, snapping for emphasis. “He knows exactly what he’s doing and what’s important for me, actually, is to make sure that I don’t get in the way of that.”
Lady Gaga performs with Tony Bennett during her ‘JAZZ & PIANO’ residency at Park Theater at Park MGM on 20 January 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Getty/Kevin Mazur/Park MGM Las Vegas
Tony Bennett recently earned a Guinness World Record after collaborating with Lady Gaga.
Guinness World Records announced on Friday (8 October) that Bennett is the oldest person to release an album of new material following his new album Love for Sale with Gaga.
He also holds records for oldest person to reach number one on the US album chart with a newly recorded album, the longest time between UK top 20 albums (39 years), the oldest person to enter the UK top 20 album chart and longest time between the release of an original recording and a re-recording of the same single by the same artist.
“Wow, thank you to all my fans,” Bennett said in a video celebrating his new world record.
