Lady Gaga reveals why she was nervous to perform 'Dick in a Box' and why she sang 'Shallow' over new music on “SNL50”

Lady Gaga was admittedly a little nervous about wrapping and presenting her "Dick in a Box" to a theater filled with people at the SNL50: Homecoming Concert event.

The Grammy-winning pop star revealed Wednesday on the latest episode of Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang and actor Matt Rogers' Las Culturistas podcast that she was initially apprehensive about performing Andy Samberg's classic SNL comedy song last month on the sketch show's 50th anniversary concert special, via a performance that also included Bad Bunny, Chris Parnell, and a giant box prop fixed to Gaga's pelvis.

"At the SNL50 concert the other night, I was nervous to do 'Dick in a Box,'" the 38-year-old told Yang and Rogers during the recording, which Yang confirmed occurred shortly after the Feb. 14 SNL50 concert. "'Dick in a Box' is a classic and I was like, oh my God, why did I agree to do this? I was walking through the theater. I remembered that the last time I'd been there, I was with Tony [Bennett]. Tony would've just said, 'Don't be nervous,' or, 'If you are nervous, it's because you care.' And I do care."

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Gaga went on to call the concert and the following night's SNL 50th anniversary special "one of the greatest nights in entertainment," and that she "felt really emotional" participating in it.

In addition to performing "Dick in a Box," the upcoming Wednesday season 2 actress also sang a portion of her Oscar-winning 2018 A Star Is Born soundtrack single "Shallow" at the event, which drew some criticism from fans who wanted to see her promote new music from her latest album, Mayhem.

"I couldn't figure out exactly what I wanted to say on stage. I ultimately decided to shout out Mark Ronson and the Roots because Mark and I wrote 'Shallow' together and the Roots were playing it with me. I love them so much. I almost said, 'Thank you to Lorne and SNL, thanks for giving me a shot on the show years ago,' because SNL helps break artists. It's a huge deal," Gaga explained. "I know that people know this, but I don't know that they know how much it means to the artist when you get booked for the show. To this day when I got called to do double-duty [on the March 8 episode], full panic tears. So happy, so elated, I couldn't be more proud. It was the thing I wanted to do the most to promote my record and make people happy."

She also went on to explain why she chose to sing "Shallow" instead of Mayhem's second single, "Abracadabra," which she surprise-released during the 2025 Grammys 12 days prior.

Gaga noted that it was an opportunity for her to "put some of my best work forward on a show that deserves your best work," and chose the Bradley Cooper duet "Shallow" because it's an "important song to me that helped me connect" to a new audience after A Star Is Born became a box office hit that helped the song chart at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — which, at the time, was her first No. 1 single since 2011's "Born This Way."

Entertainment Weekly also recently published an interview with Gaga, in which she explained the inspiration behind Mayhem and addressed viral fan reaction to the sound of singles "Disease" and "Abracadabra" that describes the act of Gaga reinterpreting and reviving a sound she previously perfected as "reheating her nachos" on the tunes.

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"I know that it can be used both in positive and negative ways, but I would say that my nachos are mine, and I invented them, and I'm proud of them," Gaga told EW. "So much of what I did with 'Abracadabra' was about claiming music and imagery that's my own invention — meaning the combination of those things is my own invention, and I wanted to really own that for myself. As a woman in music, we're often told that someone else made us who we are or somehow it didn't come from us, that we were made that way. But this is who I am."

Watch EW's interview with Gaga in the video at the top of this post.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly