Lady Gaga and Madonna have had a notoriously rocky relationship for a decade now. Now that Gaga has an Oscar for “Shallow” under her belt, the tides may have changed: the pair posed for a loving photograph together at Madonna’s Oscars after-party.
Following both her win for Best Original Song and steamy, chemistry-filled performance of “Shallow” with co-star and director Bradley Cooper, Gaga made her way to Madonna’s after-party. According to Time‘s Instagram post about a photo the magazine’s photographer captured of the pair posing and embracing one another on a crumpled white background, the party had a strict social media ban outside of their snaps. Not much else was captured of their warm rebuilding-of-bridges outside of a behind-the-scenes video of the pair eskimo kissing for the camera.
Madonna cradling Gaga’s smiling face is quite possibly the kindest encounter the pair have had in years. Gaga had been compared to the Queen of Pop from the start of her career thanks to her constantly evolving image, fearlessness when it comes to breaking genre barriers and edgy approach to both Catholicism and sexuality. Things turned sour, however, when Gaga’s “Born This Way” bore similarities to Madonna’s “Express Yourself.” Madonna never took legal action over the claims of plagiarism but she did perform sly, in-concert mash-ups of the two songs. Madonna spoke about the issue publicly, but tried to bury the hatchet in 2015 when she told Rolling Stone that she didn’t dislike Gaga beyond that one transgression.
The feud was reignited, however, by Gaga during her Joanne era claiming to Zane Lowe that she is different than Madonna because she writes her own songs and plays instruments (two things Madonna does as well). In the documentary Five Foot Two, she explained that she was upset that Madonna was the one to take their feud to the media and felt angry at the passive-aggressiveness of their stand-off.
“So the thing with me and Madonna, for example, is that I admired her always,” Gaga said in the documentary. “And I still admire her, no matter what she might think of me. I just want Madonna to push me up against the wall and kiss me and tell me I’m a piece of shit.”