Lady Gaga staged the opening night of her career-spanning Enigma Las Vegas residency Friday at Park MGM, with the singer delivering a pair of live debuts during the performance: A cover of David Bowie‘s “I’m Afraid of Americans” and Gaga’s first live rendition of the A Star Is Born hit “Shallow.”
Enigma serves as a retrospective of sorts at Gaga’s career thus far, and the shape-shifting Bowie was as a huge inspiration to the singer, from her “Poker Face”/Aladdin Sane iconography to the 10-song Bowie medley that Gaga performed for the Grammy’s tribute to the late singer. The Enigma show marked the first time Gaga tackled Bowie’s paranoiac Earthling track onstage, with Gaga weaving the 1997 track into the Born This Way portion of her Enigma setlist.
To close out Enigma, Gaga performed a piano rendition of “Shallow” that saw her tackling both roles – her own Ally’s verses as well as those sung by Bradley Cooper’s Jackson Maine in the film – of the duet.
“They thought I was shallow, but this shit is deep as fuck,” Gaga quipped at the piano before the emotional performance:
Enigma also resurfaced many Gaga hits that the singer had stopped performing in recent years, including the first live rendition of “The Fame” since 2011 and the first “The Edge of Glory” and “Government Hooker” since 2013.