“This Picture Says It All”: Lady Gaga Pays Tribute to Tony Bennett on First Anniversary of His Death

Lady Gaga paid tribute to her friend and legend Tony Bennett on the first anniversary of his death with a photo accompanied by a sweet message. The image is a black and white photo of her and Bennett, with Gaga looking reverently at Bennett while he sketches her portrait.

“It’s been one year since Tony passed away. This picture says it all,” she wrote in the caption. “I’m so grateful for my continued friendship with his wife Susan—the legacy of jazz music he left—and for the community of jazz musicians I still work with who all knew and loved Tony. We’re gonna keep on swingin’. Miss you … life is a beautiful thing.”

Gaga and Bennett met in 2011 and became friends, working on Duets II together and eventually collaborating on a jazz album in 2014, titled Cheek to Cheek. They made a second collaborative album, Love for Sale, in 2021, the cover of which featured the sketch Bennett did in the photo.

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Lady Gaga Pays Tribute to Friend Tony Bennett, Recalled the First Thing He Said to Her

Back in 2011, the two first crossed paths at a Robin Hood Foundation gala. Lady Gaga was singing renditions of jazz tunes, such as Nat King Cole’s “Orange Colored Sky,” according to a 2023 report from Rolling Stone. After that, she med Tony Bennett for the first time.

“I sang a couple jazz numbers that night, so I was real, real nervous to meet Tony Bennett — plus, I looked crazy,” said Gaga during the show One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. “I had blonde in my hair and black in my hair, red lipstick, I had four big velvet moles on my face. I was doing my thing. And I went to meet Mr. Bennett, and he said, ‘Lady, you are a jazz singer.’”

Near the end of his life, Tony Bennett suffered from Alzheimer’s, which severely impaired his memory. However, there was a moment at one of Lady Gaga’s Radio City Music Hall performances—and subsequently one of Bennett’s last appearances—where he said her name for the first time in a while.

“That’s the first time that Tony said my name in a long time,” she told 60 Minutes in 2023. “I had to keep it together because we had a sold-out show and I have a job to do. But I’ll tell you, when I walked out on that stage and he said, ‘It’s Lady Gaga,’ my friend saw me. It was very special.”

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