On the surface, Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga definitely appeared just like the oddest of couples.
That was most definitely the case when the “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” crooner paired up with the shock diva — who sang “He ate my heart” on 2009’s “Monster” — for his or her first collaborative album, 2014’s “Cheek to Cheek.”
The 2 had previously worked together, on his 2011 “Duets II” LP, playfully partnering on “The Lady Is a Tramp,” the identical 12 months that Mother Monster had gone full-on zombie in her “Born This Way” video.
That was about so far as you might get from Bennett’s classy, debonair style. I mean, did you ever see the person not in a superbly tailored suit?
Indeed, concerning the only thing that Bennett — who died at 96 on Friday after an extended battle with Alzheimer’s disease — appeared to have in common with the nearly 60-years-younger Gaga was that they were each native Latest Yorkers.
But after Gaga’s profession took its first hit with the relative flop — by her standards — of 2013’s “Artpop,” the singer needed to wipe away the artifice and remind the world concerning the talent underneath the skull makeup.
And “Cheek to Cheek” — featuring jazz standards by the likes of George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Jerome Kern — was a cred-boosting affair that proved that, at that moment, it was Gaga who needed Bennett greater than the opposite way around.
It went on to win a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2015, when there gave the impression to be absolutely nothing “traditional” about Gaga.
If there was an award for Cutest Couple On The Red Carpet on the 2015 Grammys, they might have won that too.
And once they performed Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek,” you might just feel the love between them.
“It was magic, because there was such an obvious affection each ways,” longtime Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich told The Post. “It was definitely real.”
Their “love affair,” as Ehrlich described it, was just what Gaga appeared to have to get the fervor back that was missing from “Artpop.” Indeed, 2016’s country-flavored “Joanne” felt like a passion project that set her up for Oscar glory in 2018’s “A Star Is Born.”
Thus, a star was reborn.
By the point they reunited to record 2021’s “Love for Sale” — when Bennett won the last of his 19 Grammys last 12 months — his health was failing following his 2016 Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
“It was a present,” Gaga told USA Today in 2021 about making the album. “It’s a present that I’ll hold in my heart ’til my last breath. My time with Tony has modified me without end. Frank Sinatra said he was one of the best singer on this planet, and I don’t think Frank lied.”
And when it was Gaga’s turn to be there for Bennett, she did just that. She lovingly carried — make that, willed — him though his emotional final live performance at NYC’s Radio City Music Hall in August 2021.
“I tell Tony every single day that he saved my life,” Gaga told Parade in 2014.
And he or she saved his right back.
