CULTURE

Bradley Cooper as Jackson Maine Has Now Won More Musical Awards Than Some Very Real Musicians

Ironically, parts of Jackson Maine are directly inspired by The Boss.

March 5, 2019

Courtesy Warner Bros.

A Star Is Born was all about realism, as writer, director, producer, and star Bradley Cooper explained time and again throughout the Oscar-winning film’s press tour. The singing was real, the chemistry between him and Lady Gaga was real, and, yes, that was really his real dog. In fact, Cooper’s turn as fading musician Jackson Maine was so real that he’s still raking in legitimate music industry accomplishments for it—including some that have eluded actual career musicians.

On Monday, for example, evidently still riding high off its Oscar win for Best Original Song, “Shallow” jumped to the very top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Not only does the achievement mark Gaga’s first number one song since “Born This Way” in 2011 (and her fourth in total), but it’s also Cooper’s first ever—meaning he now has more chart-topping songs than Bob Dylan, MC Hammer, Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott, One Direction, the Backstreet Boys, Sheryl Crow, James Brown, and Bruce Springsteen.

Cooper’s reaching that milestone ahead of Springsteen is particularly ironic, since he’s previously shared that a key piece of Jackson Maine’s lore—that he stole his impossibly gravelly voice from his older brother, played by Sam Elliott—came straight from The Boss. “I was reading Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography and he was talking about stealing his father’s voice and how he idolized him,” Cooper told Screen Daily earlier this year. “I connected to that,” he continued, explaining that, after already modeling Jackson’s voice on that of the real Elliott, Springsteen’s book inspired him to actually cast Elliott in the role.

Along with this chart achievement, Cooper is also now the proud owner of a Grammy Award for “Shallow.” With precisely one Grammy under his belt, the actor now has the same number as extremely accomplished musicians like Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and Ariana Grande. That also means he has more Grammys than Snoop Dogg, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Björk, the Notorious B.I.G., the Strokes, Queen, Diana Ross, and the Spice Girls.

Ironically, Cooper has been less successful in his own industry. He may have won music’s most prestigious trophy this year, but he still has yet to win a Golden Globe, a Tony, an Emmy, or an Oscar—the latter of which is something that several musicians, including Eminem, Elton John, Adele, and (plot twist!) Springsteen, have beat him to. Hey, the road to the EGOT has to start somewhere.