Lady Gaga Takes a Dive Off the ‘Edge of Glory’ on American Idol Finale

There was once a time when people were saying that the most shocking thing Lady Gaga could still do was to make a public appearance in normal clothes. That and, it would seem, jump off a cliff – which she did on last night’s American Idol finale performance.

Gaga was just one of the many A-list performers taking the stage for this season’s big finale and, undoubtedly, she did not disappoint in terms of delivering that extra little something of the shock factor.

For the special night, the singer picked a new song from the album “Born This Way” to perform, instead of her latest single “Judas.”

However, fans had heard “The Edge of Glory” before she took to the AI stage, having released it on iTunes a few days ago – but the experience of seeing it performed was entirely new.

To bring more meaning to the words of the song, Gaga sat on the edge – literally. And then she jumped off it, together with a male dancer who stood in for the lover in the song.

For the entire duration of the performance, Gaga was stranded on a rocky mountain top. At first, she was clad in a long cape and a headpiece that was probably very heavy: as such, she had very little room and possibility to move, as MTV News points out.

Once she threw her cape and headpiece into the crowd, things changed and the pace picked up a bit. She was joined by a dancer and they executed some very artistic moves halfway through the song.

“Bathed in deep blue lights, she fingered at a piano that was built into her set, and wailed the song’s booming, summertime-ready chorus,” MTV writes.

“She was joined up top by a shirtless male dancer as Bruce Springsteen’s sidekick Clarence Clemons (who performs the gigantic sax solo at the center of the song) reprised his role on the Nokia Theatre stage. Dressed in an oversized black coat and a black hat, he was barely visible, but his sax lines were immediately recognizable, even if they wavered in and out of audibility,” the publication adds.

Indeed, there seemed to be some audio issues during Gaga’s performance, from the sax to her piano, which drowned everything else when she started playing it.

Other than that, the performance was, as always, impeccable. It culminated with a kiss between Gaga and the dancer and then, holding hands, the two jumped off the cliff they’d been stranded on for the past minutes.

Check out the entire performance below.