Three months after her headlining appearance at this year’s Coachella festival, Lady Gaga is on the road with an expanded version of the haunted-opera-house spectacular she brought to the desert just after the release of her latest album, “Mayhem.” I caught Monday’s show at Inglewood’s Kia Forum, the first of four through Saturday for the 39-year-old pop superstar, and though I can’t say I have any firmer of a grasp on the story she’s telling — something about the two halves of a vicious yet empathetic queen? — her commitment to the beauty and the gore of the bit remains steadfast. Here are 11 of the most memorable moments from Night 1 of Mother Monster’s stay in L.A.
1. As she did at Coachella, Lady Gaga opened Monday’s gig with the one-two punch of “Bloody Mary” into “Abracadabra” while stationed in an enormous red hoop skirt that turned out (à la Mother Ginger from “The Nutcracker”) to conceal a troupe of dancers beneath its folds. It says something about Gaga’s creative gumption that such an enthusiastic mover would opt to start this production with use of only the upper half of her body; it says something about her expressive ability — as both a singer and a puller of faces — that she didn’t seem particularly constrained by the costume.
2. Ditto the thrashing electro-punk “Perfect Celebrity,” which she performed as she lay on her back, half-buried in a sandbox and dry-humping a skeleton.
3. As far as I could tell, no one from California’s congressional delegation took in the festivities at the Forum as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did last week — from a floor seat, no less — when Gaga played San Francisco’s Chase Center. (“The most fun I’ve had in a long time,” Pelosi wrote on X in response to a Pop Crave post noting her attendance.) In their place, though, were a handful of admiring pop stars, including Olivia Rodrigo, Matty Healy of the 1975 and Chappell Roan, the last of whom was seen in the house belting along to “Born This Way.”
4. For “Paparazzi,” Gaga wore a chrome helmet and hobbled down a long runway using a pair of chrome crutches, the train of her dress billowing heroically behind her. In a show full of detailed tableaux, this was perhaps the most striking.
5. Say this for Lady Gaga: Even as her pop ambitions have grown, she’s never made much of an attempt to retcon her beginnings as a horny New York City theater kid. Among the songs she’s added to the Mayhem Ball since Coachella are the endearingly goofy “LoveGame,” with its single-entendre lyric about wanting to ride somebody’s disco stick, and her breakout single, “Just Dance,” which she’s still introducing — 16 years after it shimmied to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 — with a shout-out to her former producer RedOne.
Lady Gaga performs Monday night.
(Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Live Nation)
6. When the singer announced this tour in March, she framed her decision to play arenas instead of stadiums as an artistic decision — the product of her desire to do something “more intimate” than the 2022 Chromatica Ball that stopped at Dodger Stadium. Often, the “I” word is a pop star’s way of managing expectations. Yet here she actually did attain a sweaty sense of connection in another oldie, “Summerboy,” which she sang while slashing at an electric guitar as half-dressed dancers writhed around her under a bank of clubby red lights.
7. “Mayhem’s” sweet spot comes in the middle of the album with a string of funky ’80s-throwback jams — “Killah” into “Zombieboy” into “LoveDrug” — that Gaga delivered onstage in an ornate Cruella de Vil getup. A nagging question, though: Why hasn’t she released one of these tunes as a single? Sure, “Abracadabra” (which dropped in February) still turns up pretty frequently on the radio. And Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile” will probably never leave the airwaves. But the lack of a big push for any of “Mayhem’s” remaining Top 40 candidates feels like a weird choice for an LP as stacked as this one.
8. Gaga’s country power ballad “Million Reasons” remade as a creepy church-organ processional? Yes, please.
9. That long runway became a short river for “Shallow,” which Gaga performed (in a moody new electro-goth arrangement) as a swooning damsel on a gondola cutting through foggy waters. Big Christine Daaé energy.
10. Having soaked up a full minute’s worth of applause after “Die With A Smile,” Gaga let the place quiet down so that she could give a little speech. “Before the show tonight, I had a chat with everybody backstage,” she told the crowd. “I was like, ‘It’s Monday — I don’t know what’s gonna happen.’ You all f—ing showed me. You came out here blazing, ready to go. L.A. has been a real interesting place in my life, because I grew up in New York City. I grew up in New York, and I moved out here when I was like 19 years old. And it was not always easy. I just want to say thank you for everybody in this room tonight. People didn’t always believe in me out here — you believed in me so much tonight. Thank you. You were always there for me.
“I come out here every night, and I always promise myself I’m gonna be really strong during this part, and I always lose it because I don’t know how to say thank you in enough ways,” she continued. “Think it always just felt easier for me to put it in a song. But community — my community, this community, our community — they’re there for you even when it’s tough and when you’re at your lowest. That’s why it’s so special, ’cause you don’t gotta be on top for your community to love you. They will always love you.
“I hope you know everywhere around the world that I go, I will try to give every drop of my passion to the audience. Inspired by all of you that when I come out here, and I see all that passion and all that love you have for me and for each other, it really makes me feel something so special. I hope that all year and all summer, that you feel my love. I’ll see you in 20 more years. I’ll just keep coming back — is that OK?”
After the speech, the singer dedicated “Vanish Into You” to two of her nieces who’d come to the show. “They said this was their favorite song,” she said. “I always dedicate this to the fans. Will you share it with them tonight?”
11. Gaga began her encore with what felt like a callback to that great scene in “A Star Is Born” where she and Bradley Cooper meet for the first time in a dressing room as she’s removing her electrical-tape eyebrows. Here she turned up on a giant video screen, singing “How Bad Do U Want Me” while rubbing makeup from her face backstage before making her way through a behind-the-scenes labyrinth to appear in the flesh once more before us.
