Lady Gaga’s is one of the best pop tours of recent years
One of the most emblematic moments of the show comes towards the end, in the fourth act, which is entitled “Every chessboard has two Queens”. The two queens, for those who were wondering, are the two Lady Gaga who compete for the stage and the applause throughout the concert: on the one hand the more naive and pure one from the beginning with “Poker face”, “Bad romance” and “Alejandro”, on the other the more mature, aware and experienced one from the post “Artpop”. It is around this dichotomy, this internal struggle, that Stefani Germanotta, this is the real name of the 39-year-old New York star, has built the show of “Mayhem Ball”his new tour, which arrived in Europe after having grossed 102.6 million dollars in the USA and the 19 and 20 October it will stop at the Milan Forum. One (the Lady Gaga of the present) appears in front of the spectators, the other (the Lady Gaga of the past) tries to steal the show: at a certain point they even challenge each other in a bloody game of chess, to the tune of “Poker face”. The first one seems to win, but the other is only temporarily out of play. Until the moment we mentioned arrives.
The new meaning of “Million reasons”
On the notes of “Million reasons“the Lady Gaga of today addresses that of yesterday, played by a masked performer dressed in red. «I’ve got a hundred million reasons to walk away / but baby, I just need one good one to stay», she sang in the 2016 single. Now Gaga dedicates those same words to the old version of herself, fragile, wounded, weak. It is the passage that in the dialectical structure of the show marks the moment of reconciliation: Gaga embraces her past and “Million Reasons” thus becomes the final destination of the journey, which is first and foremost internal, told over the course of the show. And after all, speaking of “Mayhem”, the album that marked her great return to the scene in March, Lady Gaga said exactly this: working on the album was like “reassembling a shattered mirror”. “Million reasons” does not mark the end of the show, which continues with “Shallow”, “Die with a smile”, “Vanish into you”, “Bad romance” and “How bad do u want me”, but it is the passage that makes the meaning of the show clear. Which isn’t just a concert. It’s much more. It’s a work, among the best “live” experiences ever seen in pop music in recent years (the primacy is at stake in a hotly contested head-to-head with Madonna’s “Celebration tour”, a magnificent live documentary by the Queen of Pop), conceived, written and, naturally, performed by Gaga herself and which brings to the stage the rise, fall and rebirth of a pop star like her. It does this by mixing music, theatre, cinema, dance and performance art. And also the world of opera.
A conceptual but at the same time pop show
It is no coincidence that the scenography is inspired by that of a baroque-style opera house, complete with balconies, and that before the start of the show Gaga entertains the spectators who gradually fill the arenas with a playlist that plays songs by Hector Berlioz, Georges Bizet and Gioacchino Rossini: find another pop star who does homages like this in his shows. Everything makes sense, in the complicated construction of the “Mayhem Ball”, which is undoubtedly one of the most conceptual and mature shows of Lady Germanotta’s career. Even the structure of the concert itself looks to so-called “cultured” music, with several acts that retrace the artistic parable of the pop star through a lens that cannot be overstated when defined as philosophical. The thesis coincides with the beginnings. Other pop stars deny their beginnings, crossing out the hits that marked their rise from the setlists of their concerts: there is nothing wrong with no longer recognizing themselves in songs considered, if not exactly immature, certainly representative of a less mature phase of one’s career. Gaga, on the other hand, the era of “The fame” and “The fame Monster”, and therefore of “Poker face” itself, of “Alejandro”, of “Bad romance” and of “Paparazzi” (which in sequence with the j’accuse to the record industry that treats artists as if they were dolls of “Perfect celebrity” becomes a sort of resistance hymn, the manifesto of a survivor), recovers it and inserts it into a larger story. The antithesis is represented by that phase of his career which opened with “Artpop”the moment of collapse, and which then continued with the reconstruction of “Joanne” (of “Chromatica”, for the record, there are zero pieces). Finally there is the synthesis: «We will find a way to live together like twins who duel with each other», they say in unison, like the twins in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”, the two Gagas at the beginning of the show, on the big screen.
Every fragment of the past finally finds its place
«Even if you can’t put the pieces together perfectly, you can create something beautiful and whole in its own way», Gaga said of the creative process that led to the genesis of “Mayhem”. It is the phrase that contains the meaning of the entire show: accepting one’s contradictions and transforming them into strength. There was a time when Lady Gaga didn’t seem to accept those contradictions: remember when in 2019, after the relaunch with “A star is born”, she repudiated “Artpop” itself, the 2013 album accused by critics of being an all too pretentious and cerebral work, tweeting a terse “I don’t remember Artpop”? Today Lady Gaga is an artist who no longer needs to destroy, and destroy herself, to exist: constructs a self-portrait in which every fragment of the past finally finds its place.
