Lady Gaga paused half through her stunningly powerful headlining performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Friday to tell the fans who filled the field before the Coachella Stage how much they meant to her.
“I love you so much,” she said in a set that delivered 20 songs – 11 from her new album “Mayhem” mixed with hits from across her career. “I love you so much I wanted to make a romantic gesture to you in this year, in these times.
“I decided to build you an opera house in the desert,” Gaga said, and that, in a theatrical sense, is exactly what she did for the two hours she dominated the stage with one of the greatest headline sets in Coachella history.
What compares? Beyoncé’s 2018 performance mixed her greatest hits with the marching band culture of historically black colleges and universities, and threw in a surprise reunion of Destiny’s Child to boot.
In 2008, Prince delivered what many, including yours truly, consider the best-ever headline show, performing at the peak of his talents and captivating the audience like few performers ever have here.
Lady Gaga was just impressive, presenting a show that played like an opera in four acts, each of them focused on a different part of her musical personalities, with an artistic focus – to music, fashion and art in equal measures – that few have ever attempted and none have matched.
The premise was introduced at the start of the show with a title – “The Art of Personal Chaos” – and a declaration of artistic intent: “This is the manifesto of mayhem.”
“Bloody Mary” opened the show with Gaga atop a dress-like tower beneath the crimson fabric of which a cage of dancing prisoners gyrated. “Abracadabra,” the first of 11 songs from “Mayhem,” continued the theme of Act I: Of Velvet and Vice.”
Older songs, including “Judas,” alternated with new tunes such as “Garden of Eden” as Gaga and a troupe of 20-some backing dancers moved across a stage designed to resemble an old, slightly decrepit Victorian opera house.
Lady Gaga has always presented uniquely artful choreography in her concerts and here, working with New Zealand choreographer Parris Goebel, the dance work enhanced the overall presentation tremendously. (Goebel also choreographed Doja Cat’s Coachella headline performance in 2024.)
“Poker Face” closed out the first act with a human chess game between the dark and light sides of Gaga’s life and career. With the singer dressed in black and an alter ego in all-white, the two queens and their backing dancers battled to the death of the white queen, who was placed in a grave and partly buried in sand.
Act II: “And She Fell into a Gothic Dream” opened with Lady Gaga even more buried in the sandy grave, a skeleton nestled beside her, and the heads of others around her. Still half-immersed beneath the sand, she sang “Perfect Celebrity” and “Disease,” another two of the new songs.
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The earlier hits, “Paparazzi” and “Alejandro,” elicited loud screams and cheers from fans, partly for the familiarity of the music, partly for the resurrection from the sandy grave and subsequent transformation into a half-android-like human.
For Act III: “The Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name,” French producer Gessaffelstein joined Lady Gaga on stage to play synths and computers on “Killah,” a track he produced on “Mayhem.” His unique stage look – he’s covered from head to toe in what looks like a shiny black metallic material, giving him an unearthly appearance.
“Zombieboy” found Gaga and her backing performers dancing with skeletons. For “Die With a Smile” she accompanied herself on a piano made to look like it was crafted from human bones and skulls.
“If anybody’s watching from around the world, I can tell you for it’s (bleeping) beautiful out here,” she said as Act IV: “To Wake Her Is To Lose Her” began.
“The trust is we’re all one. It’s all just one big thing. You are who you choose to be. I will always sing this for you because, you know, we were born this way.”
That song – “Born This Way” – is one of Gaga’s greatest anthems, a celebration of the humanity and value of all people no matter who they are or what they do.
“Shallow,” her song from “A Star Is Born,” was introduced by Lady Gaga, noting both the movie and the fact that part of it was filmed at Coachella in the past. Accompanying herself on piano, it remains a gorgeous love song. After “Vanish Into You,” Gaga walked back to the stage, high-fiving fans as she sang.
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The stage emptied and that seemed like it was it. Nothing happened on stage for minutes, and many fans started leaving the field, believing the show was over.
Then the Finale: “Eternal Aria of the Monster Heart” and the return to the stage of Gaga and her band and dancers. She arrived beneath a sheet as if a patient near death with red-clad dancers wearing plague doctor masks working frantically to save her.
“Bad Romance” then closed out the show, with Gaga and the crowd singing along to one of her biggest hits. Fireworks lit the sky over the stage, the artist and her team took bows, and one of the most extraordinary performances in Coachella history came to an end.
