Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball Captures the Completeness of a Pop Star

If WeHo felt particularly empty on Tuesday night, it’s because Los Angeles’ gay millennial contingency was at the Kia Forum in Inglewood for night two of Lady Gaga’s brief SoCal residency. Three months after headlining Coachella, Gaga concocted the Mayhem Ball—a potent, 29-song setlist spanning The Fame to Mayhem, packed with theatrics and deafening singalongs. She played a song from every studio album except Chromatica, which got its own “ball” in 2022, and, as the medium of live performance continues to evolve—thanks to culture-shaping tours from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé—Gaga’s elaborate, ornamental dressings and song sequencing danced in total harmony.

I do not go to pop concerts often, not because I don’t like pop music—I adore pop music—but because I loathe arena shows. They’re too big and, too often, impersonal. Banter in-between songs feels telegraphed, and everything is so choreographed down to the last detail that it exiles the greatest gift a concert can give a fan: unpredictability. And, believe me, I understand exactly why the details mean so much to an event like the Mayhem Ball. This is big-budget mainstream music being translated into a big-budget mainstream stage production. For reference, my last gig before Gaga’s was a singer-songwriter show at a hole-in-the-wall venue with maybe 30 other people in attendance. But there’s no hyperbole from me here: The Mayhem Ball is the greatest concert I’ve ever been to.

The brutalist-themed Chromatica Ball was a success three years ago, grossing a box office of, roughly, $112 million and filling 800,000 stadium seats across 20 shows. The Mayhem Ball is set to be more expansive, stretching into the early rumbles of 2026—as Gaga will play 63 shows across North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, and she’s doing at least three performances in every US city she stops in. Two weeks ago, the drama kicked off in Las Vegas and continued into San Francisco, only to return to Gaga’s old haunt of LA ahead of August’s dawn. Taking a note from Swift, Gaga has even been introducing a “surprise song” during each night’s encore, after the concluding “How Bad Do U Want Me.” So far, she’s treated her fans to “ARTPOP,” “Sexxx Dreams,” “G.U.Y.,” a cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” “MANiCURE,” “Swine,” and, Tuesday night, “Mary Jane Holland.” Some of these songs haven’t even been performed in a decade.

The Mayhem Ball is split into five acts: “Of Velvet and Vice”; “And She Fell Into a Gothic Dream”; “The Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name”; “Every Chessboard Has Two Queens”; and “Eternal Aria of the Monster Heart.” Some tracks received extended intros and outros, while others were truncated into transitional pieces. Fan favorites like “Alejandro,” “Applause,” “Kill For Love,” and “Aura” were shortened to let Mayhem songs like “Garden of Eden,” “Disease,” “Zombieboy,” and “Shadow of a Man” flourish with decorative, sweeping pomp. The Gesaffelstein and Cirkut remixes of “Abracadabra” floated around as acts came to a close, while Gaga interpolated elements of “Off With Her Head” and Giorgio Moroder’s “Tears” into “Poker Face” and “Million Reasons.” All of it felt intricate; all of it was intricate. Quells in light displays revealed a few-dozen strips of colorful tape directing every dancer and set piece’s position. The majesty of the Mayhem Ball isn’t afraid to let some guts spill out of the corset—which is why the closing performance of “How Bad Do U Want Me,” where Gaga sings while taking her makeup off backstage, before returning to the stage for a final bow, ought to cause such a stir: The Mayhem Ball heeds to its own grandeur and then obliterates it.

If you were tuned into either of Lady Gaga’s Coachella performances in April, then maybe you’re already familiar with the Mayhem Ball’s past-minded design. There is a certain nostalgia celebrated in the choreography and wardrobe of the concert, in which Gaga sports familiar outfits—like the armor and crutches from the “Paparazzi” music video, or the spiky-crowned queen and sandpit from “Bad Romance.” The first dress she wears, a giant red Tudor gown concealing a dozen backup dancers, parallels the Lady Macbeth costume Thierry Mugler designed in 1985, while the ballroom battle during “Poker Face” takes place on an Alexander McQueen-referencing, “It’s Only a Game”-style, chess board-covered catwalk.