Lady Gaga looked proud enough to cry.
Friday evening, the vast hearing ahead of her in Coachella, the pop superstar took a break about 45 minutes after her performance at the head of the poster to deliver a little speech – a royal address of Mother Monster to her loyals Minions – from the balcony on the second floor of a ruined Gothic structure which she had built on the main scene of the festival.
“I wanted to give you a romantic gesture this year in these times of chaos,” she told the crowd. “I decided to build an opera in the desert – for all the love and all the joy and all the strength you gave me all my life.” She took a break, her long blond hair and her white dress with rustling frills in the dry and dusty breeze.
“Sometimes I feel like I had a dream when I was 20,” she continued. “I've been in a dream since then, and I didn't know if I wanted to wake up, and if you weren't there?”
Think: don't cry for me, Coachella.
It was not the first most prestigious festival in Gaga. In 2017, she intervened at the last minute to replace Beyoncé when the latter withdrew after announcing that she was pregnant. But these circumstances meant that Gaga “did not have time to do completely what I really wanted to do” because she said Times last year.
She compensated for it on Friday: more than two hours, 20 songs and as many costume changes that Coachella's well -managed livestream would authorize Gaga to set up a sumptuous show built around this year “Grabuge“Album, which was largely received as the return of the singer to pop at high concept after a few years of play and jazz (and fall in love).
Would you say that the production, that it burst into four acts and a final, has brought a coherent or easily discernible story? You would not do it – although a voice off at the start suggested that it has something to do with two me who are fighting for the control of a soul.
However, the individual series were so lively and funny and bizarre that history has become one on the embrace of Gaga of its role as the biggest Kook of music.
For “Poker Face”, she organized a chess battle with her dancers as living playing pieces. “Perfect Celebrity” and “illness” twisted in a shallow tomb surrounded by the living dead. For “Paparazzi”, she put on pieces of chrome armor and strummate herself on the stage on a pair of crutches. “Zombieboy” was a dance number drawn up with swirling Gaga with a skeleton.
The list of sets has mixed new songs with the old favorites: “Bloody Mary” in “Abracadabra” in “Judas” in the “sheiße” in German, which involved a bunch of oversized pen pens and a last dinner style table. After the Pop-Funk of the 80s of “Shadow of a Man”, for which she disguised herself as a sexy military officer, she seemed to spot her fiancé, Michael Polansky, and thanked the crowd “for bringing me my man”.
Gaga was supported by a live group and a small body of rope players; The French DJ and producer Gesaffelstein, who worked on “Mayhem”, joined him on keyboards for a nagging interpretation of “Killah” of the album. Gaga was accompanied on the piano in “Die With A Smile” and “Shallow”, who did not seem to have much to do with the idea of the haunted opera, but who kept a trace? (Gaga installed the latter by recalling that the last time she was in Coachella, she filmed games of “A Star Is Born” at the festival.)
Like almost all of Coachella's titles in the years since Beyoncé's return in 2018, Gaga's performance was carefully choreographed for the Livestream of Youtube. There were cameras on drones and cameras on the threads and cameras held by guys who jostle behind while pulling the singer tracking a long track connecting the main scene to a smaller platform on the polo field. There was even a crotch cam in this cemetery sequence radiating grainy images of the rhythmic push of Gaga with huge video screens flanking the scene.
But what came, even in the most complex spectacle, is the charge that Gaga always gets to play in front of people – a queen affirmation of her star power, of course, but also a touching recognition for which she needs people to do all this. She sang live throughout the show, and her voice was strong and courageous; Between the songs, she did not attempt to disguise the dress that you could hear through her headset microphone. She finished her main set (before a welcome recall if it is inevitable of “Bad Romance”) with a new piece of desire, “Vanish Into You”, for which she jumped from the scene to press the flesh of fans against a barricade.
“I will not be able to go to five of each of you, but I can certainly sing you,” she said, and while she was heading in front of thousands of admirers, someone has held a false black flower. She claimed that it was a microphone and then used it – instinctively, charming, technically without need – for the rest of the song.
