Lady Gaga opened her four-night Kia Forum run on July 28th with a declaration that felt less like a concert and more like a coronation. The Mayhem Ball – the touring companion to her seventh studio album of the same name – arrived in Inglewood carrying the weight of expectation that only a performer of Gaga’s magnitude can generate. It surpassed every one of them.
Stefani Germanotta has spent her career weaponizing spectacle, but the Mayhem Ball represents something more considered than her prior tours. Structured in four distinct acts plus a grand finale, the show is less a greatest-hits revue and more a fully realized theatrical work – one that treats pop music as the vehicle for storytelling that Gaga has always insisted it can be. The thematic spine of light versus dark, angels and devils, temptation and restraint, runs through every set piece and costume change with a coherence that rewards attention.
The Forum itself seemed purpose-built for the occasion. From the moment the house lights dropped and two competing Gagas emerged from opposite ends of the stage, the production established its ambitions clearly: this would not be a show you passively observed. You would be pulled in whether you intended to be or not. The opening reveal – Gaga emerging from beneath an enormous red hoop dress that seemed to contain multitudes – triggered an eruption from the sold-out crowd that set the temperature for everything that followed.
Highlights arrived in waves. “Paparazzi” found Gaga hobbling on crutches in a direct nod to the iconic music video before being freed by a wedding gown caught in a retracting conveyor belt – absurd and brilliant in equal measure. “Killah” transformed the stage into something resembling a gothic coral reef, with dancers in elaborate creature costumes surrounding her as she cut through the choreography with a precision that belied the scope of the production. “Zombieboy” deployed an army of undead in purple suits performing stiff-limbed choreography that walked the fine line between creepy and genuinely funny.
“Shallow,” reconceived as a somber ballad rather than the triumphant anthem most audiences know, provided one of the night’s most unexpected emotional gut punches. Stripped of its cinematic grandeur and delivered from a gondola extending over the B-stage, it became something genuinely haunting – a reminder that the song, underneath all its orchestration, is about reaching for something out of reach. The Little Monsters in the crowd, many of them in elaborate costumes of their own, sang every word back at full volume.
“Bad Romance” arrived near the close of the main set with the inevitability of a returning tide. The Monster Queen was operated on by a troupe of beak-masked surgeons in a sequence that felt equal parts medical drama and fever dream. When the chorus finally hit, the Forum became one single organism.
Near the end of the show, Gaga paused to address her audience directly. “I’ll see you in 20 more years,” she told the crowd. “I’ll just keep coming back – is that OK?” The response – thousands of wavy claws raised toward the ceiling – suggested Los Angeles is perfectly fine with that arrangement. The Mayhem Ball is one of the finest pop tours in recent memory, and Inglewood was lucky to get four nights of it.
Setlist: Abracadabra // Die With a Smile // Disease // Garden of Eden // How Bad Do U Want Me // Kill for Love // Killah // LoveDrug // Perfect Celebrity // Shadow of a Man // The Beast // Vanish into You // ZombieBoy // Just Dance // LoveGame // Paparazzi // Poker Face // Summerboy // Bloody Mary // Born This Way // Judas // Scheiße // Applause // Aura // Mary Jane Holland // Alejandro // Bad Romance // Million Reasons // Shallow (cover with Bradley Cooper)
Encore: Swine (surprise song)
Photo Credit: Getty Images