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Lady Gaga had so little time to rehearse for her performance at the Grammys 2026That she almost canceled, executive producer Ben Winston reveals in the new episode of
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the podcast of our US colleagues. “There was a point a few weeks before the show where we thought we had to take her off the show,” says Winston, “because she just said, ‘I just don’t know how I’m going to do this.'”
Gaga was in the middle of her Mayhem Ball Tour and played four shows at the Tokyo Dome – her last performance there was on January 30, just one day before the Grammys. She landed in Los Angeles that morning, less than 36 hours before the live broadcast. “Unlike everyone else who had time to rehearse outside the venue or with their dancers, band or creative team, she couldn’t,” Winston says. “She literally jumped on stage.”
“Minimalist” show for Lady Gaga
Instead of the spectacle she would have put on under normal circumstances – “a hundred dancers and this big thing,” as Winston puts it – Gaga and her team (including choreographer Parris Goebel, director Ben Dalgleish and her fiancĂ© Michael Polansky) developed a minimalist, band-focused approach. Mayhem producer Andrew Watt played guitar, co-producer Cirkut played synthesizer, Josh Freese drummed, and Gaga operated two keyboards and actively tweaked the sounds of a modular synthesizer. She led the band through a rock reinterpretation of “Abracadabra,” her face obscured by a giant, freaky wicker headdress, and the only dancer on stage was Gaga herself. “It was so different, so original, so spectacular,” Winston says.
While Gaga was on tour, Watt – who also appeared in the Ozzy Osbourne tribute show – worked on the new version of the song. “He sent me the track in the middle of the night a few weeks ago,” Winston remembers. “I was still awake, but my wife Meredith was already asleep. He said, ‘You have to listen to this.’ I snuck into the bathroom, put on my AirPods, and sat on the toilet to listen to this. And I thought, ‘Oh man, that took this track to an incredible level.'”
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Robot use at the Grammys
The close-up shots under the headboard were taken with a camera attached to a pre-programmed robotic arm, which Winston said was a first for a live performance at an awards show. It was a risky approach. “As soon as you press play on this robot, it runs,” Winston says. “Human errors can be fixed – if a human does something wrong, you can scream in their ears. But with a robot, as soon as you press play, it runs.”
When the performance ended, cheers erupted in the production truck. “We high-fived and celebrated,” Winston says. “The funny thing is that circumstances force you to a certain creative solution, but once you find that solution, you would still choose it even if you went back in time and didn’t have those constraints.”
After the show, Winston visited Gaga in her dressing room. “I was in my office resting and she was still in her dressing room, so we went and hung out,” he says. “I think she was really proud of that performance because it was so much her own and the genius of her team. There are moments in this show that will be remembered forever. And I think Gaga’s performance is really one of them. It should be considered special.”
