Lady Gaga is a pop star the way a child would describe a pop star. She arrives in an enormous baroque dress ten meters high, which she can drop in and out of with a lift. Fireworks reinforce lashing out. She only has to spread her arms and two of the more than twenty dancers will lift her high above their heads. When she sits on top of a grand piano, it is immediately wheeled around the stage. When she sings a song in German, the setting changes into a burlesque nightclub. And that all happens in the first fifteen minutes alone.
How would that work for someone like Lady Gaga? A few months ago she played virtually the same show on the beach in Rio in front of 2.1 million people. Does an arena like this feel like a quaint venue somewhere in South-East Amsterdam? Her last show in the Netherlands was in the GelreDome and she did not sell out, but that was a different moment in her career. On Mayhem, This year’s album around which this tour is built contains a few songs that are already among her classics. Which, as was once again striking tonight, have a lot in common. Not only the typical mix of good pop choruses with clumsy dance, there is also overlap in her lyrics. „Abracadabra, abra-oo-na-na” she sings on the recent smasher of a hit ‘Abracadabra’, as she previously wrote things like ‘Ppp poker face‘, ‘Ma-ma-ma-marry the night’ or ‘Ra ra ah-ah-ah Roma, roma-ma Gaga, ooh la la‘ sang. Cheerful gibberish, but delivered in such good hooks that they are unforgettable after just one listen.
Fighting, chess, thrashing zombies
Lady Gaga is many things, but not subtle. Tonight’s show is designed as an exuberant rock opera, in several parts. It revolves around her inner struggle between pure chaos and wanting to be successful. There are fight scenes with an alter ego, a living chess match between dancers and two queens, a beautifully depicted situation where Gaga is buried among struggling zombies. In her very own universe, it all makes sense. There is no other artist for whom the ballad ‘Paparazzi’ sung on chrome stools, even with a matching chrome helmet and a billowing veil of at least twenty meters long, would be such an overwhelming highlight.
The power tonight also lies in the many details that go into the execution. The razor-sharp animations on the wall-sized LED screen transition seamlessly into practical effects. Smoke images merge with cleverly placed smoke machines, dust seems to swirl rhythmically from the ceilings of the Gothic building where the band is hidden. Her first outfit features a sash with the Amsterdam St. Andrew’s crosses. The visual direction is also clever. Steadycams dance around Gaga, there are top shots, there is a clever encore from backstage where she is putting on makeup. Due to the flood of good ideas, small blemishes such as a mediocrely sung ‘Alejandro’ or the sometimes slightly too heavy rock arrangements hardly stick. Nearly twenty years of tasty pop hits and visible chemistry between everyone in the enormous production do the rest.
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