Review of Lady Gaga's Chromatica Ball Tour
"Review" is generous. These are the prettily packaged emotional ramblings of a madwoman.
(Pictured: top right is me “dressed up” as “Lady Gaga”—I had some streamers and a DREAM—for my 7th birthday, bottom is me dressed up as her for Halloween. :p)
I sat down to watch Chromatica Ball (long overdue), thinking it would be an easy, absentminded watch for me. I grossly underestimated the visceral emotional response it would conjure out of me. Quite foolish, since this happens every time I see a video of Lady Gaga performing live. This is what I wrote during and after my viewing experience.
Chromatica ball, much like each of Gaga’s tours, is a masterclass in camp and the avant garde. She’s always been a chameleon, and she displays it for us once again in this performance. She traverses between cool, chic, sexy, peculiar, unnerving, and polarizing. She doesn’t apologize.
There’s no speculation to be made of who her influences and inspirations are. She bares them all nakedly as she has the past fifteen years. Madonna, MJ, Freddie Mercury among the titans in the industry whose spectacle and dynamic she borrows from - with the effervescence of a Donna Summer, and the soul of a Bruce Springsteen. Incomplete of course without the underlying notes of ballroom, Liza Minnelli, and drag.
But when she opens her mouth to sing, that is undeniably, 100% pure Gaga.
She sings with as much clarity, breath control, character, and emotion as she did during the Fame Monster Ball tour. To dance around the subject of aging would be irresponsible - in many ways it’s evident, in others, she looks and sounds exactly the same. The first few songs did raise questions on whether she’s past her prime, with my sister remarking that “it’s giving Frankie Valli performing live” (standing in one place while singing). This is, of course, the most common commentary to be made about female figures in pop culture. Gaga is 38 now, and for many women that means being discarded in the elephant graveyard. There’s been buzz online since Chromatica dropped that she may finally be aging out of pop stardom. Accusations of Ozempic face, dressing for LinkedIn rather than the gay clubs in NYC she got her start in, and of course, speculation about pregnancy. Some would watch “Bad Romance”, the opener, and say her age is showing. Such as my sister.
But this criticism was quickly squashed by the end of Act I, and if not by then, by “911” in Act II for sure. Her illustrious stage presence and ability to dance in full out choreography while belting is as stunning as it was the first time she graced us with a stadium tour.
“Chromatica ball” is a genius of Gaga’s own design - much like everyone’s favorite pop girlie (T*ylor Sw*ft), Gaga dons her various eras like different personas. While she expertly embodied the world and character of Chromatica, it’s when she plays her old songs that we see her; watching “Monster” made it clear that in principle, her music isn’t a costume to be put on or a character to be played. It’s just her.
In the decade and a half of her career, her energy, commanding presence, enthusiasm, and artistry has not once faltered. If anything, the commercial success she met after Fame Monster only emboldened her choices and empowered her to take it one step further. More dancers, more visuals, crazier costume changes, flying in the air on weird contraptions, singing from rotating pseudo cyberpunk coffins, and fire effects that put her 2009 pyro bra to shame.
Most importantly, she knows who she is underneath it all. She pays homage to the queer community for giving her the success she has. She strips it down for a piano rendition of “Born This Way”. I can only guess there wasn’t a dry eye in the stadium. There certainly wasn’t in my bedroom where I was watching from.
By the time she sings “Angel Down” emotions reach a fever pitch. Always unafraid to cause a stir, she talks politics in between lyrics, wrapped in vulnerable adlibs and anecdotes as smoke from the fog machine billows around her. It’s bone chilling. She knows when to drop the act and show what’s real. She does so here with great intention and precision. It feels artfully calculated, when she chooses to do this, yet achingly authentic in the way she does it.
I hope all the skeptics that weren’t sure about this concert film after the first five or ten minutes stuck around for this moment. It makes it all worth it. It’s this breakage in the waves that we can credit for her sustained success all these years. It’s what keeps us riding with her too.
If there was any question whether she can still hold her own in the fast paced, expendable nature of today’s pop industry, Chromatica Ball answered it: Gaga is here. And she’s not leaving any time soon.