Lady Gaga’s superb piano is a translucent blue. It’s so much like a neon-lit aquarium that you half expect fish to be swimming in it. They would be startled by her voice, belting out hits in an array of octaves. She’s as Elton John as she’s ever been, always more than lobster hats, anyway. Gaga is a technical virtuoso and a very human mess.
That has been her appeal for a decade, and, as she stretches out the power ballad The Edge of Glory to include the names of her Italian relatives — I caught her new tour in Milan — as well as some “Don’t give up on your dreams!” filler, her fans are overwhelmed at having her back.
After all, it’s been touch and go. The tour, which reaches Britain this week, was long delayed. It was planned for her most recent record, Joanne, which came out in October 2016. Last year, though, after a handful of US dates, Gaga was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a condition that causes chronic pain.
That’s terrible for anyone, but career-threatening for a performer. A Netflix film, Gaga: Five Foot Two, detailed her fears, so this comeback was emotional enough already, even without her Italian gigs being treated like a spiritual homecoming. And even without Joanne being mostly about her dead aunt.
Which isn’t to say this wasn’t a fun show, at times. Donatella Versace was there, with hair visible from the gods. Also, Gaga performed her three biggest hits — Poker Face, Bad Romance, Born This Way — in full costume, to wild choreography; routines as glorious as their world-conquering choruses.
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Dancin’ in Circles, from Joanne, is introduced as being for the “hooker in my soul”; and, as it’s about masturbation, has a dance move based around Lady Gaga shuffling her hand in front of her lady garden. Then, for the crowd favourite Alejandro, five worried-looking, effectively naked male dancers appear — like Chippendales who fled a show when they discovered the apocalypse had started — and start making out.
That is all terrific stand-up-and-applaud stuff, cheeky and rousing, like her bombastic older gigs from the era of The Fame Monster, with its animatronic sea beast — events you would recommend even to your Gaga-sceptic friends. This tour, though, also features videos during costume changes that show the singer choking under the metaphorically asphyxiating pressure of fame. It’s a real buzzkill for the whooping thousands, some of whom have spent hundreds on their drag wear.
Most of the other videos are about how trapped she is, while one has her dying between two closing walls. A cue, perhaps, to go to the bar. In fairness, the brutalist venue, part Pompidou, part Barbican, part the Star Wars planet Tatooine, plays its part, bringing a shadowy austerity that won’t be the case at, say, the shiny, corporate O2. But some things will remain the same.
When Gaga plays her early breakthrough, Paparazzi, for instance, which still sounds fantastic, she does so on a bridge that stretches across the crowd. All fine and fun until the end of the song, when a male dancer beats her to death and makes casual ticket buyers wonder if they should have opted for the endless Day-Glo razzmatazz of a Coldplay show for their annual arena fix instead.
Of course, she’s not dead, just a very good actor, but minutes after the Paparazzi pummelling, she’s back to sing Angel Down — a slow number about the shooting of Trayvon Martin. Yet another underrated song from Joanne, this is incredibly moving, yes, but make no mistake: this is a changed artist. She has always been political, but when she was protesting gay rights in the army, she did so wearing a meat dress. The only thing she is wearing on her sleeve now is her heart.
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Gaga has never, to her fans, been similar to the mainstream artists people lazily lump her in with. She is not Pink. She is not really a pop star, being more comfortable in the era-hogging chameleon company of artists such as David Bowie, who matter so much to fans that they adopt a lifestyle to become more like them.
Only Nirvana gigs boasted as many attendees who look like the artists they have paid to see; and because of the liberal politics Gaga stands for, perhaps because those politics have had a rough year, and, of course, because of the songs, she has attracted fans for life. Pop moves on, it’s fickle, but do enough for your followers early on — as Gaga did, in terms of how much attention and support she gave them — and a career of arena gigs is all but guaranteed. Her Little Monsters may be bigger now, but they’re still in need.
Towards the end of the generously lengthy show, Gaga reads out a letter from a girl whose father died when she was nine. She thanks her idol for being “an amazing soul”, which is like retweeting your own praise, but as I pan around, expecting cynical side-eyes and giggles, I only see looks of adoration and hands held in prayer. Everyone is shouting: “Gaga! Gaga!” Nobody leaves early.
Down in the standing area, dozens of “Stay Joanne” signs are held aloft, and the last song, Million Reasons, from the album of that relative’s name, is met with the rapture with which casual attendees treated Bad Romance. So, yes, the show is a bit sombre, with heavy-handed videos and between-song chat about her mother and father crying, but this isn’t for people who wince at sentimentality. It is for the fanatics who treat Gaga as family.
That she does the same says it all. It’s a club of mutual affection, though I’m not sure it’s accepting new members.
