Lady Gaga is so back.
The American star, 39 – real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – dominated music in the 00s, and while she dabbled in acting for a few years, she has now returned to her musical roots.
Headlining weekend one at Coachella on Friday night, fans rushed to social media to declare one thing and one thing only: Lady Gaga is back.
Performing an almost two-hour-long show in the desert, the songstress, who recently released Mayhem, her seventh studio album, gave festival goers such a ‘spectacular’ performance that many are calling it the ‘best Coachella show of all.’
Taking to X, @smazos shared a video of Beyonce’s 2018 Coachella performance and compared it to Gaga’s, writing: ‘Seeing this after Lady Gaga yesterday, I think Gaga has officially the best Coachella show of all.’
@babyloniaan agreed, posting: ‘Lady Gaga just snatched the crown for the greatest Coachella performance of all time. No debate.’
While @citizengatsby also weighed in: ‘I’m watching Lady Gaga’s Coachella set from Friday. Spectacular!’
‘Best. Coachella. set. ever. LADY GAGA DID THAT’ wrote @throwbacksgaga, and @mewanaaaa wrote: ‘omg the old lady gaga is so back!!’
Fans weren’t the only ones impressed, either. The Guardian gave it a perfect 5/5 score and dubbed it the singer’s ‘electrifying’ return to the desert after her 2017 performance.
It’s not hard to see why Mother Monster’s show has earned so much praise among fans and critics. As well as being a career-spanning two-hour set which was filled with Easter eggs, she split the performance into four acts and described it as an ‘opera house in the desert’.
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It all began when Gaga made a grand entrance wearing an unmissable red dress and stood in front of a gothic-inspired backdrop, accessorised with gargoyles and angels.
Singing Bloody Mary, fans likened it to a ‘satanic ritual’ and were captivated as she moved through hit songs throughout her career, including Abracadabra, Judas and Scheiße.
Going on to perform her career-launching 2008 single, Poker Face, Gaga’s stage set transformed into a chess board as she and her dancers took part in a dance battle.
She closed her set with Born This Way, followed by Bad Romance, before disappearing off stage, but while she may have been gone, social media was only just getting started.
@antpats2 wrote: ‘The way Gaga is out here still giving 13-17-year-old songs new life with these new remixes and renditions and making them fresh and exciting is truly unmatched.’
‘Lady Gaga didn’t headline Coachella. she reimagined it. the direction, the operatic arrangements, the theatricality, the vocals, the architecture, the costumes, the light design. Wagnerian in ambition, pop in language, divine in execution,’ @LMonsterReacts added.
It comes after the singer spoke to the New York Times last month about her performance, admitting she was losing sleep as she prepared because she wanted it to be perfect.
‘I’m getting ready for Coachella, and I’m so, so excited, but I’ve definitely lost sleep a whole bunch of nights, and it’s because I want to do a great job,’ she told the publication.
Easter Eggs we spotted in Lady Gaga’s Coachella set:
From props to costumes and little things in between, Lady Gaga’s weekend one Coachella set was filled with Easter Eggs from her career.
- Metal Crutches: She came on stage using metal crushes and fans were quick to point out they looked quite similar to those from her 2009 Paparazzi music video.
- White Crown: Speaking of accessories, during Bad Romance, one of her dancers wore an iconic white crown, which the singer wore during the music video in 2009.
- Skeletons: The crown wasn’t the only homage to Bad Romance either. In one Coachella moment, she lay down in a bed of sand surrounded by skeletons, which were also in the original music video.
‘If there’s a time and a date where you can make the public smile, from 11 p.m. to one in the morning on this day, I want to make it happen.’
This is just the first of two performances from the Paparazzi singer.
She will return to the stage next weekend, April 18, for weekend two of the popular festival. It’s unclear how the show will differ from her first, if at all, it’s likely to be a hit with the nearly 250,000-person crowd.
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