After Lady Gaga went to Coachella in April and delivered one of the greatest shows in the festival’s history it was fair to wonder: How on earth can she top that when her Mayhem Ball Tour arrives in July?
Where the Coachella show maximized the the festival’s massive main stage, the tour was booked into arenas with stages maybe a third of the size she had to play with in the desert.
And while everything Lady Gaga delivered at Coachella dazzled like shiny new treats for fans in the field or at home on social media and the festival livestream, these audiences would mostly know what was coming.
On Monday, July 28, at the Kia Forum, we returned to the Mayhem Ball to see it again. And after watching 29 songs over more than two hours, we came away with a new realization: Size doesn’t matter.
At the Inglewood arena, which Gaga also plays on July 29, Aug. 1, and Aug. 2, the more intimate setting allowed fans to actually see Mother Mayhem much more easily than from the vast festival grounds of Coachella.
While the stage sets are scaled down somewhat to fit the Kia Forum and similarly sized venues she’s playing, the set is scaled up. Nine songs have been added to the set, making it almost a third longer than it was in April.
And the production, from the stage design to the costumes and choreography, remains as creatively artistic as ever.
The night opened with Lady Gaga gliding into view atop a tower of crimson fabric, singing “Bloody Mary” as the skirts of the tower drew back to reveal dancers caged inside. “Abracadabra” followed with Gaga emerging from inside the structure before “Judas” drew her back to her perch again.
The storyline of the show revolves are dualities within the protagonist Lady Gaga portrays. Sometimes it surfaced in the color palette – a video clip that opened the night portrayed a dialogue between dueling Gagas, one clad in black, the other in white. They faced off again in person after “Garden Of Eden” ended with Gaga and her male dancers, all dressed in black, freezing in place as that number ended.
“Welcome to the opera house!” she shouted to the crowd in reference to the decrepit two-story Victorian theater of her stage set. “This is your house, and this is my house.”
Then, turning to glare a dancer dressed in a white gown with lace obscuring her face, she demanded, “What are you doing in my house?”
“Poker Face” followed with Lady Gaga and her alter ego dancing it out on a black-and-white chessboard as dancers divided equally into white and black costumes gyrated for their individual champion before Gaga shot her rival down.
As at Coachella, the show was divided into four acts. Each mixed material from her 2025 album “Mayhem,” from which 13 of 14 tracks were performed, with older hits from across her catalog.
Highlights of Act II: And She Fell Into a Gothic Dream included new songs “Perfect Celebrity” and “Disease,” both of which she sang while lying on her back in a sandy boneyard, surrounded by skeletons and skulls, several of which were dancers who eventually emerged from their faux graves to perform alongside her.
Those were followed by a run of fan favorites, including “Paparazzi” and “Alejandro” with “LoveDrug” from her 2008 debut “The Fame,” a new addition for the tour.
“I fell into this dream a long time ago,” she said as she walked from the end of the ramp back to the main stage after “Alejandro.” “It’s been 20 years we’ve spent together. I don’t ever want to wake up from this dream – please stay with me in this dream.”
The third act shifted into the dance-pop grooves that “Mayhem” and her earlier albums focus on. The new tunes “Killah” and “Zombieboy” had Gaga and her two dozen male and female dancers slinking up and down and around the stage, as fans danced and sang along from their seats. “Just Dance,” another older number returned to her set since Coachella, received a huge response a few songs later.
Act IV: Every Chessboard Has Two Queens had the greatest difference from what it had been at Coachella. “Die With a Smile,” a lovely ballad originally recorded as a duet by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, moved down from an earlier spot in the show. Three new additions for the tour – “Kill For Love,” “Summerboy,” and “Million Reasons also showed up here.
But the biggest moment here was “Born This Way,” an anthem written to support members of the LGBTQ community. “This is for the community,” she said as the song kicked off. “So hands up for your pride, for your freedom.”
The crowd danced and sang as loudly as it had all night as Gaga descended to the pit alongside the ramp, hugging fans, accepting gifts, including a Pride flag, signing autographs, all without missing a note.
“Shallow,” her Oscar-winning song with Bradley Cooper from “A Star Is Born,” also stood out as the end of the show neared. At Coachella, she’d played it solo at a piano on the remote stage. For the tour, she stepped into a boat designed to look like the mythological Charon’s Boat, the vessel that carries passengers across the River Styx between the worlds of the living and dead.
A red-clad figure pushed the boat down the ramp with a single oar as Lady Gaga sang one of her most moving ballads as most of the crowd sang with her.
“Vanish Into You” closed out the main set, its powerful vocal showing off the strength of Lady Gaga’s voice after two hours of a physically intense performance. “Bad Romance” followed as the Finale to the previous four acts before an encore of “How Bad Do U Want Me” and a singalong to the track of “Swine” closed out the night with bows from the entire troupe.
“Before this show tonight, I’d have a chat with anybody backstage: ‘I don’t know what’s gonna happen, it’s a Monday night,’” Lady Gaga said at one point late in the show. “You all (bleeping) showed me. You came out here blazing, ready to go.”
She noted that she’d moved from her hometown of New York City to Los Angeles at 19, and it hadn’t always been easy.
“People didn’t always believe in me out here,” she said, growing emotional. “You believed in me. You were always there for me.”
Watching her performance, and the audience’s reactions throughout, it’s clear that this love and belief is a mutual thing.