Joanne World Tour Reviews

[Mr S 7,601]

I thought it would be good idea to put all the critic reviews together for reference. I'll update it as the tour continues

 

VANCOUVER

Review: Lady Gaga kicks off Joanne tour with jaw-dropping Vancouver show

Spoiler

MARSHA LEDERMAN

The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Aug. 02, 2017 11:28AM EDT

If you’re a pop star who has built her career on out-there showmanship bordering on performance art (in addition to infectious hooks and vocal talents), then it’s a safe bet that your live show will be consistent with that kind of kick-ass, highly staged aesthetic. So when Lady Gaga launched her Joanne World Tour in Vancouver Tuesday night, nobody was expecting ho-hum.

Still, wow.

The production on this show was jaw-dropping, eyebrow-raising, stunning and seamless, with intricate choreography along with pyrotechnics, and a complex, ingenious design. A multiplatform main stage that took on countless configurations was as shape-shifting as the singer has been herself. Lighting pods hanging from the ceiling became video screens, then descended to become catwalks (and then flipped onto their sides to become video screens once again), giving Gaga and her gang of fantastic dancers bridges so they could spread out to smaller platforms across the floor and finally to the other side of Rogers Arena, where a jagged-heart-shaped light-up piano awaited. The whole place was her stage.

The show went off without major hitches (there were teeny hiccups; the odd bit of feedback, too-long pauses between sets, that sort of thing) although the expected 8:30 p.m. start time was pushed back to about 9:15, following an announcement explaining that “final preparations” were taking “a little longer.”

Sorry for the cliché, but it was worth the wait.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta released her album Joanne last fall, inspired by her namesake, her father’s sister Joanne, who died when her father was a little boy in 1974 – 12 years before the singer was born.

“I named my record after my father’s sister because what I realized is for all of us, there is grief passed on from generation to generation, from our parents, from our grandparents. Things that happened to them that were passed on to you,” she told the packed, adoring and flashy-fashioned crowd.

“When I look back on my life, there’s a series of events that took place that blasted me. And I walk around a lot wondering if I’ll ever feel the way I used to feel. What was my life before the fame? What happened after? What happened during? And all the things that made me who I am as a young woman. So if you can all just take a moment and give yourself some mercy for that moment that blasted you so hard you can’t remember who you were before. For me that moment has one name, and it’s Joanne,” she ended, her voice breaking, before launching into the title track, sitting on a stool with a guitar.

Her voice was ballad-beautiful and strong on this and other vocal-flaunting songs such as Angel Down and Million Reasons, so you can’t really complain about the obvious backing tracks on some of the wilder stuff.

At just over two hours, the show included a number of other songs from the new album – including A-Yo, Dancin’ in Circles (the first time this was performed live), Perfect Illusion and a rocking John Wayne – as well as monster hits spanning her career.

There were no anti-Trump tirades from the singer who rallied for Hillary Clinton during the U.S. election campaign; the only time things got political (not that she nor her audience would necessarily see this as political) was when she made a plea for gay rights.

Noticing a gay pride flag that someone tried to toss on to the stage (it’s unclear if this was a plant as it seemed a little too perfectly timed), Gaga asked a security guard to give it to her, then held it up.

“Needless to say, I have a lot to say about this issue,” she said on the piano stage at the far end of the arena. “But the most important thing that I have to say about it is that everybody’s got to love each other. … So for any of you who don’t believe in equality that are here this evening, come to mama.” She then played – of course – Come to Mama, a singalong show-stopping version of The Edge of Glory, and finally her LGBTQ anthem Born This Way, which saw a perfectly timed return to the main stage across those catwalks, down a staircase and finally under the stage.

Countless costume changes – some onstage, most off – required numerous breaks for she of the many bodysuits. There were extended musical interludes and video sequences that depicted Gaga, for instance, in an old-time convertible blasting out pink smoke, Gaga on an Escher-type staircase cube and Gaga in her dressing room clawing at a transformative inhaling device.

Gaga is all about her Little Monsters – her fans – but at times the bantered platitudes bordered on patronizing, cheesy, even juvenile. “Just remember that I believe in you!” Really? What do you actually know about us?

In the final, glorious set, Bad Romance was followed by The Cure and then Million Reasons. This finale felt like a kind of on-theme epilogue from Gaga: Bad romance (or bad whatever), Little Monsters? Here’s a cure. And a million reasons to know you’ll be okay.

Lady Gaga is in Edmonton Aug. 3, Montreal Sept. 4 and Toronto Sept. 6 and 7.

Globe and Mail

 

EDMONTON

Lady Gaga world tour as impressive as it gets

Spoiler

TOM MURRAY
More from Tom Murray

Published on: August 4, 2017 | Last Updated: August 4, 2017 7:24 AM MDT

Part positive affirmation, part Broadway musical, part rock spectacle.

That might be the easiest way, to sum up Lady Gaga’s show at Rogers Place last night, but it wouldn’t be entirely accurate.

A big, over-the-top assault on the senses, Gaga’s Joanne World Tour is as impressive as an arena show gets, with a dramatic arc that hinges as much on the singer’s charisma and vocal skills as it does any of the special effects. That she has both in spades can’t be denied, even if you might not find her music all that appealing; and if you can’t find at least one of her songs appealing you’re probably actively trying to resist. For the ecstatically happy, packed out audience at Rogers Place this wasn’t an issue at all.

She kicked off with Diamond Heart, the opening track from her latest album, Joanne, and then filled the always moving stage with a seemingly endless number of dancers for A-Yo, also from her newest. Gaga then relented on the new music with a stellar version of early hit Poker Face, leading up to one of the first of several intermissions through the evening. These were accompanied by videos and the band vamping on what sounded like instrumental soundtrack rock from the ’80s as she disappeared for a costume change. 

Gaga emerged for Just Dance with a massive, gaudily fringed keytar, one of her (quite amazing and indefatigable) dancers circling around her and holding the microphone for her to sing into before she dispensed with the instrument halfway through. Love Game saw Gaga holding onto what appeared to be a stylized mace, looking like the fashion forward ruler of a future dystopian wasteland presiding over disco troops. ARTPOP banger Applause was prefaced by a disturbing but striking video of Gaga with long, twisted fingernails inhaling a mystery substance.     

The ambitious production seemed to run off without too many hitches. There were occasional long pauses between numbers, Gaga and dancers frozen together in place while the applause tapered off, but considering the stamina they showed it seems crabby to mention it. Even the musicians went over and above their usual duties, especially bassist Jonny Goood, who kept up on his instrument while doing the splits.

The concert kicked into high gear as three large UFO-like objects hovering above the floor drifted down and revealed themselves to be bridges for Gaga and her dancers, now bedecked in flowery spandex, to cross over to a platform on the other side of the arena. There she gave a shout out to LGBTQ audience members and then sat down at a laser beam shooting piano for the bouncy Come to Mama, followed by a heartfelt take on The Edge of Glory where she almost appeared to be channelling Liza Minnelli.  

She donned the bottom half of a wedding dress for the anthemic, celebratory Born This Way. Bloody Mary saw the entire troupe in the appropriate colour, Gaga’s dancers tumbling after her like the asylum inmates in Marat Sade, while Dancing in Circles was her affirmation of the importance that the club scene still holds for her. Pulled high into the air and then enclosed into the ceiling on one of the bridges, she then re-emerged to take an acoustic guitar on the spare, soul-bearing Joanne.

It was the naked, emotional core of the show, with Bad Romance and The Cure bringing fans back around to a more jubilant ending.

Edmonton Journal

 

TACOMA

Lady Gaga treats fans to an expansive, smart hit-filled set in Tacoma

Spoiler

By Owen R. Smith

Special to The Seattle Times

Lady Gaga has the kind of fans that would probably have gone home happy if she had showed up to the Tacoma Dome Saturday night and given a lecture on quantum physics, such is their reverence for their queen.

Gaga treated the sold-out crowd to a different kind of master class instead, cherry picking some of her biggest hits and new material from her 2016 album “Joanne” to fill out an expansive two-hour set with an intoxicating mix of her best work.

As an ominous, pink neon countdown hit zero, Gaga stormed the stage promptly at 8:55 p.m. to the crunchy chords of “Diamond Heart.” It had been quite the build up given that there was no opening act, but the long wait only seemed to wind the crowd up further.

The best pop shows function much the same as summer blockbusters: they are loud escapes from reality, full of action and spectacular set pieces and they’re unafraid of a little fan service. Gaga embraced the spectacle, setting the place on fire as she launched into “Poker Face” while a section of the stage raised her high into the air.

It was almost odd to hear the iconic song and realize that it is nine years old. Gaga herself noted the passage of time, but there was no regret or nostalgia in her voice, simply pride for keeping the passionate relationship she enjoys with her fans going for that long.

While the old hits were certainly welcome — “Telephone” off 2009’s “The Fame Monster” in particular was almost a religious experience — it was Gaga’s new material that proved most compelling. Whether it was the explosive flash and swagger of “John Wayne” or “Come to Mama” (played on a satellite stage in the middle of the arena), she seemed to relish her new songs most.

Two more new ones, “Angel Down” and “Joanne,” provided Gaga with a quieter moment to catch her breath after executing a barrage of impressive choreography and turned out to be nice vocal highlights. Gaga isn’t in possession of an absolute laser voice like Carrie Underwood, but she’s come a long way for someone whose massive success has never been predicated on singing perfection.

Gaga closed the show with “Bad Romance” and “The Cure,” a pair of singles that served as a reminder that few people in the industry write more anthemic pop songs. After a brief delay, she came back out to the satellite stage for “Million Reasons.”

“I try to make the worst seem better,” she belted out, surrounded by thousands of hands reaching toward her on all sides. As the crowd sang along reverently, it was hard not to think Gaga had succeeded.

Seattle Times

 

Review: Lady Gaga, the Flashy Provocateur, Battles Lady Gaga, the Raw Voice

Spoiler

By JON CARAMANICA AUG. 6, 2017

TACOMA, Wash. — Lady Gaga introduced her performance of “Joanne” at the Tacoma Dome here on Saturday night with a long disquisition on what she called “generational grief” and how it shaped this song, the title track from her latest album. She dedicated the performance to people who have been affected by a pain so long-running they can’t remember a time before it, and let them know that they were not alone.

She performed it on acoustic guitar, eventually joining two of her bandmates, also playing guitar, for a maudlin, Eagles-like effect that punctured the sharp vulnerability with which she opened.

After a short interlude, she returned to the stage, in a white outfit with winged glasses, for “Bad Romance,” from 2009, one of her biggest pop hits. Her performance here was the total opposite: energetic, precise, committedly plastic and fiery.

The juxtaposition was disorienting. This show, the first United States stop of her new tour, highlighted the tensions that bedevil Lady Gaga, especially at this stage of her career. She is titanic when it comes to huge smears of feeling, and also to pulverizing disco-pop. She radiates rawness, and is facile with costuming. But all of these things don’t always go hand in hand, and often Lady Gaga finds herself in tugs of war with herself — sincerity versus artifice, extravagance versus asceticism, and so on.

Ostensibly this was a tour to celebrate “Joanne,” her fourth proper solo studio album, which was released in October and has been her least successful. But the songs from that record were among the least effective here: the messy rock theater of “A-Yo,” the drowsy “John Wayne,” the awkwardly jaunty “Dancin’ in Circles.” They were also among the least characteristic. Lady Gaga thrives at the extremes of theatrical contrivance and stone-cold intimacy, and those are the modes in which this performance succeeded.

The concert’s first half was disjointed, shifting styles and attitudes seemingly at random. But about midway through, Lady Gaga struck a rhythm, after three bulbous pods hovering near the roof of the arena cleaved to reveal footbridges that descended to the floor, forming a path she could traverse, with stops at two small circular platforms along the way, from the main stage to a smaller one at the far end of the room.

That stage had a piano, and here Lady Gaga was at home. She gave “Come to Mama,” from “Joanne,” a hokey Broadway-cabaret arrangement, but redeemed it with thick Mama Cass singing. She followed that with “The Edge of Glory,” an older anthem, sung solely with piano, which she introduced with a story about the death of a close friend.

There aren’t likely to be many more bracing displays of vocal verve in an arena setting this year, or any other. Her performance was tragic and yet full of hope, warm, wounded and ecstatic. It embodied this singer at her best, serving as a conduit for profound feeling. That continued on two later songs from “Joanne”: “Angel Down” and “Million Reasons,” which she sang at the piano, and sometimes standing atop it.

Lady Gaga made her name with ostentation, ironic flamboyance and pseudo performance art. That strangeness once gave her centrist disco-pop real teeth, but it has long since decayed. Throughout the night, during her most effervescent hits, she was flanked onstage by a dozen or so dancers, who largely served as a kind of visual starch, frenetic but undistinguished, moving a lot but communicating little.

Older hits like “Paparazzi” and “Telephone” still had pizazz, but they paled compared with the moments when Lady Gaga took the show into her own hands. It all suggested a molting on the horizon. Take away the dancers, the ornamentation, the arched-eyebrow provocation and leave only the pain — a show solely devoted to elegantly rendered bruises might be peak Gaga.

NY Times

 

LOS ANGELES

Review Lady Gaga was a better troubadour than a superstar at the Forum

Mikael Wood Pop Music Critic

Spoiler

Images of a staircase seemingly inspired by Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis.” A Latin-accented beat that echoed Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita.” Sharply angled shoulder pads like the ones David Bowie wore during his Ziggy Stardust phase.

These were just some of the many pop-culture references Lady Gaga threw at her audience — and in a sequence of just three songs — Tuesday night at the Forum, where the singer brought her latest world tour for the first of three concerts.

A multimedia extravaganza with costume changes, slick video interludes and a network of movable bridges that connected the main stage to a second platform at the rear of the arena, the two-hour show offered plenty of the flash and theater that have been Lady Gaga’s specialty since she emerged nearly a decade ago with high-concept singles such as “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance.”

Yet this tour, which launched last week and will continue through mid-December, follows the star’s 2016 album, “Joanne,” which she’s called her most personal work. She reiterated that idea Tuesday in a long story she told about the real-life Joanne, an aunt whose death at a young age made a dramatic impact on her family; Lady Gaga described the record as her attempt to explore the pain passed down from her grandparents to her parents to the singer and her sister.

So in addition to the elaborate set pieces her fans expect — “Bloody Mary,” for instance, had the look of a spirited satanic orgy — Tuesday’s performance featured a number of smaller moments, including the new album’s title track, for which Lady Gaga perched on a stool and accompanied herself on acoustic guitar. (True, she was basically dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow. But still.)

What was surprising was how much more effective the intimate episodes were than the rest of the concert. Not because Lady Gaga had never stripped down before; she’s been peppering her gigs with piano ballads for years, eager to demonstrate her vocal chops to anybody convinced her singing is a studio creation.

But in the past those moments were often the phoniest, as though she’d entered a kind of stage-school zombie state. At April’s Coachella festival, the singer began her headlining set with a thrilling 45-minute sprint through some of her highest-energy, most provocative material — then brought the production to a standstill when she sat down behind a keyboard and turned her song “The Edge of Glory” into showy but unfeeling cabaret.

Here, in contrast, she was funny and poignant as she did the new record’s “Come to Mama” at a glowing piano positioned on that smaller stage. “Joanne” was disarmingly tender, with a blend of grief and hope that felt lived, not rehearsed.

Even “The Edge of Glory,” which she again performed by herself, seemed reawakened to the transformative sensations the song describes. Halfway through the tune, Lady Gaga paused to say a few words about a friend who’d recently died, then started back in on what appeared to be the wrong chord. Yet the mistake hardly fazed her; she was plugged deeply into the music’s emotion, not at all worried by the demands of precision.

Indeed, the show’s bigger numbers — those with lights and choreography and a muscular backing band — suggested she’s begun to tire of carefully synchronizing all those moving parts. In busy old hits like “LoveGame” and “Telephone,” Lady Gaga put across little visible excitement, while “Bad Romance” had her wearing an oversized pair of winged glasses, perhaps to disguise a look of utter boredom in her eyes.

And you could almost hear the regret in “The Cure,” a laughably trendy electro-pop single she released in the wake of “Joanne’”s underwhelming commercial performance.

Lady Gaga closed Tuesday’s concert with an appealingly raw rendition of the new album’s country-ish “Million Reasons,” and here she interrupted herself for another aside, in this case to congratulate her audience for watching her halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl.

Her point seemed to be about the message of inclusion her fans had sent with their enthusiasm, the way they’d helped make a once-rigid American institution safe for Lady Gaga’s embrace of all kinds.

But really she was just reminding us that she’d played the Super Bowl — one clear sign that superstar razzle-dazzle dies hard.

LA Times

 

Lady Gaga Brings All Her Pop-Star Personas to One Stage for Joanne World Tour Stop in Los Angeles

8/9/2017 by Katie Atkinson

Spoiler

"I only act different because I don't know how to act the same," Lady Gagaannounced more than halfway through her Joanne World Tour stop at The Forum in Inglewood, California, on Tuesday night.

In that one sentence, she encapsulated everything Little Monsters would witness over the extravagant two-hour-plus show, from just a girl in a pink cowboy hat strumming a guitar to an avant-garde grande dame in feathered eye mask and studded leotard, defying gravity while dancing in heels on a 45-degree-angle stage.

All the Gagas were in the Haus, and below, we run through the six best moments from a show filled with nonstop moments:

"My Name Is Joanne!"
The show stayed very true to the tour's title, as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta honored her late aunt and middle-namesake by playing nine of her latest album's 11 tracks and telling stories about how Joanne's death before she was even born impacted her tight-knit family. When Lady Gaga declared after second song "A-YO," "My name is Joanne!," the crowd launched into a 30-second chant of "Jo-Anne! Jo-Anne! Jo-Anne!" "I wanted to write an album that came from the deepest pain that I had in me, something I had to say," she explained from the stage. "And the truth is, that what I realized when I dug deep down into myself, there was a pain that was passed on generation to generation that we all shared -- an intergenerational pain, a grief passed on by our grandparents, through our parents. When I was a young girl, I would sit at the dinner table, and I got that strong sense over Christmas and Thanksgiving that there was somebody missing. … For me, that pain has only one name, and it's Joanne."

A Welcome Deep Cut
Amid the Joanne-heavy set, one Born This Way album cut truly stood out: "Scheiße." The song -- a synth-heavy fan favorite -- was never a single, though it did crack the top 10 of Billboard's Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart, and dancing fans were clearly thrilled with the unexpected set-list addition.

Ronson Family Tree
Producer Mark Ronson was a constant presence during the Joanne rollout, but there was another Ronson family member Gaga wanted to spotlight on Tuesday night: Mark's DJ/songwriter sister Samantha. "I'd like to dedicate this song to a friend of mine who's here tonight," she said, before launching into universal-love anthem "Come to Mama." "I made Joanne with her brother, Mark Ronson -- Samantha Ronson, my friend, whom I have stayed up many a night talking about this very issue of the world loving each other. It was just her birthday. For those of you who are not here in the name of equality, I just have one thing to say to you: Come to Mama!"

Angel Down
Another dedication went out to Andre, the husband of Gaga's late best friend Sonja Durham. Fans might remember Sonja from her October appearance at the New York Bud Light Dive Bar Tour stop, when the longtime Haus of Gaga managing director was still battling stage 4 breast, brain and lung cancer. She died in May, and Gaga performed an emotional, stripped-down rendition of dance hit "The Edge of Glory" in honor of her family, tearfully sharing love from behind her piano throughout the song.

"Paparazzi" Attack
Gaga's uber-dramatic side came out in her "Paparazzi" performance, which ends with a choreographed attack on the bedazzled pop star before she ascends into the rafters and re-emerges as the Joanne troubadour, complete with cowboy hat and guitar strapped to her back. Is this the death of the dancing queen we met almost a decade ago? Or just another step in her constant evolution? Sounds like we'll have to wait to see what Gaga emerges when she releases her sixth studio album.

Gaga's Ideal Haus
By far the most impressive part of the Joanne World Tour stop was Gaga's use of The Forum space. She (of course) didn't feel confined to the main stage at the top of the floor, instead incorporating two circular stages in the center of the crowd and even a bonus stage at the opposite end. A series of bridges descended from the rafters, hidden in giant projection pods throughout the show, that connected all the stages and allowed Lady Gaga and her dancers to traverse the entire length of the arena floor. This meant no matter where you were sitting, you had an equal shot to be front-and-center with Mother Monster. Gaga even finished up the concert on the farthest back stage, which housed a translucent grand piano and was the setting for the dramatic "A Million Reasons" finale. The piano disappeared into the stage as she played her final notes, before Gaga scurried out from underneath to wild applause as she waved to fans -- equal parts elusive artist and accessible woman of the people, kind of like her multiple-personality show.

Billboard

 

SAN FRANSISCO

Lady Gaga speaks out for love and justice amid dazzling AT&T Park show

By Tony Bravo 

Updated 2:35 pm, Monday, August 14, 2017

Spoiler

Lady Gaga performed her first-ever show as a stadium headliner at San Francisco’s AT&T Park on Sunday, Aug. 13, and the timing could not have been better.

A day after the violence around the white supremacist march in Virginia, nearly 40,000 fans came to the outdoor concert with the expectation that “Mother Monster” would make her voice heard on the subject.

“I usually use this part of the show to shout out to the LGBTQ community,” Gaga said to the crowd in the middle of her two-hour set. “But tonight I cannot do just that. Tonight we must say hello and a great welcome to every single person of every single type and color and background and religion that is here.

“Don’t worry, I’m not confused,” she continued. “I know I’m a white woman standing up here tonight saying that to you, but I promise you that I will speak love into this world every day and I will remind myself every single day to speak love to every color, to every background, to every religion no matter what. And I dare you to do the same.”

The concert came at the end of a busy weekend for music lovers in San Francisco, as the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival wound down in Golden Gate Park. Gaga was asked to perform at the 10th anniversary for the three-day music event, according to festival organizers, but turned it down in favor of her own concert, part of her “Joanne” world tour that kicked off in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Aug. 1.

After an electrifying performance where the singer jumped from new songs to old hits as easily as she jumped around the hydraulic stage in her Giuseppe Zanotti boots, the decision to go solo seems to have been the correct one.

The format of Gaga’s show owes more than a passing acknowledgment to the chameleonic female singers who paved the way for her. Tina Turner, Grace Jones, Cher and notably, Madonna (whom the singer has often been compared to) have been touring with similar concerts since the 1970s and ’80s, and the rhythms remain unchanged.

The multitude of costume changes (Gaga wore looks by San Francisco-born designers Alexander Wang and Zaldy, among others), athletic backup dancers, big-screen projections and even pyrotechnics has become standard fare by now. But by comparison, Gaga’s show was relatively stripped down, with set pieces limited to a runway and bedazzled piano. No fireworks here; the singer’s command of her songs was the only special effect she and her audience needed.

The 31-year-old was in strong voice even as a chilling fog rolled off the bay and onto the field. The music on the folk-influenced “Joanne” album seems to have brought a fuller depth and richness to the singer’s lower register on new songs like the uptempo “John Wayne” and older hits like “Alejandro” and even club favorite “Just Dance.”

Although Gaga is not a natural dancer in the mode of a Beyoncé, Richard Jackson’s choreography and direction showed her doing what she does best in her videos: moving distinctly from one pose to another in rhythm. What was more impressive was how Gaga moved among the guitar, keytar and piano.

Perhaps no part of the show was more successful than the singer’s rendition of “Edge of Glory.” Seated at her piano, she belted out the ballad for fans who sang it back to her word for word.

Of course, they were primed and ready by that number.

Before Lady Gaga sang a single note, her fans were already putting on a show of their own throughout the stadium. The singer’s most ardent devotees, affectionately named “Little Monsters” by the pop diva, were out in full force with wardrobe inspired by some of Gaga’s most memorable looks two hours before their queen hit the stage.

Kristen Rendler and Jonathan Huynh of San Jose painted their faces in white Day of the Dead skull makeup and wore costumes that referenced the “Born This Way” music video. Rebecca Mosley of Redding drove four hours to San Francisco with her hair wrapped in Diet Coke cans a la Gaga’s costume from her “Telephone” duet with Beyoncé. And Candace Benting, also from Redding, said she spent hundred of dollars having the singer’s 2017 Grammy outfit (black leather hot pants and a breast-baring jacket with a spiked collar and sleeves) re-created especially for the night.

But among the many fashion statements honoring the singer at the packed concert, the most plentiful were the wide-brim pink country hats, the signature look from Gaga’s latest release.

Although three expected songs were cut from the set list — “Bloody Mary,” “Dancin’ in Circles” and “Paparazzi” — Gaga ended strong. After a punchy rendition of “Bad Romance,” Gaga slowed things down to bring out her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, the director of Gaga’s inclusion-focused advocacy organization the Born This Way Foundation, before closing with “The Cure” and an encore featuring “Million Reasons.”

“They told me my show was too gay. Then I played the Super Bowl,” said Gaga, by now in a long Swarovski-crystal-studded wrap and, again, her pink cowboy hat, referring to her stunning Super Bowl 51 halftime show in Houston this year.

“I’m sorry,” she corrected herself. “We played the Super Bowl.”

SF Gate

 

OMAHA

Lady Gaga demonstrates she's a great live performer in Omaha show

 

L. KENT WOLGAMOTT Lincoln Journal Star Aug 20, 2017

Spoiler

OMAHA -- As she showed millions during the televised Super Bowl halftime show, Lady Gaga is a great live performer. As she showed a packed CenturyLink Center Saturday, she’s better and more impressive in person in an arena.

Starting 90 minutes late for reasons not disclosed, Gaga’s two-hour show was a masterpiece of entertainment, innovatively staged and strikingly arranged and choreographed from her opening cry of “I am Joanne” onward.

That yell brought out the first of many Gagas. For the first four songs, she was the rock singer, who strapped on a guitar, and roared through the opening number “Diamond Heart” and, with her five-piece band, put a guitar punch into “Poker Face” as Gaga, her band and dancers performed on a stage that moved up and down in sections in front of a bank of bright lights.

Along the way, more Gagas emerged, most often after short “intermissions” and a costume change -- the pop star, the singer-songwriter, the vocalist, the musician, the dancer. She can do it all and did in a concert that was music theatre in the best, not the Broadway sense of the term.

While the show has some jarring juxtapositions in tone, Gaga never failed to captivate -- whether gyrating with her dancers on a raised platform on “Dancin’ In Circle” and “Paparazzi,” where she was letting her internal tramp out to play or, minutes later, sitting alone with an acoustic guitar, telling the heartrending family story behind, then singing the song “Joanne,” the title cut cut of her new album.

The “bridge” was part of the stunning stagecraft that saw three large, cloud-like structures near the ceiling serve as lighting bays, transform into video screens, then lower down the bridges that allowed Gaga and her dozen-or-so dancers run from the main stage, onto two platforms to a second stage at the opposite end of the arena.

There, she delivered the night’s most impressive performance, a solo take on “The Edge of Glory,” as she played piano and emotively sang at her very best.

Prior to that song, Gaga got overtly political for the only time during the show --and rather obliquely so, referring to the Charlottesville, Va. protest and Saturday’s anti-white nationalism protest march in Boston with this:.

“This has been a terrible week for everybody. That’s an understatement.I have to say, the loudest voices today were peaceful and loving. We have to love each other.”

As for the costumes, well, they fit the moment, coming out in a David Bowie-esque outfit for the glittery “Just Dance,” “LoveGame” and “Telephone” -- that would be the glam Gaga, wrapping a fluffy white skirt around herself as she strutted down the bridges during her anthem “Born This Way” and wearing a white-winged mask to kick off the final segment of the evening that began with “Bad Romance.”

Before that song, she asked “Where are my Little Monsters?" They were there in droves and connected with her from start to finish. So did everyone else in the building.

Lady Gaga is no longer the pop star of the moment. To be honest, “Joanne” isn’t her best album nor were the songs from it the peaks of the night.

But she is, unarguably, today’s top pop singer, capable of duetting with Tony Bennett or belting out rockers as well as a talented dancer and a purveyor of unvarnished emotion and heart that few if any can match.

Add the striking staging, lights, dancers and choreography and Gaga’s show was terrific -- once it got started.

Lincoln Journal-Star

 

Review: Lady Gaga dazzles an adoring sellout crowd in Omaha

By Betsie Freeman / World-Herald staff writer Aug 20, 201

Spoiler

Lady Gaga conquered the CenturyLink Center on Saturday night.

From her opening song, “Diamond Heart,” off her latest album, “Joanne,” she had every person in the sellout crowd right where she wanted them. They embraced her strong female persona, illustrated so well in “Schieße,” sung with an industrial backdrop and light show.

They cheered her pleas for peace, love and understanding and her shout out to the LGBT community.

“It’s been a helluva a week,” she told the crowd, referring to the nation’s reaction to events in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The concert started 90 minutes late, but she made no mention of the delay.

The show was packed with hard-driving dance music, and she was surrounded at all times by choreographed dancers. It resembled a staged Broadway show as much as an arena concert.

At one point, three segments of a bridge were lowered from the ceiling, allowing Gaga and crew to dance from one end of the arena to the other. They walked over fans standing on the floor and, at the other end, she bowed to other thrilled fans.

One of my favorite parts of the show was when she slowed it down and showcased her undeniably great voice on “The Edge of Glory.”

She changed costumes every four or five songs, going from skimpy to flowing to almost demure. After her piano set, for instance, she donned a skirt with poufy white ruffles to sing one of her signature songs, “Born This Way.”

Film clips shown behind her were at times weird, provocative, a little disturbing and very cool.

And, of course, there were the obligatory soaring bursts of fire and sparks from the stage. It was especially nifty on “John Wayne,” when flames were projected behind Gaga.

Toward the end, dressed in flaming red, she walked across the bridge again, taunting people to take her picture and singing “Paparazzi” as blaring sirens conjured up the memory of Princess Diana’s death.

She also got introspective on the song “Joanne,” about her late aunt, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar.

In the end, the concert left no doubt that Lady Gaga is versatile, sensual, sometimes raw and always theatrical.

Omaha World-Herald

 

ST PAUL

Review: Gaga plays it big and small at Xcel

By Jon Bream Star Tribune

Spoiler

Lady Gaga is a master of performance art, but she has yet to master the art of performance.

Her 2¼-hour concert Monday at Xcel Energy Center didn’t satisfy in the two areas in which Gaga has specialized onstage: It wasn’t weird enough (she can be weird in a good way), and it wasn’t intimate enough (she’s at her best during piano ballads).

Of course, dealing with this duality in concert is a challenge. Touring behind her most personal but least successful album, “Joanne,” Gaga responded with the straightest of her four arena presentations. There were no hard-to-follow, fantastical story lines, outrageously outré outfits or garishly over-the-top stage sets.

To be sure, Gaga came up with some compelling staging, with platforms rising and falling to different levels on the main stage and then three satellite stages, connected by bridges that floated down from pods in the ceiling when needed.

What hindered this concept was that too often Gaga got lost in the visuals — the wash of lights, the stage fog, her wide-brimmed hats and dark (or white) costumes blending into the dark (or white) outfits of her dozen dancers. At times on the many big dance numbers — she’s become a more confident but no more graceful dancer — one kept wondering: Where’s Gaga?

There was no problem finding Gaga when she landed at the satellite stage farthest from the main stage. First of all, this secondary platform was lit Gaga style, with all kinds of neon and bright colors. She brightened things up with the Broadway-ish “Come to Mama,” a track from “Joanne.”

Then she did a solo number on her transparent grand piano. But it wasn’t a simple, straightforward rendition of the 2011 anthem “The Edge of Glory.” She prefaced it by dedicating it to her wheelchair-using Minnesota friend of five years, Emma, who recently took 30 steps with a walker. As Gaga sang, she paused periodically and talked about Emma and her courage and determination.

Not only was Gaga’s voice soaring with heartfelt emotion for the first time all night, but her conversation was so uplifting, so reassuring, so Gaga — the kind of message that she has sent to her followers of misfits and misunderstoods. Forget all the sparkly baubles, gaudy eye makeup and long bleached hair. This was all about real, deep-felt emotion. It was a goose-bump moment.

“Take 31 steps next time, Emma,” urged Gaga, who happens to be 31.

Gaga being Gaga, though, means she had to do something — at least a little something — to be provocative. Probably the most outrageous thing she did Monday was roll around on a satellite stage, ask a man in the front row to take her picture and then strike several provocative poses. This, of course, was a prelude to her 2009 hit “Paparazzi.”

The prelude that really mattered was her long introduction to the song “Joanne,” a number inspired by her aunt, who died of lupus 12 years before Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born. Gaga talked about alcoholism and other problems in her family. She said she had to go backward with this song in order to forgive and change.

She then sang “Joanne” on acoustic guitar, making it sound like a country ditty. It showed how raw emotion and intimacy are the essence of Lady Gaga.

The only way she could top that was to bring Emma, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Be Kind,” onstage for the encore. The crowd of 16,000 roared. Then Gaga sat down at her grand piano and delivered “Million Reasons,” her hit ballad that was such a big hit at the Super Bowl halftime earlier this year. Maybe she has mastered small moments on big stages.

Star Tribune

 

CLEVELAND

Lady Gaga thrills a packed Quicken Loans Arena (concert review)

By Chuck Yarborough, The Plain Dealer

Spoiler

[email protected]

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Lady Gaga is one part Madonna, one part Billie Holiday, one part Barbra Streisand, one part Bette Midler, one part Maria Callas, one part Mitzi Gaynor, one part Judy Garland, one part Gypsy Rose Lee and 1.2 billion parts pure entertainer.

Kids, it doesn't matter if you don't recognize all those names; all you need to know is that it is using a litany of legends in a futile attempt to define and describe the lady who filled Quicken Loans Arena to near capacity Wednesday night.

For more than two hours, Gaga kept an enthusiastic crowd movin' and groovin' to her bouncy pop songs, to the point where we felt like we should be dripping sympathy sweat for her and the ever-moving troupe who complemented her.

One thing should be made absolutely clear: In some shows past that were heavily focused on the dance routines - Madonna and Justin Bieber come to mind - it was doubtful whether the backing vocal tracks were actually BACKING tracks and were instead recorded lead vocal tracks. In both of those cases, mouth and microphone were rarely in the same ZIP code, yet vocals came loud and clear.

The vocals came through just as loudly and even MORE clearly with Gaga, whose microphone never left her lips - even if a dancer had to hold it there while she had both hands on the keytar. A breathy whoosh every now and then, and frequent conversations and ad libs were further proof that Gaga was singing every freakin' note.

Now, don't get me wrong. There WERE taped backing tracks, there for harmonies and effect, but Gaga's lead vocals were real - and impressive.

The night was cut into different segments, divided by "video interludes'' on a dynamic main stage that really was several stages within a stage, much like the various stages of Gaga's career, as well as a trio of satellite stages, all connected by suspended bridges that lowered to on cue to allow her to access those stages.

Songs like "A-Yo,'' "Scheibe,'' "Just Dance,'' "Poker Face,'' "Bloody Mary,'' "Perfect Illusion'' and more showed off her songwriting skills almost as much as her singing gift, and of course, she's got dance moves that would make Gene Kelly jealous - not to mention better legs.

Most of her devoted fan base reveled in songs like "John Wayne,'' "Born This Way,'' "Paparazzi'' and "The Cure,'' and "Alejandro'' had a nice Latin flavor (with just a ghost of Abba's "Fernando,'' but that might just be because the two names sound so much alike).

But it was "Come to Mama'' and especially "The Edge of Glory'' that really put both her piano and torch-singer skills on full display. "Edge'' in particular showed off the full range of her powerful and emotion-laden voice and quite frankly left me looking forward to the day when she skips the histrionics of a stage show - as good as hers is - and just sits down and SINGS.

The Plain Dealer

 

CHICAGO

Lady Gaga brings a rare intimacy to Wrigley Field

Greg KotContact ReporterChicago Tribune

Spoiler

Wrigley Field’s concert history for more than a decade has skewed heavily toward classic rock and bro country and drawn a similarly homogenous audience.

But Lady Gaga changed all that in one night. She drew a racially mixed and gaudily costumed audience Friday that packed the creaky ballpark to see its first female headliner. “I feel so proud to stand here … but sorry you haven’t had a woman here for 100 years,” she said, exaggerating just a touch. “Welcome to the womb.”

She gazed out toward an audience in which spangled hot pants, pink cowboy hats and thigh-high boots were everywhere. And let’s not leave out the female fans, who were blinged out as rhinestone cowgirls, bondage queens and showgirls from Venus.

Gaga raced through the usual half-dozen costume changes, but this show was softer on spectacle and strangeness than her past arena tours. Most of the visual weirdness was compressed into video interludes that showed the singer sporting talons and oozing face paint.

The set was split into an up-tempo first half and a lower-key, more intimate part 2. From the opening “Diamond Heart,” Gaga brought the rock firepower with a five-piece band and wedded it to dance beats that drew on Euro-disco, hip-hop, Latin music and even country. She played guitar and keytar, and looked at home as the leader of a rock band.

She was more constrained as a dancer, at one point hopping on the back of one of her 10 dancers, a move that left both parties looking uncomfortable. Many of the dance routines suffered from rote choreography, a tacked-on piece of eye candy rather than an integral part of the show. And during a particularly poignant moment in the later acoustic set, the arrival of the dancers verged on intrusive. Similarly, pyro and fireworks were the type of cliches the typically subversive Gaga once shunned.

The singer instead poured her energies into the music, pogoing as she roared, “It was a lie! It was a lie!” in a particularly cathartic moment during “Perfect Illusion.” And she vamped it up at the piano on “Come to Mama,” a bluesy equality anthem that nailed a central theme of the night with humor and swagger.

At that point the concert took a turn toward vulnerability, as if Gaga went off-script, ditched the costumes and props, and tried to turn the stadium into her living room. She didn’t quite pull it off, but not for lack of effort. She offered long introductions and told stories about valued compatriots and family members: her musical director; a friend who recently died of cancer; her father; a late aunt, Joanne, for whom her latest album was named.

Tears flowed, and momentum was lost. One could never imagine Gaga’s pop-diva predecessors or contemporaries — Madonna, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Janet Jackson — indulging such intimacy. Amid the wrenching acoustic “Joanne,” the sultry pop-soul of “The Cure” and the LGBTQ-rights declaration “Born This Way,” she turned “Edge of Glory” into an elegy. It was more akin to Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” than the more bombastic recorded version. The singer’s voice dropped barely above a whisper as the song faded, and a hush fell over the audience. It was another Wrigley first – the night’s most moving moment also proved to be its quietest.

Chicago Tribune

 

Lady Gaga reigns supreme in Wrigley Field headlining debut

Selena Fragassi - For the Sun-Times

Spoiler

In the 12 years that Wrigley Field has been hosting concerts, Jimmy Buffett has brought Margaritaville and cheeseburgers to the stadium on more than one occasion, Pearl Jam has said “Let’s Play Two,” and Billy Joel practically lives at the park. But there has never been a single female headliner to take the stage on the field. Until Friday night.

“Someone told me today I have the great honor of being the first woman ever to headline Wrigley Field. I’m so proud to stand here tonight,” Lady Gaga remarked about crossing the proverbial threshold, before putting the talent bookers in their place. “But you know it is a real shame you haven’t had a woman here in over 100 years. Welcome to the mother——- womb!”

With a two-hour spectacle that was sensual, emotional and lovingly communal, Gaga (born Stefani Germanotta) celebrated her headlining milestone amid joy and tears. Currently on her Joanne World Tour, there were two women clearly on Gaga’s mind on this night: her late aunt Joanne Germanotta, who died of complications from lupus in 1974 (the person who inspired Gaga’s latest album and tour name), and close friend Sonja Durham, who passed away from cancer in May.

The singer, fighting back tears, announced that some of Durham’s ashes were scattered at the park earlier in the day. “So actually I’m not the first woman to headline; Sonja took the stage before me,” Gaga said, looking up to the heavens. She then barreled into an incredibly moving and nearly operatic version of “The Edge of Glory” as she sat stoically behind a glass piano situated on a thrust stage amid a throng of transfixed fans whose detailed costumes and wigs vied for attention.

The song was part of Act IV of the carefully curated performance (which was broken into several themed segments), and it was arguably her strongest. She began with the modern disco hit “Applause,” dancing her way through the crowd before taking her perch at the piano. After throwing a custom Cubs jersey over her dress, she segued into “Come to Mama,” followed by “Glory,” then lightening up the mood with stadium-raiser “Born This Way,” which even had several security guards busting a move in the aisles. “As someone that used to live in Chicago, I’m offended if you’re sitting down on a Friday night,” she roared to a round of cheers from the crowd.

Gaga is not only the first female headliner, but also the first to turn the ballpark into a 41,000-person nightclub, emboldened by the techno glitterati of a sophisticated stage setup with decks of strobe lights, go-go platforms and tilting stages that gave the dancers — and Gaga herself — a challenging obstacle course. The singer, though, was a shadow of her former dancing self, relying on years-old choreography and struggling to keep her balance on “Bad Romance” (though in fairness she may not have been able to see clearly through the plume of feathers in the awkward masquerade mask she sported).

Chicago Sun Times

 

NEW YORK

Lady Gaga: People told me my show was ‘too gay’

By Hardeep Phull

Spoiler

These days, Lady Gaga’s “Little Monsters” come in tens of thousands to honor their idol.

But back when she was just getting started, doubters thought no one would bother showing up to her shows.

“When I started out, people told me, ‘Your show is too gay,’ ” she told a packed crowd at New York’s Citi Field on Monday. “ ‘No one is gonna come.’ They told me there was no commercial audience for me.”

“They” were obviously wrong. On her Joanne World Tour, which began Aug. 1, she’s impressed fans and critics with superb choreography, a hits-packed set list and her ever-powerful voice.

In the first of two successive hometown shows, Gaga credited her time on the Lower East Side for her love of the avant garde and joked, “Everyone [says my music videos] are so fashion . . . and I’m like, that’s just what a party in Brooklyn with my friends looks like.” She also made sure to shout out friends and family, including longtime collaborator Tony Bennett, who was in the crowd.

Later, Gaga went into touching detail about the inspiration behind her latest album. “Joanne” (released in 2016), she told the crowd, was named after her late aunt, who passed away from lupus as a teenager before Gaga was born.

The singer recalled painful family dinners at her grandparents’ house in New Jersey: “We’d be sitting there eating, and . . . my grandparents would start to cry and my father would get all choked up and would have to leave the table.”

With this new album, Gaga hoped to assuage some of that grief — by assuming Joanna’s persona. “Maybe I did become my dad’s sister to heal his pain. [But I’m] so glad that I did.”

NY Post

 

BOSTON

Lady Gaga makes a powerful statement at Fenway

By Maura Johnston GLOBE CORRESPONDENT  SEPTEMBER 02, 2017

Spoiler

Lady Gaga, the shape-shifting belter whose ascent over the last nine years helped usher in pop music’s shift toward electro’s rigid beats while giving a huge boost to its overall weirdness quotient, began her career gutting it out at small clubs in New York City under her own name, Stefani Germanotta. During her fast-paced, splashy show at Fenway Park on Friday (the first of two there this weekend), her production numbers — full of onstage costume changes and big beats — were balanced by heartfelt speeches and chats with the audience that gave off if not the sweaty, cramped feeling of catching a band at a small bar, at least a sense of camaraderie with the performer and her audience members.

Gaga started off with a barked command: “Don’t call me Gaga,” she sneered, “call me Joanne!” It’s her middle name and the name of an aunt who passed away before she was born; it’s also the title of her most recent album, which made up the bulk of Friday night’s set. That album was hailed as a deep dive into “realness” for Gaga, another step away from the overblown oddness of her 2013 album, “ARTPOP.”

Her new album’s back-to-basics reputation is a bit overblown; while its lyrics are abstractly reflecting on her own life, the electro-cowboy stomp “John Wayne” and the storming “Perfect Illusion” are only two “Joanne” selections firmly rooted in dance-pop’s ideas. From top to bottom, the night was defined by Gaga’s acrobatic, rich vocals and overwhelming charisma. But a few moments allowed her to break from the big beats and synchronized dance moves of her biggest hits like the stuttering “Poker Face” and the grandiose “Bad Romance,” which were for the most part faithfully re-created by Gaga, a wide array of modular costumes and cowboy hats, and her phalanx of dancers.

Gaga preceded “Come to Mama,” a welcoming if slightly impatient look at the way discrimination and dogmatism divide society, with a short speech welcoming the LGBTQ community to the show and stating, “The truth is that everybody’s gotta love each other.” Seated at a translucent piano, she played up the similarity between “Come to Mama” and the sort of strutting numbers that give musical-theater heroines the chance to dust themselves off and declare themselves stars, to great effect. “The Edge of Glory,” a triumphant synth-rocker from 2011’s “Born This Way,” was flipped into a stark piano ballad dedicated to the late Sonja Durham, the former managing director of Gaga’s creative team Haus of Gaga; she died in May of cancer. And the delicate ballad “Joanne” was introduced by Gaga talking about her dealings with anxiety and depression and its familial roots, and her hope that songs like it could help people realize that even with all the grand production and costume changes, she was still just a person like them.

The night ended with the weeper “Million Reasons,” which she preceded with a high-five-punctuated walk around the stage’s lip and dedicated to her most fervent fans (who dressed up for the occasion in glittery capes and uncomfortable shoes). She wore a version of the giant pink cowboy hat that she sports on the cover of “Joanne,” and as the song drew to a close, she waxed philosophical one last time: “Sometimes it’s important,” she said, “to try on somebody else’s hat to understand.” The restlessly morphing pop star doffed the hat and placed it on the microphone stand, then walked off, allowing the spotlight to shine on her ad hoc sculptural work, which was perhaps a statement on taking time to listen.

Boston Globe

 

Lady Gaga soulful show rivets Fenway

Brett Milano Saturday, September 02, 2017

Spoiler

The most spectacular moment in Lady Gaga’s show last night involved no spectacle at all — no dancing, no lighting effects, not even a band onstage. Just a solo-piano version of “Edge of Glory” that she dedicated to a close friend who was lost to cancer earlier this year.

If you expected her to be daring or sexy or provocative — well, the rest of the show had plenty of that. But for this moment, it was all about one mighty voice and a lot of convincing emotion.

Divided into six sections (separated by costume changes, band instrumentals and video interludes), the two-hour concert really shifted gears around the time that song appeared midway through. The first hour was all high-energy, with the dance hits, explosions, a wall of color-changing light and a platform that levitated while she danced. There were a few touches of decadence in “Poker Face” and “John Wayne,” the latter of which found her strutting in a leather jumpsuit. This was the flashy Gaga that showed up at the Super Bowl in February, the one that her fans — themselves in plenty of leather and glitter — probably expected to see. She also celebrated the moment by noting that she’s the first woman to headline Fenway Park and saying “Boston, welcome to the womb!”

But things got surprisingly subtle in the second half: The light psychedelia of the peace-and-love themed “Come to Mama” made a natural bridge into the inclusive “Born This Way,” introduced with the usual nod to the LBGT community (“If you don’t feel that way, this is probably being a pretty tough couple of hours,” she noted). But gentler numbers continued to predominate, with her once again alone onstage (this time on acoustic guitar) for “Joanne,” before which she opened up about family history, the loss of an aunt and her own bouts with depression. The tempo revved back up for “Bad Romance” (with more fireworks behind the stage) but she left the crowd with another warm-hearted ballad, “Million Reasons.”

Gaga could pull this off for one good reason: She’s a remarkable singer, equally at home with blue-eyed soul, hard-edged dance tunes and torchy cabaret numbers. There wasn’t a bit of evident lip-synching during last night’s show (the band also played live with a minimum of digital help) — and for mainstream pop artists at superstar level, that’s a pretty big exception to the rule. The show suggested that her career may be moving into a less flashy, more intimate phase — but last night she brought it all, the cheap thrills and the underlying heart.

Boston Herald

 

TORONTO

Lady Gaga concert almost lets spectacle swamp the star: review

By BEN RAYNERPop Music Critic Thu., Sept. 7, 2017

Spoiler

Don’t be a drag, she’s just the queen.

The naysayers have been pecking away at Lady Gaga’s right to pop stardom for almost a decade now — she was a fraudulent “outcast” poseur on 2008’s The Fame, an outcast suddenly grown too big for her britches on 2011’s Born This Way, a hopeless commercial disappointment on 2013’s ARTPOP and, as of last year’s underrated Joanne album, neither enough of an outcast nor enough of a too-big-for-her-britches pop star to satisfy anyone’s expectations, commercial or otherwise, anymore — but you can’t argue with the goods when consistently confronted head-on with the goods. And, (wo)man, has Lady Gaga got the goods.

Those goods were once again on lavish display in Toronto throughout Wednesday night’s sold-out Toronto stop at the Air Canada Centre by Gaga’s Joanne world tour, a high-tech barnburner designed to ensure that everyone in the rink would feel like they got a little bit of up-close-and-personal Lady time and leave feeling that they’d got their money’s worth. I’m guessing most did.

True, this was the first of Lady Gaga’s arena tours where her outsized personality and deceptively down-to-earth charm occasionally threatened to get lost in the spectacle. During roughly the first third of Wednesday’s performance — to be followed by another gig on Thursday evening at the ACC, then the unveiling on Friday of her new biopic, Gaga: Five Foot TwoGaga: Five Foot Two, as part of the Toronto International Film Festival — it was almost as if she’d offered herself up as merely another prop in a giant multimedia installation. There were the dancers, the pyro, the lasers and LED-light displays, the state-of-the-art video pieces (Gaga doing pink-fogged doughnuts in a vintage GTO, Gaga huffing nitrous oxide from a mask backstage, Gaga fighting through a hallucinatory wall of phantasmic faces) and the many moving ramps and risers adorning a set that spilled out to the back of the arena bowl across three separate satellite stages in addition to the main.

Perhaps that was merely as long as it took for one’s mind to fully get a grip on the 360-degree sensory overload, perhaps that was because the many new songs featured from Joanne — from the decidedly rock-’n’-roll opener “Diamond Heart,” to which Gaga appeared onstage atop a lift in cowboy-hatted silhouette copping Steven Tyler poses with the microphone stand, on through the jaunty jump-up “A-Yo,” the lead single “Perfect Illusion” and the strutting “John Wayne” — haven’t enjoyed the same level of cultural ubiquity as such indelible predecessors as “Poker Face,” “Just Dance,” “Alejandro” and “LoveGame.” Really connecting with Wednesday’s performance beyond being generally awestruck at its technical splendour required a moment or two.

Even those monster tunes, some of them rendered in slightly abbreviated form, seemed to blaze by in a deafening blur before you really realized what was happening. Something onstage was always moving or flashing or belching flame to shift your focus from the musical business at hand, to distract you from the fact that, say, it was kind of a thrill to hear a deep album cut like Born This Way’s “Scheiße” bursting forth from the PA.

Eventually, however, the very same technology that appeared on the verge of totally overwhelming Gaga wound up riding to the rescue. After a brisk, Beyoncé-less rip through “Telephone,” the many marshmallowy pods hanging above the floor transformed from overhead projection screens into bridges that permitted Miss Monster to gradually make her way from secondary stage to secondary stage to a glowing, heart-shaped grand piano awaiting her at the back of the rink. Once there, the master of pop artifice born Stefani Joanne Germanotta let the humanity and sweet-natured engagement with her audience that’s always been key to her live performances’ appeal, above and beyond the exhibitionist spectacle, bubble forth and genuinely connected with the crowd.

A vampy solo-piano version of “Come to Mama” was followed by a torchy version of “The Edge of Glory,” her stentorian pipes providing proof positive that the throat infection that prompted a show cancellation in Montreal two nights before was a thing of the past. The latter was dedicated to a friend of Gaga’s who recently passed away, as well as to anyone else in the room who might be in the process of losing someone they love, offering a short, thoroughly emotional respite from the sound and fury that had come before. And then it was on to even more sound and fury than before, as a march back to the front stage to “Born This Way” lit the crowd up beyond all reason.

The show could have ended there, frankly, and no one would have complained. The red-lit, red-clad pageantry that followed for “Bloody Mary,” the meandering Beck co-write “Dancin’ In Circles” (he was in the room, apparently) and “Paparazzi” dragged on just long enough for the evening’s first tinge of boredom to set in.

Once again, though, Gaga pulled everyone back in by getting human. After descending from the rafters, back in cowboy garb, to the ballad “Angel Down,” she sat with an acoustic guitar in the middle of the floor, explained the album title Joanne — it’s named for an aunt who passed away years before she was born but who has, she said, nevertheless haunted her for her entire life — and delivered the song of the same name in showstopping Stevie Nicks form.

“It really means a lot to our family hearing you sing along,” she said, and you kinda wanted to hug her. “Bad Romance” was entirely unnecessary at that point, but it was nice to hear it nonetheless.

Toronto Star

[drinkmytears 2,332]

Maybe use Spoilers so the OP isn't so long! Love reading these.

[Gagaplayer315 12,025]

Another tour date, another slay 

[Mr S 7,601]

Few more reviews added

[Girrr 1,086]

That LA Times review 

[Mr S 7,601]

Added the Toronto and Boston reviews