"Get on your feet/ stand up!" – "Put your hands up!"

[Eurotrash 1,621]

With the return of Gaga's uncompromised artistry in her most recent projects, and public and editorial appearances introducing her next musical odyssey, a long-lost appreciation and excitement has returned.

 

Having recently indulged in the soundtracks of Gaga's 2011 and 2024 HBO concert films, a very promising premise has ushered to me. With many different endeavors, images, and sounds in between "early year" Gaga performing at the Monster Ball Tour and current post-Chromatica Gaga, the same passion can be not only seen, heard, touched or even dreamt of but can also be chronicled for Lady Gaga's evolution as a performance artist.

 

Throughout HBO 2011 "Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden" concert special, a reoccurring observation is to be made. At the time Lady Gaga shows would most often frequent arenas, festival ground stages, and theatres. While most certainly this detail didn't hold much relevance in Gaga's artistic catalog in the development years of her career, Gaga's desire to create catharsis for her fans for the many different messages and their respective sonic landscapes has remained regardless of countless battles, surges, setbacks, and triumphs in the last 16 years of Lady Gaga.

The following clip from the said film has capsuled a very familiar passion and lust for the same qualities that "Gaga Chromatica Ball" possesses. Fashion, particularly bold, robust, and industrialism-inspired theatrical garments, dance as holistic expression, fury, explosive live music, and universal joy within the venue continue to reign the zeitgeist of a Lady Gaga production.

 

'Did you have the time of your life?'

'Do you feel free, monsters?'

'Dance!' 

 

In 2011 the name Lady Gaga was most definitely known in every household around the globe, yet by then 'The Fame Monster' was the most fundamental moment in Gaga's career, and the love revolution of 'Born This Way' in the body of an album and a foundation had just begun to spread. As "Bad Romance" is closing the epic journey of a show, Gaga is still fiending for the attendees' involvement of a passionate revelation dressed in techno-industrial house beats. We are commanded to both "sing it" and to put our "paws up" by the singer herself numerous times.

Years later Gaga captured that sentiment in 2013-single "Applause", revealing the irresistible urgency to entertain her audience.

 

It can be agreed that there have been moments when none of us would want to voice our concerns about Gaga's physical abilities to perform and uphold the tenacity for elaborate live shows. After discovering the global body pain Gaga endured during the second half of The Born This Way Ball Tour and the tumultuous experience of continuous health scares while on the road for Joanne World Tour, it was universally known that touring had taken a bigger toll on Gaga than we believed at first. Today we can all be delighted to hear of Gaga's blossoming happiness and the state of her physical and mental health. 

From an Instagram post (17/06/2023)

"I can say for the first time in many years that my love of making art, music, fashion, and supporting community has never been more fulfilling. I may not be sharing as much of myself online as I have in the past, but I hope you know this time to myself has been extremely healing and recharging for my heart, mind, body, and creativity—to create within myself and to have a personal life that’s just for me. I’m sure that may feel different because I haven’t always been so private (I bet that will make some of you laugh)—but I LOVE my fans, my little monsters, so much and that will never change." 

 

Gaga also reported in The Chromatica Chronicles for V Magazine's September 2022 issue that “him (Hedi Slimane) being at the Chromatica Ball was an especially proud moment for me because I’m so much healthier now than I’ve ever been.

So to be photographed by him and to be healthy, felt like a real milestone for me as a person, and as an artist—an artist that always believed that if I was suffering, I was doing it right. You know, he’s photographing a different person now. For him to photograph me in my essence, in that moment where I allow the animal in me to start to wake up and I tell myself, ‘Okay, the animal can be awake for two hours and then has to go back to sleep,’ it’s tremendously meaningful to me.

You know, I’m so grateful that I got to deliver Chromatica to the world in this way, because the biggest discovery and the biggest gift I could have given myself in becoming healthy is that when I’m on stage now, I’m not blasting the music and getting lost. 

I’m not in a nightclub wasted, getting lost in the record…Now I’m inside my dance routine. I’m inside my vocal technique. I’m inside the artistry of the fashion and the imagery. I’m clear about where the cameras are. I’m always thinking about the image that the audience is seeing. It’s a real performance. It’s a performance that honors the craft of my musicianship. When I’m playing piano, I can hear what I’m playing. I care about every note. And I can’t tell you how much suffering is not worth it if it means it’s going to compromise your talent."

(Full story https://vmagazine.com/article/digital-cover-chromatica-tour-diaries-by-hedi-slimane/)

 

 

 

 

After the long-awaited release of "Gaga Chromatica Ball" (it's interesting to see the exclusion of 'Ļady' possibly alluding to a new approach to craft a symbiotic relationship between 'Lady' (as the late Tony Bennett used to call her) and 'Gaga' that by definition is the antithesis to 'lady') viewers have noticed Gaga's powerful commands.

In the duration of the concert film, the audience receives directions to put their hands up 45 times, symbolizing the shift from Gaga's 2011 impact as a performing artist in arenas, charging the attendees to "stand up" for the music, now to see 52,000 palms of fans' hands. 

Instead of having to ask for the members of the audience to respectfully stand up for the community of loving fans, in 2024 that command is unnecessary as everyone is already standing up for her. All she can ask is to be present in the moment and feel the music.

 

[Schizophonic 7,015]

Well the first few years she asked everyone at her shows to get their D‘s out…. 

Edited June 3, 2024 by Schizophonic