“I’m home, New York City!” That’s what Lady Gaga yelled from the stage Friday night as she brought her Mayhem Ball tour to Madison Square Garden for the first of six hometown shows.
While the set was essentially the same as the previous shows on the tour, Gaga did prepare “something special” for her New York crowd. After performing “Die With a Smile” solo on the piano, the fans gave her a prolonged ovation, and she became emotional, wiping tears from her eyes.
“I know that it’s me standing up here, but you’re all standing in here with me … I feel so honored to be here tonight at Madison Square Garden,” she said. “I’m sure you can tell if you listen to the music that I am from here. Everything about my artistry, I think, was born in this town.”
“I’m sure that all of my albums could not have been made without New York, but I am sure this album would not have been made without New York,” she noted. She then launched into the Born This Way track “Hair” for the first time since 2017.
At the very end of the show, she threw in another Born This Way deep cut, the New York-centric “Heavy Metal Lover,” which she hadn’t played since 2013.
The rest of the concert was a series of dazzling set pieces that blended nearly every cut from Mayhem with classics including “Paparazzi,” “Poker Face” and “LoveGame.” They were grouped loosely by theme into four acts that told the story of Gaga struggling with her masked alter ego, “The Mistress of Mayhem,” to find balance amid the chaos.
She recreated the choreography from “Abracadabra,” rode in a boat for “Shallow,” sang “Bloody Mary” atop a dress that was several stories high, lit up a veil that stretched the entire length of the stage with rainbow colors, danced with a giant skull and sang in a massive sandbox.
The adoring crowd — sporting more corsets and fishnets than a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening — gave Mother Monster deafening applause, but never louder than for the Artpop song of the same name.
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