Lady Gaga, O2, review - A gig mixed with motivational witterings and blood stained corsets is a spectacular antidote to the seasonal spirit
With his attention-seeking red-and-white costumes and all those stunts with flying reindeer, Father Christmas probably thought he had the seasonal headlines all sewn up. But the bearded old Laplander never stood a chance against Lady Gaga. When he was hurled, in cuddly effigy, at the semi-naked pop star’s feet on Thursday night she sneered down at him in mock pity, before ripping his head off with her teeth and stamping on it. His floppy little bobble hat was skewered by her sci-fi stiletto as she snarled: “I hate the holidays! I’m alone and miserable!”
Motivational witterings: Lady Gaga in concert at the O2 Arena, London, Briatin
It was a quintessentially Gaga moment: full of stagey shock and gore, threatening nothing, and drawing a delighted blend of cheers and chuckles from the sold-out stadium crowd. It was also the kind of moment that freshens up a tour that has been on the road for over a year now.
Of course, the Monster’s Ball is a spectacular show, featuring phantasmagorically theatrical costumes and props that wipe the floor with every other pop act going. There’s the celebrated flame-throwing boob tube, the car that turns into a keyboard, an enormous angler fish-cum-octopus and the Phantom of the Popera herself, in a range of eye-popping headgear that could cause Isabella Blow to reach from the grave.
I arrived expecting to sit back like a lazy diner and be served infinite courses of a wild, visual banquet and was unreasonably frustrated that only so much was practical in the context of a pop show. Her vocals are far better than I expected – “Surprise!” she shouts, “A pop show and the bitch can sing!” – if formulaically phrased. But Gaga whets an appetite she can’t possibly satisfy: weirder, wilder, faster, louder, catchier! More!
Watching her gyrate in her blood-spattered corsets and battery-powered hats around neon signs about car crashes, you realise that she’s almost a pop star from JG Ballard’s fiction. With her poker face and robotic dislocation of syllables from the words and music she uses to express emotion, she goes some way to representing our struggle to reconcile the human ache for meaningful connection with the superficial, self- harming culture we’ve created. Consuming her from a distance – via photographs and recordings – you could swallow this clever pose whole.
But, live, she can spoil such critical theories by being, well, just a 24-year-old blonde in a bikini blithering on about how she’s here to “liberate” us all, “baby”. “Don’t you dare leave here loving me more,” goes the gushing American’s motivational lecture to her “little monsters”. “You leave here loving you more!” Yuk!
We Brits could stomach the carpaccio couture, but this sort of rubbish makes me want to reach for the sick bucket. As did Gaga’s witterings about how much she hates money, because a quick glance around the arena made it clear that she’d clearly filled her bondage boots with our hard earned loot. Ga ga ga? Ho! Ho! Ho! ( telegraph.co.uk )
With his attention-seeking red-and-white costumes and all those stunts with flying reindeer, Father Christmas probably thought he had the seasonal headlines all sewn up. But the bearded old Laplander never stood a chance against Lady Gaga. When he was hurled, in cuddly effigy, at the semi-naked pop star’s feet on Thursday night she sneered down at him in mock pity, before ripping his head off with her teeth and stamping on it. His floppy little bobble hat was skewered by her sci-fi stiletto as she snarled: “I hate the holidays! I’m alone and miserable!”
Motivational witterings: Lady Gaga in concert at the O2 Arena, London, Briatin
It was a quintessentially Gaga moment: full of stagey shock and gore, threatening nothing, and drawing a delighted blend of cheers and chuckles from the sold-out stadium crowd. It was also the kind of moment that freshens up a tour that has been on the road for over a year now.
Of course, the Monster’s Ball is a spectacular show, featuring phantasmagorically theatrical costumes and props that wipe the floor with every other pop act going. There’s the celebrated flame-throwing boob tube, the car that turns into a keyboard, an enormous angler fish-cum-octopus and the Phantom of the Popera herself, in a range of eye-popping headgear that could cause Isabella Blow to reach from the grave.
I arrived expecting to sit back like a lazy diner and be served infinite courses of a wild, visual banquet and was unreasonably frustrated that only so much was practical in the context of a pop show. Her vocals are far better than I expected – “Surprise!” she shouts, “A pop show and the bitch can sing!” – if formulaically phrased. But Gaga whets an appetite she can’t possibly satisfy: weirder, wilder, faster, louder, catchier! More!
Watching her gyrate in her blood-spattered corsets and battery-powered hats around neon signs about car crashes, you realise that she’s almost a pop star from JG Ballard’s fiction. With her poker face and robotic dislocation of syllables from the words and music she uses to express emotion, she goes some way to representing our struggle to reconcile the human ache for meaningful connection with the superficial, self- harming culture we’ve created. Consuming her from a distance – via photographs and recordings – you could swallow this clever pose whole.
But, live, she can spoil such critical theories by being, well, just a 24-year-old blonde in a bikini blithering on about how she’s here to “liberate” us all, “baby”. “Don’t you dare leave here loving me more,” goes the gushing American’s motivational lecture to her “little monsters”. “You leave here loving you more!” Yuk!
We Brits could stomach the carpaccio couture, but this sort of rubbish makes me want to reach for the sick bucket. As did Gaga’s witterings about how much she hates money, because a quick glance around the arena made it clear that she’d clearly filled her bondage boots with our hard earned loot. Ga ga ga? Ho! Ho! Ho! ( telegraph.co.uk )
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