By Jem Aswad
Executive Editor, Music
An HBO concert special based on Lady Gaga’s 2022 “Chromatica Ball” tour will premiere on the network on Saturday, May 25 at 8 p.m. ET/PT and will be available to stream on Max.
The special was filmed before a sold-out crowd of 52,000 people at Los Angeles’s Dodger Stadium in September of 2022 and features the Grammy and Oscar-winning artist performing such hits as “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance,” “Poker Face,” “Shallow,” “Rain On Me,” “Stupid Love” and more.
The special was produced, directed and created by Lady Gaga; executive producers were her longtime manager Bobby Campbell; Live Nation touring chief Arthur Fogel; and Interscope Records’ John Janick and Steve Berman.
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Nina Rosenstein, HBO executive VP of programming, late night & specials, says: “Lady Gaga is a complete powerhouse. She’s a once-in-a-lifetime artist who never holds back, and ‘Gaga Chromatica Ball’ puts her endless list of talents on full display. We’re thrilled to partner with her once again for this breathtaking concert special.”
The concert, of course, took place just months after the pandemic began to lift in earnest and celebrated an album that was released in the summer of 2020 — a dance-party album when there were few parties and most dancing was done at home. Variety‘s Chris Willman wrote of the concert: “Gaga has remained undaunted in making it clear that 2020’s ‘Chromatica’ is the album she is very much touring behind, with 10 songs from the two-year-old album accounting for just under half the overall set. There was a sense of post-pandemic victory to Gaga’s increasingly lengthy asides, late in the two-hour-plus concert — ‘The whole world did not fade. We’re all here, in some kind of way,’ she said. But, as an undertow, you might detect a sense of vindication for the ‘Chromatica’ record itself, in how she’s determined not to let it go down as a lamb that got lost in the storm.”
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