By Larisha Paul
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The Chromatica Ball, Lady Gaga‘s most recent stadium tour, fought against numerous obstacles before it was able to fully bloom in 2022. The run was postponed twice — first when the world shut down during the pandemic in 2020, then again when only certain stops on the international run were prepared for the return of live music in 2021. When the Ball finally commenced, Gaga leaned into her biggest and weirdest musical modes. She also captured an entire sold-out show on film for the HBO Original Concert Special Gaga Chromatica Ball.
Premiering on HBO on May 25 at 8 p.m. EST, the concert film captures Gaga’s September 2022 performance at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The stadium welcomed 52,000 people to the event, all there to witness the crown jewel of pop spectacle. In the first trailer for the special, the musician performs Chromatica‘s lead single “Stupid Love” and her seminal single “Born This Way” against a dramatic stage backdrop.
The Chromatica Ball tour was a (mostly) career-spanning run split into four acts with a prelude and grand finale. The fourth act alone featured “Shallow,” “Always Remember Us This Way,” piano versions of “The Edge of Glory” and “1000 Doves,” “Fun Tonight,” and “Enigma.” Elsewhere in the set, Gaga performed classics like “Telephone,” “LoveGame,” “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance,” and “Poker Face.”
“Gaga is at her best when she’s at her absolute, most unbridled weirdest,” Rolling Stone‘s Brittany Spanos wrote in a review of the tour. “The interludes make little to no sense and only some of them seem to be related to what’s about to happen onstage (like the brutalist hospital pictured before Act One that leads way to Gaga singing “Alice” from what appears to be some type of stone slab). The best of the interludes was before the finale, with Gaga at her most melodramatic. She recites a creepy sonnet about art and the responsibility of the artist: ‘This life is only art on life support, and nature is a knight. No king, no court,’ she says as the vocals chaotically layer. If we found out later she was teasing her part in Joker 2, I’d buy it.”
She wasn’t exactly teasing Joker 2, but it’s all connected for Gaga.
“I wanted to share a more personal moment with you today, I know I haven’t been doing a lot of that lately and some of you are really longing for me to share more of my artistic process,” she wrote on Instagram, last June. “I’ve been experiencing my creativity ever since last summer in a really special and private way. I wrote and produced music for a special project, I prepared for months developing my character for Joker, I filmed Joker for many months (a very introspective time), I have been running my start-up Haus Labs, doing philanthropic work, and additionally have been working on The Chromatica Ball film edit.”
She added: “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,” she added. “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.”
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