Lady Gaga at Coachella review – a breathtaking masterclass in pop spectacle

 

Lady Gaga at Coachella review – a breathtaking masterclass in pop spectacle
Empire Polo Club, Indio, California

The pop icon storms back to the desert with a two-hour, career-defining performance—an electrifying, genre-bending triumph that cements its place among Coachella’s all-time greats.

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In 2017, Lady Gaga faced a daunting challenge: stepping in for Beyoncé at Coachella after Queen Bey bowed out due to pregnancy. During her Joanne era—already ahead of the curve with its country-pop twist—Gaga more than rose to the occasion. Only Beyoncé rivals her in sheer live performance prowess, and Gaga delivered a set that confirmed her status as a generational talent. Still, she felt something was unfinished. “I’ve had a vision I’ve never been able to fully realize at Coachella for reasons beyond our control,” she wrote on Instagram, announcing her long-awaited return to the desert stage this spring. “I have been wanting to go back and do it right, and I am.”

She did more than do it right.

More than any of her peers, Gaga has treated pop as transformation, live performance as a kind of hunt—intense, ravenous, laser-focused. And at “Gagachella,” as fans are calling this instantly iconic performance, she went in for the kill. From the moment she appeared in full deranged queen regalia—her towering hoop skirt parting to reveal a birdcage of backup dancers—it was clear the vision had arrived. Spanning 22 songs over nearly two hours, her set now joins Beyoncé’s Homecoming in the pantheon of landmark Coachella performances: a master class in pop spectacle, years of craft crystallized into one electrifying night, and a euphoric dance party operating in a class all its own.

At 38, Gaga reigns as pop royalty, a status she wielded with staggering effect on Friday night. “Welcome to my house,” she declared before launching into “Bloody Mary”—an understatement, considering her “house” was a sprawling skeleton of a neoclassical opera set, her dominion a surreal, theatrical dreamscape. The performance doubled as a full-blown introduction to Mayhem, her new album that channels the raw pulse of her early work: pounding synths, maximalist drama, and hooks with teeth. Gaga spun a twisted, self-aware fairytale across five acts, complete with witches, queens, and stark contrasts between light and dark.

Notably, the set wasn’t a full retrospective. She skipped over Artpop, Joanne, and Chromatica, with “Shallow” from A Star Is Born the sole nod to her cinematic side. Yet the show still felt expansive, drawing threads from her foundational eras—The Fame, Born This Way—and weaving them seamlessly into Mayhem, her best work since Artpop. The album grapples with identity and duality, and Gaga brought that inner battle to life: a domineering black-clad queen versus an innocent in white, complete with dramatic wig changes and extended interludes that spotlighted her dancers and metal musicians in equal measure.

Gagachella also marked a return to form in her performance style. From the start of her career, Gaga has treated dance like exorcism—wild, physical, unfiltered. Here, her visions took shape as full-blown pop theater: a deathmatch chess game for “Poker Face,” a fame-fueled skeleton in “Perfect Celebrity,” and the jaw-dropping high point, “Disease,” where a zombified 2009 VMAs Gaga strangles her present-day self. The energy was primal, cathartic—an explosion of sound, movement, and emotion.

Her voice, refined over time, was more agile and radiant than ever. But as always, Gaga’s performance was as much about acting as it was about vocals—she channeled the possessed, the regal, the tortured, the Oscar-nominated. Even a slinky banger like “Killah” came with demonic flair, French producer Gesaffelstein appearing like a ghostly oil-slicked figure in her nightmarish opera.

Still, in true Gaga fashion, she allowed space for vulnerability and warmth. She saluted her fans, her fiancé, and her belief in interconnectedness. “The truth is we’re all one. It’s all just one big fucking thing,” she said before launching into “Born This Way.” The mayhem culminated in a triumphant, macabre finale—“Bad Romance” reimagined as a Frankensteinian resurrection, plague masks and all. Gaga’s expression flickered between the snarl of performance and the pure joy of fulfillment.

And then came not one, but two extended curtain calls with her entire cast and crew—rare for a music festival, but perfectly fitting for a night that wasn’t just a concert, but a landmark in pop theater history.