It’s been almost three years to the day since Lady Gaga last played a show in Miami, and it was a dramatic one. As the singer sat down at her piano for the stripped-down portion of her set, lightning in the area threatened to shut down the concert. Gaga laughed it off at first, but after a two-hour rain delay, the final show of her Chromatica Ball tour ended before the last set and encore. It was a symbolic end for an album era marred by the start of the COVID pandemic.
September showers followed Gaga to Miami once again Sunday night, but under otherwise starkly different conditions. This time, the singer is touring in support of her seventh studio album, Mayhem, her biggest critical and commercial success since 2011’s Born This Way.
Fans who five years ago dressed in bright Chromatica pink turned out in gothic black, red, and maroon getups to embody the dark spirit of the Mistress of Mayhem, the alter ego Gaga inhabits (and battles) during her more than two-hour Mayhem Ball show. We watch Gaga shoot that other side of herself, follow her as she falls into a dream-like abyss, and resurrects as a figure who learns to live with the dark elements inside her. She’s returned to the theme of battling demons time and again during her nearly 20 years as a touring act — we’ve watched her battle the Fame Monster (a massive, glowing angler fish) during the Monster Ball and the disembodied visage of Mother G.O.A.T. during the Born This Way Ball — but it had been several years since she’d dug into this fertile thematic ground.
