“Huh? She’s in town? Slash still alive?” So came the bitter refrains when I excitedly told my friends I was seeing Lady Gaga on Saturday night. “Sure you don’t wanna just hang out for Miley?” Shut. Down. Had I missed something?
Yes, I was aware that some sort of inevitable baton-pass had occurred in the endless pop diva relay race to nowhere. No, Gaga’s once giddily high record sales weren’t what they used to be. And no, I wasn’t what the French would call overly-familiar-or-familiar-at-all with the latter half of her most recent record.
But still, there’s some glitter-choked umbilical extension between Mother Monster and I that remains unsevered. The Taylor Swifts, Lily Allens and Katy Perrys of this world may shimmy their way to the front of the throng for a season, but still Gaga resonates. Saturday’s artRAVE: The ARTPOP Ball extravaganza gave me a concrete answer as to why.
Gaga really cares about her fans. That I can say, without shame, I genuinely felt.
Huge portions of the show were devoted to chance exchanges with fans as Gaga gleefully accepted barrages of plush toys, flowers and letters. She congratulated one PFLAG mum for her six-inch heels, bear-hugged a set of very touchy twins and personally invited scores backstage – a reward for their audacity and open-heartedness.
Ms Germanotta shares stories of addiction, depression, even opening up about public backlash around the alleged pretentiousness of recent release ARTPOP. There was a great fragility in the starlet’s stage presence, a willingness to share not from atop Olympus but to really reach out to people as her cloud lowers.
The weird factor so synonymous with Gaga of years past was not wholly present here. Appearances of meat dresses and lobster hats were minimal, pyrotechnics, projectiles and acrobatics were sparing, but this all added to a sense of groundedness lacking in the spectacles of so many other pop divas. As she fiercely pointed out to one Perth-based critic that accused her of lip-synching (and at that moment, my balls shrunk), she is a singer first and foremost.
The artRAVE experience itself is also aware of public weariness in some way. There’s less of a diva worship structure in place, and more modelling of playful anarchy that Gaga wants taken up by every member of the crowd.
There’s generosity and danger in the staging of multiple runways jutting into and through the crowds, over which Gaga leans, flirting with the idea of leaping. She doesn’t really have backup dancers, but other performers with whom she dances. In one number, Gaga actually channels Pippi Longstocking in cartoonish Harijuku dreads as she impels her fans to awaken their own artistic animus within. “I don’t believe in hierarchies,” she says in response to one fan’s deifying letter, “there’s room for all kinds of artists, and that’s what makes it great.”
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty that’s special about Gaga’s music, too. Her language play is sophisticated and witty – it’s sexy, cheeky poetry set to the most bankable of melodies. Her penultimate number, Swine, was disgusting in all the right ways as she snorted and gagged like a farmyard dominatrix.
But in the end, it’s that feeling of utter devotion – from both sides – that’s palpable in the room when Gaga tears through iconic numbers like Born This Way. Ripped from Madonna or not, that familiar drumbeat that asks us to march in our own way still lit me on fire. Especially with a beaming Mother telepathically hugging each of her little monsters before my very eyes. Very stirring.
And the note that we end on actually happened somewhere towards the middle of the show, with Gaga tenderly pledging that it would be us she would think about when she took her final breath. For me, it’s hard to put this dame out to pasture when she cares just that damn much.
BY JUSTIN NOTT
Loved: Intimate love ballad Dope reworked for 11,000 adoring fans.
Hated: The weird beef carvery in the middle of Rod Laver Arena. What?!
Drank: In honour of the innumerable tweens around me, I mixed drinks: one canned G&T, one sparkling, one Boags.
