At the end of her “Mayhem Ball” tour, Lady Gaga performs “Bad Romance” as the opera house behind her ignites, the set piece roaring with flames. It’s a commentary, or at least it appeared to be, on the ephemeral nature of pop music: Gaga spends the entire performance celebrating the genre’s artifice by leaning into its flashy tropes, only to burn it all down. As “Bad Romance” concluded, Gaga reemerged for one last song, not as the character she had inhabited for the past two hours, but as herself, beaming at her own creation.
But what if the story didn’t end there? In between legs of her “Mayhem Ball” tour, Gaga debuted “Apple Music Live: Lady Gaga Mayhem Requiem” at Los Angeles’ Wiltern in January, unveiling an almost entirely reconfigured version of both the stage show and album that served as an extension of — or, as it was later clarified, the conclusion to — her “Mayhem” era. Fans plucked from a lottery to secure $229 tickets were in the dark about what would transpire at the 2,300-capacity venue; rumors rippled through the line snaking around the block that it could very well be an acoustic set, or a showcase of new songs for a potential super-deluxe record. About an hour before start time, in shuffled Little Monsters, phones locked in security pouches, unsure of their fate.
