Lady Gaga to bring Mayhem tour to Australia
By Kate Lahey and Cindy Yin
Lady Gaga has officially announced the Australian leg of The MAYHEM Ball tour, with three stadium shows planned for Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.
They will be her first shows in Australia since 2014’s ArtRave: The ARTPOP Ball.
Lady Gaga performing at the Grammy Awards in February.Credit: AP
Gaga will headline the opening weekend of Coachella this Friday, before beginning a leg of stadium shows in Mexico City and Singapore, and a landmark free concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.
Her latest album, Mayhem received widespread acclaim from critics and fans when it was released in March, and debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200.
This masthead’s reviewer Robert Moran described it at the time as “concrete proof that Gaga was, finally, returning to her sacred well of maximal pop”.
“After such a spell amid Hollywood fantasies and Bruno Mars features (their maudlin hit Die with a Smile awkwardly closes Mayhem), there’s something to be said for an icon willingly returning to the source. Fan service, some might derisively call it,” he wrote.
“But if anyone’s earned the right to indulge her particular set of skills, two decades into her career no less, it’s the greatest pop star of the 21st century.”
The 14-time Grammy Award-winning Gaga is one of the world’s most successful artists.
She’s sold an estimated 170 million records since the release of her debut album The Fame in 2008 with the second single off the album, Poker Face selling 14 million copies alone.
The release of Bad Romance the following year, the lead single from the reissue of her debut album, further cemented her status as a global pop icon.
Lady Gaga performing at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.Credit: Getty Images
While Gaga is renowned for her fashion, genre-defying music, and elaborate performances, she has been a champion for LGBTQ rights, helping fight for marriage equality in the US.
Her song Born This Way with lyrics “No matter gay, straight, or bi, lesbian, transgender life // I’m on the right track, baby I was born to survive,” is recognised as an LGBTQ anthem.
The announcement of the Australian leg of the MAYHEM tour comes after her duet with Bruno Mars Die With a Smile, recently notched a 15th week atop the Billboard Global 200 chart, just behind Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You as the song with the longest reign.
Gaga first ventured onto the big screen in 2013, making her acting debut as an assassin in Robert Rodriguez’s action film Machete Kills. She later starred alongside Bradley Cooper in the widely acclaimed 2018 version of A Star is Born, a remake of the 1937 film of the same name. The film received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a Grammy.
Gaga will perform at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium on December 5, Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on December 9 and Sydney’s Accor Stadium on December 12.
Presale for the Australian dates begins on Monday, April 14.
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