Friends Arena, Stockholm Gaga makes a strong claim for pop’s crown with a bombastically hit-stacked show that also creates an intimate human connection

T he opening salvo of Lady Gaga’s Chromatica Ball is one almighty flex. After dabbling in pared-back soft-rock on 2016’s Joanne, and cementing her status as a credible actor via A Star Is Born and House of Gucci, this delayed, 20-date stadium tour – in support of 2020’s synth-pop opus Chromatica – is her chance to make a claim for pop’s crown once again. It certainly feels like it’s on her mind when the grinding synth riff of opener Bad Romance kicks in, only to be followed by a pulverising Just Dance – sent skywards by a roared “Stockholm put your fucking hands up” – which in turn bleeds into Poker Face. As unequivocal statements of intent go, unleashing three of the 21st century’s defining anthems in quick succession is pretty bold.

But this being Lady Gaga, such a rapid-fire blitzkrieg of bangers seems to serve an artistic purpose, too. Housed initially in a surprisingly austere, monochrome set – dubbed the “museum of brutality”, but with a whiff of “multi-storey car park” – she performs Bad Romance trapped inside a modernist dress-shaped tomb with just her face visible. With each song an outer layer is removed, but she remains rooted to the spot, spinning round while bathed in red light as her dancers strut front of stage. Set in among the show’s somewhat muddled narrative of rebirth and salvation, with its five defined acts separated by elongated video interludes that occasionally disturb the show’s momentum, it reads like a comment on the suffocation of early, overwhelming fame, with the following act dubbed The Treatment.

That frantic early pace is maintained via Chromatica’s Alice – a dark treatise on failing mental health set to bubbling house and performed in bloodied PVC – and the high camp of Replay. Five songs in, Gaga joins her dancers in full-blown choreography, a concession perhaps to the fibromyalgia that caused her to cancel the Joanne tour in 2018. It’s followed by the underrated Monster, a delicious electropop confection linking seduction and cannibalism, that ends with her being mauled by her dancers only to re-emerge in a sparkly red cropped jacket and oversized sunglasses. It’s a gloriously camp flourish and a reminder of the early humour that vanished from 2013’s frustratingly highfalutin Artpop and the po-faced Joanne. Interestingly, neither album is represented in the setlist tonight.

Instead we get a rousing Telephone – complete with huge, skin-melting plumes of fiery pyro – and a brilliant, disco-laced Babylon, in which Gaga sashays around in a gold lamé suit before donning a floor-length cape to take it to its gospel conclusion. Whereas on previous tours she may have artfully glided above the crowd, or traversed the DayGlo stage via raised platforms, here she keeps it simple, walking through the throng during Free Woman to get to a minimally adorned B-stage complete with piano. Always a fan of a blustery ballad, tonight she’s in her element, with the Oscar-winning Shallow causing a mass singalong and shrinking the 40,000 venue to a barroom. Brilliantly, rather than pare back the spectacle, she performs it while dressed as what looks like a purple praying mantis, complete with bulbous headdress and antennae. It’s a testament to her voice that the song’s emotional heft isn’t diluted even when performed in insect cosplay.

The ballad section is also where her crowd interaction shifts from sweary demands for energy to pleading insistence that everyone love themselves. Before a gorgeous Always Remember Us This Way she starts to cry remembering a time she thought she may never be able to perform live again, while an initially stripped back Born This Way is dedicated to her mum who missed the show due to illness. Keen to include everyone, she even dedicates Fun Tonight to “anyone not having fun tonight”.

The spectre of the pandemic haunts the show, too. The Edge of Glory is interrupted by a brief speech about the loneliness of the last few years, while the main set finale of dance goliath Rain on Me – released in peak lockdown – is treated like a huge unleashing of pent-up emotions, Gaga starting and ending it flat on her back breathing heavily into her head mic. It would have made for an ideal end, but she arrives for one more song – this year’s mildly underwhelming Hold My Hand from plane spotter’s thirst trap, Top Gun: Maverick. Bloated and saggy on record, here it just about makes sense, with its OTT 80s balladry beefed up with chunky guitars and lashings of pyro. Taken out of the film’s context and plonked into a roaring stadium it morphs into a song about Gaga’s favourite topic – her relationship with a fanbase that has constantly acted as a healing salve. Now it’s her chance to return the favour. “Promise me, just hold my hand,” she sings, that missing connection finally complete.