Lady Gaga invited 52,000 Little Monsters to Dodger Stadium on Saturday night (Sept. 11) for her long-awaited and long-waylaid Chromatica Ball tour, and if you weren’t one of the tens of thousands in the ballpark, you still might be able to see the magic unfold in the future.
“52,000 people. Sold out. 30 cameras pointed at you and one take,” Gaga tweeted after Saturday’s show, sharing a fan video of fireworks exploding over Dodger Stadium to wrap up her performance of the 2020 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 Chromatica single “Rain On Me” (sans duet partner Ariana Grande). Over on Instagram, Gaga wrote over a photo of herself in costume, “30 cameras pointed at you and you get one take.”
Gaga was clearly ready for her close-up at the bombastic show, because in addition to the robust camera crew capturing the concert, her every move was also captured by the massive video screens on either side of her geological Chromatica Ball stage, helping even the fans in the back row of the upper deck catch every stony facial expression, machine-like dance move, and ornate costume.
The pop superstar got physically and emotionally closer to the crowd when she took to a paleolithic-inspired piano at a circular stage in the middle of the field at the end of Act III to start an acoustic, belting version of her 2011 Hot 100 No. 1 “Born This Way” before transitioning into the dance mix we know and love. She also stripped things down for two songs from her critically acclaimed turn in 2018’s A Star Is Born: the Hot 100 No. 1 duet “Shallow” (without co-star/director Bradley Cooper) and the made-for-singing-live “Always Remember Us This Way.”
Before singing the solo movie song, Gaga took a moment to thank the crowd for their patience in waiting for a stadium tour around an album that came out more than two years ago.
“We were supposed to do this show a long time ago and we had to cancel, so thank you for coming,” she said from her piano. “Tonight, we don’t have to be home alone. Tonight, we don’t have to be standing so far from each other. But I think about all those nights that we wanted to kiss and touch and love each other, and we could not. Some people want to forget. I don’t think we should forget; I think we should remember all the bravery and all the kindness and all the courage. When I look around this stadium, at 52,000 people, I see a lot of courage, and I always want to remember us this way.”
It looks like her fans will be able to do just that once they see what those 30 cameras captured sometime in the future. (Billboard reached out to Gaga’s reps for more information about what the concert was filmed for.)
The Chromatica Ball has two more U.S. stadium dates before wrapping up: Tuesday in Houston and Saturday in Miami.
52,000 people. Sold out. 30 cameras pointed at you and one take 🖤 #monster #ChromaticaBallLA
I LOVE YOU🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 https://t.co/NbAQxMItj8— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) September 11, 2022