Every night on her current tour, at the moment she emerges onstage as Lady Gaga, perched atop a 14-foot-high crimson gown, Stefani Germanotta starts to panic. At the center of her opera-house set, two layers of curtains part, revealing that glorious, preposterous, Clifford-size crinoline and the tiny woman ensconced within it. Twenty thousand or so now-grown Little Monsters scream for the guiding light who told them, when they needed it most, that they were born this way. They still need it.

 

 

The accompanying tour, the Mayhem Ball, is the most impressive spectacle in a career full of them, but the first performances immediately confirmed how much she had changed. "I'm not an adrenaline junkie anymore," she says. " I used to love that feeling." 

Now, she reacts like any well-­balanced human would if they found themselves wheeled out in front of a packed arena, squeezed into a mammoth Lady Gaga costume. "I see all the fans," she says, eyes wide, "and I'm in this big dress, and the music is so loud and it's very dramatic … and for 90 seconds, I have to talk myself out of a panic attack." Polansky, listening in on her mic feed, sometimes catches her breathing hard.

The feeling sustains for the entire first song: "I'm panicking a little bit during 'Bloody Mary.'" But after that comes this year's hit "Abracadabra," which may well have supplanted "Bad Romance" as the Gaga-est song ever recorded, its triumphant chorus replete with authentic Moth­er Monster gibberish: "Abracadabra, morta-ooh-ga-ga/Abracadabra, abra-ooh-na-na!"

Somehow, every time she starts that song's choreography, her heart rate slows, and she remembers who she is. All of her practice, for this tour, for every tour, kicks in. "The rehearsal of self saves me," she says. "Every cell in my body goes, 'You know what to do.'" Around that point, she tends to gaze out at the crowd and shout a familiar command: "Put your ******* paws up!" Yas, Stefani.

 

 

They're planning on getting married soon, either during the tour or just after. "We're talking about it all the time," Polansky tells me. "We have these breaks, and they're tempting. It's like, 'OK, can we get married that weekend?' We don't want a really big wedding, but we want to enjoy it. In a lot of ways, we already feel married, so it's not like it's gonna change much."

 

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lady-gaga-mayhem-tour-grammys-cover-story-interview-1235460150/

Edited November 13, 2025Nov 13 by Almodusa

Oh MOTHER  

her best photoshoot in YEARS 

The FINGERS!?!!!??

oh I KNOW Michael's prostate is shaking

The piano fascinator is so cool

Joker being referred to as an “instantly notorious megaflop” with the article

the cover is a slay

 

Nice photoshoot, I like it

A LIVING LEGEND 

Mayhem has truly felt like a good old-fashioned pop ERA  

lady godga you are a STAR

MOTHER

 

like MOTHER

***** shut the **** upppp

Oh she's definitely winning multiple Grammys this year. I can already feel it 

Quote

Oddly enough, the video, and all of the thematic cues the tour took from it, might not have existed without Gaga's latest movie, last October's instantly notorious megaflop Joker: Folie á Deux. "There was a ton of negativity around Joker," she says. "And I think I was feeling artistically rebellious at the time."

 

This one

G.U.Y vibes

 

MOTHER

 

OH STONEGA

Oh she's taking it

But after that comes this year's hit "Abracadabra"

 

but ATRL told me…

Oh wow

 

GOD + GA = GODGA

DarkGa