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Its possible that we are undervaluingLady Gaga.
Alright, shes coming in hot for 2019s awards season following Bradley Coopers remake ofA Star Is Born.
Yes, shes forever a household name.
But there isnt that universal hysteria lent to Gaga that we employ with Beyonce or Teslas or Meryl Streep.
In Vegas, theres no visible excitement for the opening of her residency at the MGM Park this Friday.Zero.
A cruise down the Strip reveals the usual chiseled, vacant stares from Sin Citys prime residents.
Calvin Harriss startled DJ face is indistinguishable from that of Tiestos or Zedds.
Celine graces the facades of malls advertising her final dates.
Her mugs frequency is matched only by Britneys who announces her return in 2019.
None of the Strips familiars, however, have had the game-changing impact of Gaga this past decade.
Its as the underdog that Gaga has always excelled.
For her residency, titledEnigma, she has studied excessively, offering snippets of rehearsals on her Instagram.
Unusually for the age that we live in, this unveiling comes with next to no preamble or information.
There is barely a welcome wagon on Friday.
Performance at 8 p.m. is the only instruction.
Secrecy is priceless these days, mystique unheard of, but Gaga has managed both.
Surprise has been a strong suit in her past.
She was a master of shock and shlock in the early 2010s: The meat dress.
Birthing herself from an alien egg.
Bleeding onstage at the VMAs.
Since then her arc has been less of a climb, more breakthrough bursts staggered by occasional missteps.
But in Vegas, surprise is back on the menu.
Theres something about seeing a superstar soaring overhead that changes your sense of perspective.
Up in the roof she looks dainty like a Polly Pocket.
Behind me is Katy Perry.
I stare at Perry, staring at Gaga, zipping overhead and think about women and glass ceilings.
Her catalogue is catnip for Vegas; a blueprint for how to respect the role of entertainer.
She pays homage to her greatest inspiration David Bowie by cleverly covering Im Afraid of Americans.
Her political tidbits are just that tidbits.
Her material, now devoid of the blogospheres WTF-is-this-right-is-this-wrong diatribe, has grown better with age.
She delivers a hit parade with expletives in between: PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP!
she screams, like shes fronting a hair metal band.
GET OFF YOUR FUCKING FEET!
she freaks out, as shes launched into eye-popping scenes that cross the video gameBayonettawithThe Matrixand the planet Mars.
Onstage she brings back some of that balance.
Take Alejandro; an Ace of Base-by-way-of-Cabaret belter that reduces queer men in the pit to tears.
Its a song about infidelity, engorged with innuendo.
From her second LPBorn This Way, Sheisse was written after a night out in Berlin in 2010.
Introducing it, she screams: I dont speak German but I can if you lyyyyk!
and proceeds to speak gibberishDeutschfor a whole verse.
If youre a strong female you dont need permission, she sings.
Her humor is liberatingly absurdist like Streisand with added eroticism.
Then theres her bodily surrender.
Her physicality in this show is unnerving given that fact.
I think in yoga they call this a revolved half moon.
There is no flinching, no sign of aches.
Her defiance as a dancer is a physical manifestation of art as catharsis for emotional trauma.
There are plenty gregarious dressers in the crowd too.
The so-called Little Monsters were also out in force.
This is as much a show in their freakish honor as it is in Gagas.
Her resurrection of her inner weird is a match for Vegass plea for rebellion.
Its also an equalizer.
On one such night, his friends sister was in the crowd.
Its a personal interaction that Gaga still craves.
During the final throes, that interplay between fan and star overwhelms her.
For Million Reasons she sits at her piano to talk about all shes shared with fans for ten years.
Gaga never drew a line between artifice and reality.
For her there doesnt seem to be one.
She bleeds superstar, a performer who is moving because shes odd and odd because shes moving.
Thats why she cant make it through the first verse of Shallow without breaking to catch her tears.
Thank you for believing in me, she says.
