With Mayhem, Lady Gaga is six albums deep in a glittering solo career. There’s a whole lot more to come.
Gaga is currently on a drought-breaking visit to Australia with the MAYHEM Ball World Tour, her first in these parts for more than a decade.
When the U.S. pop superstar stopped by Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on Tuesday night, Dec. 9, she made her apologies for the long wait. And made a special promise.
“So,” she remarked during her set, “for those of you who have been in my life, for 20 years almost, what I want to know is, I intend to make lots more music and lots more albums. In 20 years from now, will you come back?”
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The answer from the 52,000-odd little monsters in the stadium, was a resounding yes.
After performing “Die With A Smile,” Gaga vowed, “I won’t leave it for 11 years next time.” Things, however, got in the way. “I wanted to,” she explained. “It means so much to be back here. Looking out into the audience, we’re all grown up.”
Gaga’s last jaunt down under was for 2014’s ArtRave: The ARTPOP Ball, when she played arenas.
“What I like about this is it won’t just be, like, me and some of you. It will be, I think, I hope, a lot of you that are here,” she continued. “So much of this show is about community, but I can’t do it by myself. The real show is in the audience, and I know you know that.”
The long wait hasn’t hurt Gaga’s relationship with her Aussie fans. Following its release in March, Mayhem powered to No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, her fifth leader here and 13th title to crash the top 50. Previously, Gaga logged three weeks at No. 1 in 2010 with The Fame Monster, two weeks in 2011 with Born This Way, 11 weeks in 2019-20 with the A Star Is Born soundtrack, and two weeks in 2021 with Chromatica.
Gaga endeared herself early to the sold-out Brisbane crowd, her only visit to Queensland on this trip, when she dropped a statement just like a local. “We didn’t come here to f*** spiders,” she remarked, dryly, a statement which, in the Australian vernacular, means there’s other serious business to attend to.
For two-plus hours, Gaga and her crew turned this rugby colosseum into an opera house, a performance that included the classics “Poker Face,” “Born This Way,” “Shallow,” “Rain On Me,” and a touching rendition of “The Edge of Glory” at the piano.
Later, fans turned to social media to put the venue on blast for technical issues, which meant thousands were late to pass through the gates for what was an unusually early start, at 7.30pm, with no support acts.
Gaga’s five-date east coast swing is produced by Live Nation. The shows got underway Dec. 5 for the first of two nights at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, and wraps up this Saturday, Dec. 13 with the second of two shows at Sydney’s Accor Stadium.
A second North American leg of The Mayhem Ball will kick off in early 2026, with a new run of dates that will see Mother Monster visit cities that she wasn’t able to reach with her first run — such as Atlanta, Austin, Boston and Washington, D.C. — as well as performances each to Los Angeles’ Kia Forum and New York’s Madison Square Garden.
