No eyebrows, still slaying.
Photo: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert via YouTube
Just one day after tearing up the MTV VMAs stage with her performance of “Abracadabra” and “Dance Dead,” Lady Gaga hath returned with a stripped-back performance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert of “Vanish Into You.” The VMAs was all showmanship, featuring tons of dancers and a heightened sense of theatricality, but the acoustic “Vanish,” no less considered, calls back to her Tony Bennet days when Gaga highlighted her vocal capabilities. On her current tour, the Mayhem Ball, MTV’s Artist of the Year ends the acoustic portion of her set with “Vanish” as a piano ballad before morphing into the original, electronic version of the track as she walks past audience members at the barricade. On Colbert, she makes the whole track acoustic, belting out the lyrics while playing the piano, accompanied by just two guitars.
In the new version of “Vanish Into You,” Gaga edits how the song starts — the original begins with a forceful, a cappella rendition of the chorus, while this version goes directly into the verse. The biggest change in the arrangement, however, comes during a pre-chorus in which she’s desperately pleading, “Do you see me? / Do you see me now? / I’ve been waiting for you / Crying out,” low and slow, plucking minor keys. It leads into a chiller version of the chorus, building power toward the end of the song when she finally reaches for the limits of her register with “Saw your face and mine / In a picture by our bedside / It was cold in the summertime / We were happy just to be alive.” By the time she finishes, the strength of Gaga’s voice has been laid bare. Mayhem, according to the tour (which extended its North American run through April on September 9), is about “The Art of Personal Chaos,” and with her two most recent performances, Gaga shows the breadth of her chaotic range.
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