{"id":187712,"date":"2026-03-03T02:49:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T02:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/187712\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T02:49:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T02:49:19","slug":"lady-gaga-brought-gorgeous-chaos-to-dickies-arena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/187712\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady Gaga Brought Gorgeous Chaos to Dickies Arena"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lady Gaga\u2019s Mayhem Ball brought a two-night reign through Fort Worth\u2019s Dickies Arena over the weekend.\u00a0The tour, which immediately topped our list of most anticipated shows of the year<\/a> upon its announcement, comes at an exciting moment in her already storied journey as an artist. Though she\u2019s a firmly planted fixture in the highest tier of the pop stardom hierarchy, her Grammy-winning album, last year\u2019s Mayhem, unlocked a new zenith of her pop pedigree.\u00a0In many ways, it was both a return to form and a rush of exploratory sounds. <\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s show in Fort Worth was an electric victory lap for such an apex in her career. A lap she ran through a rock opera fever dream, and one that she told the audience she didn\u2019t want to wake up from. Scattered across the crowd in red lace bodysuits, six-inch platform heels and looks impressively recreated from her various eras (someone in a full pope costume was seated directly in front of us), her fans, known as \u201cLittle Monsters,\u201d were happy to oblige as her dream warriors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though the tour is called the Mayhem Ball, the show was titled \u201cThe Art of Personal Chaos.\u201d Across the tale\u2019s four separate \u201cacts\u201d and a grand finale, Gaga intertwined the vibrant, disparate fragments of her catalog. Aside from a few overstayed intermissions between acts (we checked ourselves by acknowledging that wig and costume changes of this caliber deserve as long as they damn well need), the format mostly read like a charm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She unveiled the first act with \u201cBloody Mary\u201d from 2011\u2019s pop bible, Born This Way. Opening the show with a deep cut from a record released 15 years ago would seem like a chaotic choice, but the song surged in popularity a few years ago after receiving the coveted modern pop-culture resurrection via TikTok virality<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Lady Gaga opened the Mayhem Ball with \u201cBloody Mary\u201d and a #look to match. <\/p>\n

What was pleasantly chaotic, though, was her then immediately roaring into 2025\u2019s omnipresent \u201cAbracadabra,\u201d which we didn\u2019t expect from her so soon in the setlist. We then quickly remembered we were watching one of pop music\u2019s greatest iconoclasts. \u201cFeel the beat under your feet, the floor\u2019s on fire,\u201d she sang through the song\u2019s chorus \u2013 we didn\u2019t feel the beat from under us nor any fire, but we did feel the ground literally shaking from the dancing that engulfed the crowd.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Throughout the night, the production was beyond Broadway-worthy. She greeted her monsters atop a two-story bird cage draped with lush red curtains. By act two, she reemerged on the stage from a grave box, lying next to a skeleton, for a shortened version of \u201cPerfect Celebrity.\u201d Her dancers were soon exhumed from the gravel around her to launch into the dark, electropop-powered \u201cDisease.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She introduced Act Three, titled \u201cThe Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name,\u201d appearing from a giant skull. Strutting down the stage\u2019s phallic runway through favorites like \u201cApplause\u201d and \u201cJust Dance,\u201d she screamed, \u201cTexas, get your fucking paws up!\u201d\u00a0The sheer showmanship of her dancers, catapulting from every end of the stage through vouging battles and back flips, cannot be overstated in bringing these tracks to life, too.<\/p>\n

Act Four was the longest chapter, and early in the set, she jumped from\u00a0Mayhem\u00a0to\u00a0The Fame\u00a0as she traded dancing on \u201cKill For Love\u201d for a guitar under Berlin basement club-esque red lights for \u201cSummerboy.\u201d The latter felt truly special, given that much like \u201cBloody Mary,\u201d it\u2019s hard to imagine we would have been gifted with its inclusion on the setlist had it not also had its own trending moment on TikTok<\/a> last summer.\u00a0The Mayhem Ball marked the first time since 2007 that she performed the song live. <\/p>\n

\"\"Gaga literally rose from the grave in Act Two, titled \u201cShe Fell Into a Goth Dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the long-held LGBTQ battle cry that is \u201cBorn This Way\u201d erupted at Dickies Arena. It was tucked deep into the show, but in a lot of ways was being set up to match the profound impact it holds in a place like Texas, particularly right now. She understood the importance of it at this moment, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas, you deserve to dance,\u201d she told us in the first act. And by the time she arrived at her anthemic love letter to the LGBTQ community, she asked the audience, \u201cWhere is the queer community? This show is for you, your joy, your freedom, your queer Texas art.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Admittedly, we weren\u2019t as excited for the fun to dial down as she transitioned toward her big ballads in the back half of Act Four. (With a vault of glittery pop hits stacked as tall as hers, can you blame us?) We were again reminded that we were watching one of the most enduring pop artists of the 21st century, who has built a career on proving we should never make the mistake of assuming we have her figured out.<\/p>\n

Her vocal runs on \u201cMillion Reasons\u201d were chill-inducing enough, and then she sailed \u2013 vocally and literally \u2013 into \u201cShallow\u201d from A Star is Born as the titular character from\u00a0Mayhem\u00a0joined her in a mythological novel-like boat. Eventually, she floated to the end of the runway where a piano awaited her to begin \u201cDie With a Smile,\u201d the colossal, Grammy-winning, and Bruno Mars-featured song that likely brought out some suburban North Texans who once upon a time made her the object of Satanic Panic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"LadyGaga ooh-la-la: the Grammy winner saved \u201cBad Romance\u201d for the encore, of course. <\/p>\n

Truly the most beautiful moment of Act Four \u2013 and maybe even the entire night \u2013 though, arrived with \u201cMarry the Night.\u201d In a black sequined veil, still behind her piano, she prefaced the pared-down rendition of the song with \u201cI know things are very scary right now, and I\u2019m thinking about everybody in Texas. I feel very honored to be here.\u201d From nearly any other artist making their every-few-years rounds through our home, this might have seemed like a version of going through the \u201cwe\u2019re so glad to be here\u201d script. From her, it felt like a hyper awareness of the role she holds for so many Texans who yearn to be loved back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Any wet eyes in the arena were soon dried by the time we had to lock in to get our \u201crah rah\u201d on<\/a> for the encore of \u201cBad Romance\u201d \u2013 the already atmospheric hit somehow felt even more formidable live. In true Gaga form, she came back out to the stage on a hospital bed pushed by dancers in witch doctor masks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the show, she did promise us that though she\u2019s nearly 20 years into her career (we shuddered at this inadvertent reminder that we are, in fact, getting old), she\u2019ll continue to meet us for the next 20 years if we\u2019ll have her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If we are to be so fortunate as to receive invitations from her world of gorgeous chaos that existed on Sunday, we\u2019ll meet her there every time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lady Gaga\u2019s Mayhem Ball brought a two-night reign through Fort Worth\u2019s Dickies Arena over the weekend.\u00a0The tour, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2171,116,118,117,4661,2174],"class_list":{"0":"post-187712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-concert-reviews","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","11":"tag-fort-worth-news","12":"tag-pop-music","13":"tag-touring-artists"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}