We Infiltrated Lady Gaga’s Funeral for 'MAYHEM' at the Grove

Put your paws at half mast: MAYHEM is dead, and Lady Gaga performed an entire set on its grave without telling anyone to put their hands up. We are mourning, dammit!

In other words, a maudlin affair. One befitting a public funeral on a Thursday evening (for a post-Cirie Fields public, too, predisposed to mourning). And where else, of course, for such an affair than Los Angeles’ The Grove?

If you are not familiar with Los Angeles, I need you to understand this location before we go any further. The Grove is one of Rick Caruso’s famous outdoor malls. Like the one Ava lives in for that one Hacks season, except that is The Americana at Brand, which is just like The Grove except in Glendale and therefore moderately bougier. Her slightly chicer sister, if you will, but both do possess Cheesecake Factories, so let’s not get carried away or anything.

The Grove is sort of in West Hollywood, but not really, more in a region called Miracle Mile. (LACMA and The Academy Museum are also here.) There are these little “streets” that trolleys drive on but mostly people walk on, like we are in fucking Disneyland or something. During the holiday season, they put lights up everywhere, and they pump fake snow out every so often, and there is a Christmas tree they do a Lighting Ceremony for every year where people like Nick Carter perform. The parking garage is an inscrutable nightmare located inside a force field that lobotomizes the masses therein (not unlike that of an airport). Just so you know what we are working with.

Anyway, the first thing I see is the tuba, and then the next thing I know there is a funeral procession to a band arrangement of “Abracadabra.” It is 7:22PM. The sun is very much still out. Storefronts for maje and the Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill adorn my view, backdropping a procession of twenty or so actors in drapey blacks and whites with lots of ruffles and veils, so many veils. I really love this one guy wearing a top hat and a sheet ghost black chiffon veil fantasy over a jeweled harness situation that gives a Phoebe Bridgers effect. And at their center, Mother Monster in glorious, divine red. A veil for her as well, naturally, but a net one that immediately teleports me back to summer/fall 2021 and that one Spencer press photo, I know you know the one.

When she reaches the photo op staged in front of the theater, she and her troupe of players form various moody, Gothic tableaus. Heads tilted back forty-five degrees or resting in the crook of a neck caused by such a tilt. Outstretched, almost Fosse hands. That fantasy. They begin to throw rose petals. They are showering Gaga in rose petals. The song is “Garden of Eden” now. They are throwing roses into the crowd. One hits a colleague of mine point-blank. Gaga poses for more photos, now mostly surrounded by actors in black. She feels puss tonight. “Perfect Celebrity” now. “Is it the whole album???” I write in my notes.

Lots of movement in the tableaus, during which Gaga vanishes. (Part of the reason this is often the go-to AMC for high-profile things like this or the Eras premiere — yes, I met Taylor Swift at the Grove — is that it’s very talent-friendly in this way.) “Disease” now. My eyes go to the band. It has been like ten minutes at this point. I also need you to understand that this theater was fully operational, and it is Thursday night, meaning there are new releases like Obsession normal people are trying to see. People dressed in all black frantically usher people through a small lane behind the band.

I succumb to a primal queer joy only experienced in the presence of genuine camp. People throw that word around too much. I’ve been guilty of it in the past. But this is fucking camp. “Abracadabra” again. We are looping the opening suite of MAYHEM. People begin to disperse. But not me! I continue to take it all in, until about ten minutes before showtime. There are restaurants surrounding the theater’s neighboring mall-streets with outdoor dining. This is their problem, too. The Cheesecake Factory balcony overlooks it all, and I don’t really know physics so cannot attest to the sound travel, but it is on some level also their business.

At 8:01PM, Gaga gives a very sweet introduction where she softly muses that the show and special capture “a side of [her] that’s more who [she is] in the studio.” She connects reworking the album to reassembling “the broken pieces of our lives.” I love it when she gets sentimental, largely because I was gay and in elementary school in the South during her Imperial period and am therefore psychically linked to her for life.

Anyway, Miss Thing presented reworked versions of every song on MAYHEM, so obviously we need to get into it. Well, the standard version of MAYHEM, which means that we are ending the era without a “Can’t Stop the High” performance. This is deeply offensive to me, personally, especially knowing that she played the track during curtain call at the Wiltern show a la her tour outro songs. Let me stop myself before I get too worked up.

​Introduction

I don’t generally care about the interludes, but noting the opening epigraph: “Stranger, Remember Me” – Unknown. Gaga emerges in all black; she will continue this trend for the whole evening. This look features a fabulous chain mail veil my friends and I collectively dubbed the Bene Gesserit garment. The Apple Music Live logo is in the bottom right corner of the screen, where it will remain for the special’s duration. This is probably fine at home, but disorienting in a theater.

“Disease”

Remember Azealia Banks’s brief hyperfixation on this song? Stylistically, this one isn’t a huge departure, which makes sense considering its original iteration already fits the brief. I write down “on SSRIs;” upon relisten, I’d also dub this one “trailerfied.” In a good way. I think. I love this fucking song. The way she shrieks on the outro is just divine.

“Abracadabra”

Back when she performed this at the Grammys, I speculated that was the Requiem arrangement. I was wrong! She’s at the piano for this one, which spends its first verse-to-chorus go-round in standard-ish (Piano Version) mode. A fun little adlib going into the first prechorus: “why don’t you hold me…” We see her chord charts on the piano, which somewhat look to be written by a toddler. I’m lukewarm on the take until a new, skittish beat kicks in after that first chorus. Everything that follows is thrilling, especially her “sing for me a sinful melody” opt-up on the bridge. A key theme of the MAYHEM era, which she seems to have taken from her Jazz & Piano days, is that she’s a damn good vocalist and musician, and don’t you forget it.

“Garden of Eden”

Mostly an amped-up version of the typical arrangement, with more prominent guitar mixing. Sure! Remember when Jane Don’t went home to this song? I miss the dance break.

“Perfect Celebrity”

The grunge one to begin with, so a straightforward piano version works well enough here, if not particularly exciting. This song has already given us so much, and it is so vocally demanding if performed as a full-out, that I do not mind. Though I cannot help but yearn for the litterbox she typically does this in. Fab countermelody on the second pre-chorus.

“Vanish Into You”

Somewhat of a middle ground between the jubilant standard arrangement and the stripped Colbert version that made everyone, including us, dissolve into a puddle the way they talked about Britani Bateman after the plane ride. Great arrangement! She spends this number crawling around for some reason.

“Killah”

*Costume alert: new veil, showing off her trademark white blonde. I write “tulle on tulle!”

My first proper YASSSSS GAGA of the affair. This is one of two numbers that she and Apple are pushing, and for good reason. Hoooooly fuck. Holy fuck. I’ve always taken to this track, both despite and because of the way its inherent goofiness clashes with its industrial slant. But I would be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped for a full-on industrial moment on the album, and “Killah” came the closest. Well…I got it!!! I write “Nine Inch Nails” in my notes and then she literally screams “I WANNA FUCK YOU LIKE AN ANIMAL” and the “Closer” sample takes center stage and I think I moaned out loud. Sorry.

“Zombieboy”

Forever chasing the high of those damn skeletons. The one sort-of miss for me, mainly just because I love the original so much. While “Killah” is able to shed its goofiness, “Zombieboy” is, to its core, kitsch. She can’t help but have that Pete Burns affect on the verses. She reads as aware this one is a bit of a stretch.

“LoveDrug”

Pretty by-the-book rendition I note as “MTV Unplugged.” This song inexplicably features not once but twice in the movie The Thursday Murder Club.

“How Bad Do U Want Me”

*Costume alert: a new headpiece that kind of resembles a tire.

My most-played song of 2025! This opens how you might expect, which is to say as synthy worship music like “Oceans” by Hillsong, which remains a strong cultural touchpoint for me given my obligatory overcompensatory religious mania period. It also sounds like it could be in the movie Sing Street. Odd lyric change: “cause if I get too close, she screams,” rather than “she might scream.” Then those delightful little Peter Griffiny he-he-hes come in, and things enter very Yazoo “Only You” territory, which is to say bliss. Her vocals are anointed here, especially on that “tell me” adlib leading into the final chorus.

“Don’t Call Tonight”

There is a contingent of fans online feigning outrage at this song’s correct exclusion from the tour setlist. I do not mean to say that it is a bad song, by any means, but in terms of live performance, it’s just kind of an awkward tempo and energy level. Which is why this is its live debut. Normal arrangement, with some fun adlibs.

“Shadow of a Man”

This one was pre-released, which feels random except for the fact that it was the first thing she teased from the era, way back at the end of the Chromatica Ball special. The first bit sounds like “Dream On” in this arrangement. Not much else to say, but she sounds fucking phenomenal.

“The Beast”

As with the tour, she sings this one from the balcony, or what’s left of it anyway. Between that staging and the piano-heavy arrangement, I am reminded of Gabriella Montez in “When There Was Me and You.” At Coachella, she timed this song so she said “11:59” at exactly 11:59, like literally was singing it as the clock changed. As always, she devours this song vocally. She is laying down for like half of this one. Sure!

“Blade of Grass”

*Costume alert: Beads. Veil behind her. Love.

She’s only performed this song at the piano thus far, so it was cool to see a fleshed-out arrangement. The song is, by design, pretty simplistic, but it works for a reason. Would love to feel this someday.

“Die with a Smile”

*Costume alert: slick armor, a ruffled skirt, and a helmet. A Koopa Troopa in Metropolis, prepared to dance the cancan at a moment’s notice.

My relationship with the song “Die with a Smile,” a song practically begging Mindy to sing it on Emily in Paris, is complicated. In a Great American Songbook way, it is, I suppose, “good.” I understand its value in her catalog, just as I understand “Million Reasons,” but that does not mean it is for me, nor that I have to be happy about it.So imagine my surprise when this, of all songs, inspires the evening’s most fervent YASSSSSSS GAGA. I’d been tipped off that this arrangement was the biggest departure, and that it was built on a sample of Kavinsky’s “Nightcall” (of Drive fame). This did not make sense to me on paper and still does not as I write it now. As soon as she first clips Bruno’s vocal, it’s clear that we’re in for it. (This is the other performance she and Apple are pushing.) I’m sold before she sings a word — and then she comes in with that severe vocoder. At which point I do possibly the biggest movie theater lean in recorded history. I realize that as her final act of the MAYHEM era, Lady Gaga has done the impossible: she has transmuted “Die with a Smile” to a frequency suitable for queer ears.

Epilogue

There are no credits, and therefore there is no “Can’t Stop the High” because this is a city that might elect Spencer Pratt for mayor and as a result does not deserve such things. As I exit the theater, I find out Drake has released three (3) albums, which is not my concern. I run into Seth Rogen’s assistant again, and I apologize for calling him straight, but to my credit he is wearing a Brain Dead t-shirt this time around.

As I walk aside, the band has returned, if they ever left in the first place. Playing their suite again and again.

MAYHEM is dead. Long live MAYHEM.

Images via Getty