Gaga (second left) last performed in the UK a year ago
Lady Gaga has opened the iTunes festival in London, playing a set of entirely new material.
The 60-minute show marked The pop star's comeback, after a
broken hip caused her to cut short her Born This Way Ball tour earlier
this year.
"To say that I've missed you, it's a bit of an understatement," she told her fans on stage at London's Roundhouse.
Featuring pig men in boiler suits and multiple costume changes, the show was streamed live around the world.
In the audience were celebrity fans including Adele, Niall Horan from One Direction and TV personality Arlene Phillips.
Many fans dressed for the show, following a bizarre dress code laid out by the pop star on Twitter
For fans, it was the first taster of Gaga's forthcoming album
ArtPop, as seven songs - including Manicure, I Wanna Be With You and
Swine - were played for the first time.
Many attended the show in a dress code dictated by the
27-year-old on Twitter - including "bedazzled pig snouts" and "trash
bags or artclothes".
"Artclothes are clothes you don't mind getting covered in live art!"
she said, warning there would be a "paint zone" at the show.
In the event, nobody left the show resembling a Jackson
Pollock painting - with the "live art" amounting to nothing more than
dancers spray-painting canvasses.
In an X Factor era, pop's main message is "be yourself". Lady Gaga isn't interested in that.
"I'm not one icon. I'm every icon," she recently
told WWD magazine. "I'm an icon that is made out of all the colours on the palette at every time."
In essence, she's a visual performance artist, exploring
fame's ability to seduce, transform and distort. Not for nothing does
she sing "art's in pop culture in me" on her current single.
But the music is what fans came for - and the good news is
that, on first impressions, Gaga's new material is catchy and clever.
Manicure is Abba by way of Giorgio Moroder, while Sex Dreams is every
bit as saucy as the title suggests.
The set could have done with less waffle, and the pauses
between songs were unforgivable. But when she's paying attention, Lady
Gaga can out-sing, out-perform, and out-smart most of her
contemporaries.
Gaga took to the stage nearly
half-an-hour late, dressed as a bandit, holding a knife, with a black
bandana obscuring the lower half of her face.
Strapped into a metal cage that resembled a medieval torture
device, she was hoisted above the audience to perform the opening
number, Aura.
"What's up, London?" she demanded as the song ended. "Do you have to scream so loud? I can barely hear myself."
The new music largely stuck to the electro-pop template of
her biggest hits, Bad Romance and Just Dance - but one track, Jewels and
Drugs, which featured rapper TI, was inspired by the star's love of
hip-hop.
"I wanted to set myself free of this box they put you in, in
pop music," she explained. "It's like you have to stay inside the box
and be a good girl.
"But I don't want to be a good girl. I want to be out of the box."
Later, the singer, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta,
told fans she had survived "some really tough times" and explained she
had used "wigs and make-up" to "cover up the pain".
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SETLIST
- Aura
- Manicure
- ArtPop
- Jewels & Drugs
- Sex Dreams
- Swine
- I Wanna Be With You
- Applause
"When I didn't feel strong enough to be me, I created someone else. And it worked.
"So here I am, the human underneath the wigs," she said,
removing her headpiece and bobby pins to reveal a tousled brunette bob.
"This is my real hair."
Fans lapped up the theatrics, as Gaga attempted to break down
the artifice of pop stardom by changing wigs and costumes in full view
of the audience.
But some were disappointed that the hits were being ignored.
"Just play Poker Face," shouted one during a lull in the music.
Accordingly, the singer's current single, Applause, got the
most rapturous response of the night, as the singer prowled the stage in
a Mad Hatter costume, complete with a Sherlock Holmes' pipe.
The singer's eye-opening performance marked the opening night
of the month-long iTunes festival, which will also see concerts by
Elton John, Justin Timberlake, Queens Of The Stone Age and Katy Perry.
Competition-winners make up the audience every night, with entry via a free ballot.
