It just so happened that Lady Gaga was also scheduled to perform in Macao the weekend we went there to watch Linkin Park perform. My dad said it’d be cool to watch her concert as well, shrugged his shoulders and bought us tickets. Really, and he didn’t even know any of her songs before the concert except the ever-popular ‘Poker Face’.

So, on the night of the 15th of August, my family and I trouped down to the indoor stadium that was connected to our hotel, The Venetian Macao. I had the weirdest feeling that my dad was the oldest one there (and I was probably right about that.) We surveyed the young, hip crowd, and settled down to wait for Lady Gaga to arrive.

Well, we waited.

And we waited. I realised that when they say that celebrities are fashionably late, they really do mean fashionably late, and at that moment in time it didn’t seem all that fashionable to me - probably because we had run out of popcorn.

On a higher note, the rest of the audience was obviously very hyped about the concert. In fact, a group of people at the sides of the hall managed to start a massive mexican wave around the stadium that kept going for at least 15 minutes. It was quite an eye-opener for me, who had only seen mexican waves of this magnitude on TV.

When the lights dimmed, there was a stupendous cheer, but it wasn’t Lady Gaga who stepped onto the stage to perform. It was a group of male dancers, part of the supporting act before the real concert actually started. They ended their dances to a round of applause and was followed immediately by an amazing beat-boxing performance. I hadn’t actually planned to be impressed by the supporting acts, but they had me convinced that it wasn’t going to be too bad - or at least until this one lady with a terrible sense of fashion graced the stage. To be honest, her clothes were rather hurtful to the eyes, with the furry, feathered, yellow jacket and the skintight leather pants, but I supposed that beauty was in the eyes of the beholder. Sad to say, her fashion sense actually topped her singing, which was way too screechy for my liking. To my dismay, she sung three songs before she left the stage, and my poor ears throbbed their discontentment.

We went back to waiting, and there was a murmur of anticipation when an image of Lady Gaga, dressed in typical Gaga-garb, was projected onto the drop-down screen, but it died down when she didn’t appear.

When the lights dimmed for a second time, we were slightly lethargic at first, half-expecting another supporting performance. However, when they rolled a video montage of Lady Gaga’s alias for the night, ‘Candy Warhol’, the audience cheered enthusiastically. The video told an interesting story - that Candy had murdered someone who had broken her heart with poison -

“He drank it all, in one efficient gulp, like a beautiful monster...and took off into the city. And now I just feel...I feel so..”

“Empty?”

“No....no.”

“Candy.”

“...Free.”

 And with that dramatic ending, she burst into song - ‘Lovegame’, to be exact, in a chunky, glittering swimming suit-esque costume.

The rest of the night was a blur of costume changes, lights and songs, and people dancing to the steady beats of her music on the floor. If you’ve ever been to a Madonna concert, then you’d be able to make a comparison between the two, because they were eerily similar, both flashy and executed with dramatic flair.

‘Just Dance’Lady Gaga worked the stage in glittering, tight-fitting costumes with plunging necklines and tall collars - ‘Beautiful Dirty Rich’, with chunky sunglasses - ‘The Fame’ and towering platform heels, vivid colors - ‘Eh Eh’ and even a wand which sparkled when she wove it. Mostly, she wore swimming suit-like costumes with huge sleeves and asymmetrical, geometric lines, favoring white highlighted with bold colors like red and green, glittering under the multi-colored spotlights.

She laughed occasionally, flirted with the audience constantly, swore none-too-politely, and basically had the audience twisted around the dangerously tall spike of her boot heel. Of course, she also came equipped with her group of gyrating male dancers and the occasional motor bike.

Well, the biggest surprise of the night was when her very own custom-made transparent piano was rolled onstage, filled with bubbles. Then the Lady herself appeared, decked out in her very own version of haute couture to match the piano, wearing nothing but nude colored underwear and a transparent, bubble-covered jacket.

The audience screamed and catcalled at the scandalous nature of it all. My mother just screamed, without the catcalling. I covered my brother’s innocent eyes, but enjoyed the showmanship myself. There’s something liberating about watching someone who is confident of her ability to perform, so confident that she can walk out onstage wearing nearly nothing and feel great about it, and that, girls, is the kind of confidence we should have, but preferably with more clothes on.

She started off pretty normally - playing the piano normally, that is, to the tune of ‘Brown Eyes.’ But soon, she had climbed up onto the piano and was playing it upside down, and then she had climbed onto the piano chair and stood on that while banging on the keys, and then she stood on one heeled foot while the other rested on the keyboard. It was one of the weirdest and most interesting performances I had ever seen. While chatting to the audience, she slid effortlessly into the chords of her hit song ‘Poker Face’ without us noticing it, and then she performed a slow rendition of what was supposed to be a fast paced song. It all sounded very unique and original, and just when we thought that she was done, she cranked up the pace and the strobe lights flashed once more as her backup dancers sauntered in to the faster, upbeat version of Poker Face.

She ended the concert spectacularly, carried off the stage by her muscular dancers, waving to her audience, the bubble jacket discarded and forgotten. There would be an after-party, down by the poolside, but my family and I were satisfied with what we got, and not to mention pretty tired from all the scandalous screaming that we did. Besides, we had one more concert to go, and it was the one that I was saving my voice for.

But I’ll talk about it in another article.

“I’m so excited because after the show I’m going to go eat some dim sums!” - Lady Gaga