Review: Lady Gaga's Chromatica Ball is Her Best Tour Yet

Over the last 14 years, Lady Gaga has developed a reputation for putting on some of the most over-the-top, expensive, and satisfying touring productions and live performances. And while she always delivers, her current Chromatica Ball tour is so extraordinary that it makes all her other tours look like mere warmups.

I've been lucky enough to have seen Gaga on several occasions, first with the Born this Way Ball, then the Artpop Ball, Joanne World Tour, and both her Enigma and Jazz & Piano shows in Las Vegas. Each one has been a religious experience, and the thrill of seeing her do what she does best in the flesh has never faded. But never has my mind been blown off my shoulders the way it was this past week at The Chromatica Ball.

After multiple delays due to COVID, many of us wondered if The Chromatica Ball would ever come to be at all, particularly since the occasion for the tour – her album "Chromatica" – came out two years ago. But we all should have known better than to think Mother Monster would ever do anything to disappoint us.

While Gaga's star has never been on the decline, there was a period of time post-ArtPop (2013) and pre-Super Bowl (2017) when it was less apparent where her career was going. And after her jazzy "Cheek to Cheek" project with Tony Bennett, it was even less certain whether she even wanted return to the Gaga of "Poker Face," "Bad Romance," and "Born this Way." After concluding her "Cheek to Cheek" tour with Bennett, Gaga made something of a surprise appearance on the 2015 Academy Awards to sing a "Sound of Music" medley, a medley that is now credited as one of the major turning points in her career. For some reason, the general public seemed gobsmacked that the meat dress-wearing provocateur could actually sing.

And then came the Super Bowl Halftime show of 2017, just five months after the release of "Joanne," her first pop album in three years. Her performance captivated more than 117 million viewers, making it the second most-watched halftime show in history, and it might have been in that moment that she began the transition from pop icon to bona fide legend.

Of course, the next several years saw Gaga's star climb higher than it ever had before: Her Vegas residency is perhaps the greatest show the strip has ever seen, she won an Oscar for "A Star is Born," and she carried "House of Gucci" on her back, helping the film earn $160 million and counting. And just when all the little monsters wondered whether Hollywood's newest A-lister would ever return to her weird-ass roots, she released "Chromatica" during a global pandemic and – to paraphrase Erika Jayne from "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills"–gave the gays everything they wanted.

All of this is to say that Gaga's journey from weird pop star to living legend has not been a linear one, and all that's on display at her Chromatica Ball is a heart-stopping testament to her dizzying talents. Whether dancing so hard that I feared she'd break a heel in "911" and "Stupid Love" to her stunning piano performances of "Shallow," "Always Remember Us This Way," and "1000 Doves," Gaga practically bleeds on stage and leaves nothing on the table. I've seen her be incredible before, but I've never seen her like this, and to miss The Chromatica Ball this summer would be to miss one of the greatest achievements in live performance that I've ever seen. That might sound dramatic, but it is – if anything – an understatement.