The Monster Ball Tour
The Monster Ball Tour was the second worldwide concert tour by American singer-songwriter Lady Gaga. Staged in support of her first EP, The Fame Monster, the concert largely comprised songs from that recording as well as Gaga's debut album, The Fame. The tour visited various arenas and stadiums, performing over 200 shows between November 2009 and May 2011. With the tour separated into three respective North American and European legs, as well as visiting Australia, New Zealand and Japan, the Monster Ball is the highest-grossing tour for a debut headlining artist in history.
Described as "the first-ever pop electro opera" by Gaga, the tour was announced in October 2009, after an originally planned joint concert tour with rapper Kanye West was abruptly cancelled; instead, the Monster Ball officially began just four days after the release of The Fame Monster, in November 2009. An updated version of the show was created after only a few months of touring due to the singer's concerns that the original had been rushed-through during its initial stages. The stage for the original show looked like a "frame", similar to a hollowed-out television set.
As The Fame Monster dealt with topics of overexposure and toxic celebrity culture, including the paranoia Gaga herself had experienced, the main theme of the shows became personal growth and human evolution, while elements of the originally planned tour were retained in some parts. From 2010 on, the shows took on a "Big Apple" theme, telling a story in which Gaga and her friends are lost in New York City and must find their way to the "Monster Ball". Both versions of the show were divided into five acts, with an encore finale. Each section featured Gaga and her dancers in new outfits, performing music relating to the theme of each respective act; acts were separated by video interludes.
The tour received positive reviews, with critics praising Gaga's live vocals, musicianship, and the theatrics of the show. The Monster Ball was also a commercial success, with high demand for tickets creating multiple-date extensions to the itinerary. The Monster Ball ultimately grossed an estimated US$227.4 million from 203 reported shows, attended by an audience of 2.5 million. At the 2010 Billboard Live Music Awards, Gaga won the Breakthrough Performer Award as well as the Concert Marketing & Promotion Award. HBO recorded a special of the Monster Ball during Gaga's February 2011 shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City; interspersed with backstage footage and interviews, Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden aired on HBO in May 2011 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 21 of that year.
Background
Rapper Kanye West and Lady Gaga initially planned to launch a joint tour in October 2009, known as Fame Kills: Starring Kanye West and Lady Gaga. Amid negative response to his controversial outbursts at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, West declared that he would take a hiatus from his music career. Nevertheless, the complete schedule for Fame Kills was released, with the tour set to begin on November 10, 2009, in Phoenix, Arizona. Shortly afterwards, the tour was officially cancelled without any explanation. Gaga addressed the situation at Billboards annual Women in Music luncheon, where she cited creative differences as the reason for the tour's cancellation. In an interview she stated, " is going to take a break, but the good news is, I am not."After assuring the public that she would be embarking on her own tour, Gaga officially announced the Monster Ball Tour on October 15, 2009. It was originally planned to debut in London in early 2010, but ended up kicking off on November 27, 2009, in Montreal. Rapper Kid Cudi and singer Jason Derulo were confirmed as the supporting acts for the tour, with Cudi supporting Gaga from the beginning of the tour, and Derulo joining from December 28, 2009. The official poster for the tour featured Gaga in Versace 676 sunglasses and wearing a gyroscope around her called "The Orbit", which she first wore on the October 3, 2009, episode of Saturday Night Live. The contraption was designed by Nasir Mazhar in collaboration with Gaga's own creative production company, Haus of Gaga. The tour's sponsor of the American leg was Virgin Mobile USA, who introduced the "Free I.P." program which offered free show tickets to fans who volunteered their time to homeless youth organizations.
Development
Original concept
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gaga explained that she wanted to put together an expensive looking, beautiful show which would be affordable for her fans. She asserted that the tour was a "pop-electro opera" because the theatrics and story elements interwoven within it played out like an opera. According to her, the design of the show was innovative and forward in terms of creativeness. Gaga wanted to change the shape of the stage and designed one with Haus of Gaga that was "essentially a frame with forced perspective, and the frame is put inside the stage." The stage had a triangular inset, like a diamond, and everywhere the show took place, the dimensions were measured in such a way that the box fit any stage. "So no matter where I go, my fans get the same experience. So often you go into theaters and there's ambient light flying in from all sorts of places, and the audience is in different spots, and the stage is in different shapes and lengths and widths and depths, so this is a way for me to control all the light and all of the different elements of the show", she added.The show revolved around themes of evolution, as well as her paranoias represented on The Fame Monster. While developing the tour Gaga spoke about original sin and demons inside human beings; "So we talked about growth, and that led us into this kind of scientific space, and we started talking about evolution and the evolution of humanity and how we begin as one thing, and we become another." This theme of monsters and evolution played a part in the fashion for the tour, which according to Gaga was "another level from where we were with the Fame Ball. It's going to be a truly artistic experience that is going to take the form of the greatest post-apocalyptic house party that you've ever been to." Although Gaga stated that she was inspired by the things she and West were doing with the Fame Kills tour, she concluded that she did not want to use any of the things that they had designed together. Later, she said that Fame Kills was "the great lost tour", but confirmed that some of the elements of it were incorporated into the Monster Ball.
In an interview with MTV News, Gaga further described the tour:
"I begin as a cell and I grow and change throughout the show. And it's also done in what now is becoming my aesthetic, which is, you know, it's part pop, part performance art, part fashion installation—so all of those things are present... It's a story, it's me battling all my monsters along the way. I'm playing all the music from The Fame, all the music from The Fame Monster. And the stage that I designed with the Haus is a giant cube that sits. Imagine you were to hollow out a TV and just break the fourth wall on a TV screen. It forces you to look at the center of the TV. It's my way of saying, 'My music is art.'"
For the performance of "Paparazzi", Gaga had collaborated with her Haus of Gaga creative partner Matthew "Matty Dada" Williams. She had a different vision for it in the beginning. Dada thought that Gaga should wear her hair braided, which Gaga had never done before. Dada's explanation for the concept was the look of Rapunzel, the fairy-tale character. He felt that "it's something people deeply understand. And when you're wearing sunglasses on a scaffolding piece with a giant alien dancing behind you, I promised it's not going to look like Rapunzel.'"
Revamped concept
In December 2009, Gaga revealed that she planned to cancel the concept of the original shows of the Monster Ball Tour and start afresh. She felt that the revamp of the show was needed as the original tour was constructed in a very short span of time. Gaga recalled that after West and she split up for this tour, she was unsure if she could get a show together in time, but nevertheless wanted to promote The Fame Monster. Hence she was able to put together "something that, in truth, I never would have done if I had a longer amount of time". The revamp of the tour was planned from the arena shows in the United Kingdom from February 2010. "My team thinks I'm completely psychotic. But I don't fucking care what they think. Well, just to give you an idea, the stage is about four times the size of the one we're on now and conceptually, it's completely different. One thing that has been lost over the past 10-15 years, in pop music, is the idea of showbiz. And this is definitely going to bring that back", clarified Gaga. According to James Montgomery of MTV, the show recalled the Broadway performance musicals The Wizard of Oz and West Side Story, the Broadway stage musical Metropolis, and the television mini-series Angels in America.During an interview with London's 95.8 Capital FM radio station, Gaga further elaborated on the changes in the show. She said that the show was constructed like a piece of musical theater. It also incorporated a number of contemporary and old musical pieces, some of them being re-recorded specifically for the show itself. A new keytar was constructed for the show and was named Emma. The instrument was created by the Haus of Gaga and the singer said, "We have this new instrument that I brought to the Brits tonight, 'Emma', which is what I was playing on the stage. She's a hybrid from all these other instruments." During an interview on KISS-FM with Ryan Seacrest, on his show On Air with Ryan Seacrest, Gaga explained that the concert tour was still called "The Monster Ball", but it had become more of a musical and less of a concert. It had a New York theme at its core; telling a story where Gaga and her friends travel to the Monster Ball, but get lost.