If you were one of the tens of millions of people who watched Lady Gaga‘s Super Bowl performance on Sunday night, you have probably already thought up about a million reasons why you should love her. After all, Gaga’s Super Bowl half-time show was one of the best we have ever seen.
Reasons I can come up with to love Lady Gaga and absolutely adore what she did on Sunday night, include these six. And no, they may not be a million reasons but, hey, if I had enough time and paper I could probably come up with them as well.
Descending into the Super Bowl via high-wire — Come on, it takes guts to even agree to be the Super Bowl half-time show performer, let alone to descend into Houston’s NRG Stadium from an incredible height via a high-wire in front of tens of millions of people. But Gaga did it. She then continued to stay attached to the wire for a good few minutes at the beginning of her act, allowing her to do aerial gymnastics and really keep the crowd on their feet.
The breadth of songs she covered — When a star as big as Gaga has just released a new album, you might expect most of her songs during a Super Bowl show would be from that album. After all, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest platforms in the world for any artist, and can potentially sell millions of copies of singles and albums.
But Gaga went a different route instead and sang songs from across the breadth of her entire career. Songs like ‘Poker Face‘ and ‘Just Dance‘, as well as her anthem ‘Born This Way‘, and the quintessential Gaga track ‘Bad Romance‘. In fact, we only got one song from her latest album — ‘Million Reasons‘. A song she sings the hell out of, by the way.
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Powerful vocals — I don’t care what anyone says. There are few singers that can sing brilliantly live. Yet Gaga can. Every time. And she did during Sunday night’s Super Bowl half-time show as well. Which shows, yet again, that while Gaga may be enormously famous for her costumes, her looks, her constantly-changing style, her political opinions and her unwillingness to ‘conform’, she is also a singer that can actually sing, and sing brilliantly, and her live performances prove it.
Because look at Gaga’s Super Bowl half-time show. It was over 12 minutes of being suspended from a high-wire and quickly plummeting hundreds of feet down to the stage below, which is guaranteed to take anyone’s breath away. Followed by aerial gymnastics on said high-wire, various energetic dances that also required her to run up several levels of stage, and then a piano piece. While still singing.
Finally, a still massively energetic number closed the show, with Gaga clutching a football, and leaping off the stage into the darkness below as her finale.
And yet, she managed to perform the entire 12 minutes with incredibly powerful live vocals, and barely out of breath. And few performers could do that.
Sparkling outfits — Sure, Gaga’s outfits during the Super Bowl half-time show were far less risque than she normally wears on stage. After all, this was a family show with mom, dad, grandma and the 8-year-old watching. But, even with the dress code restrictions, Gaga still managed to wear an array of sparkling outfits that were sexy, stylish and cool. Even while mostly covering up her myriad of tattoos.
Gaga’s stomach — Trolls on the Internet lambasted Gaga after her Super Bowl performance because she had a little bit of a ‘jiggle’.
Bitch, please! The woman has one of the most amazing bodies in show business. Period.
She was political — Gaga was asked by the Super Bowl organizers not to be political during her show. Because, let’s face it, the majority of Americans hate Trump and what he is doing, and Gaga is no exception. So it was to be expected that she may try to get across a political message to America lambasting Trump at the Super Bowl. Especially after Beyonce’s message about Black Lives Matter at last year’s bowl.
So, for all intents and purposes, when you watched her Sunday night performance and didn’t look beneath the obvious, you may think she listened to what the organizers told her and was not political. In which case, you would be wrong.
That’s because Gaga opened her 12-minute performance with Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land‘, an anthem that is being sung by anti-Trump protesters across America at the moment, as well as a protest song that has been used by anti-government activists from almost the minute it was released.
On top of that, however, Gaga also sang ‘Born This Way‘, a pro-LGBTI song with lyrics that include “No matter gay, straight or bi /Lesbian transgender life/I’m on the right track baby/I was born to survive”. Because she included people who are gay, lesbian, bi and transgender during one of the ‘straightest’ and most macho events of the year. And that. It was beautiful.
All in all, sure, these may only be six reasons why you should love Lady Gaga after that incredible Super Bowl performance. But just keep watching the woman as her massive career just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And I guarantee you, she will give you a million more.
Meanwhile, watch or re-watch Gaga’s Super Bowl performance in her VEVO video below to see what I mean. Breath-taking. Of course.