Lady Gaga Stuns Fans with a Pop-Music Funeral at The Grove | Vanity Fair

Little Monsters wearing ornate bird masks, leather tank tops, and black top hats packed the narrow streets at The Grove in Los Angeles Thursday night as a group of VIP guests (identifiable by their botox, filler, and tailored blazers) was ushered toward a step-and-repeat draped in black theater curtains. Nobody seemed entirely sure whether Lady Gaga was actually coming. But when the Gaga music started playing, the crowd erupted with the kind of hysteria once reserved for Beatlemania.

The pop auteur emerged shortly after, leading a funeral procession–style parade of dancers and an eight-piece brass band performing somber, New Orleans–style jazz renditions of songs from her 2025 album Mayhem. Phones shot into the air almost instantaneously. Once they reached the step-and-repeat in front of the AMC Theater, Gaga and her dancers lurched through a series of sharp, staccato sways, grabbing and falling over one another like a glamorous exorcism that would have made Trent Reznor smile. Rose petals thrown into the air slightly obstructed the view of her adoring fans like a beautiful red snowstorm.

The moving piece of performance art was staged to celebrate the release of Mayhem Requiem, a new live album presented by Apple Music. Recorded during a no-phones-allowed performance at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre in January, the project reimagines Mayhem with a more punk rock, distorted, and theatrical sound. The album release coincides with a companion filmed performance that debuted for one night only at select AMC theaters on Thursday. The film will also be available to stream on Apple Music. While Thursday’s event was billed as a surprise, the hundreds of Little Monsters who arrived dressed for a Gaga arena show clearly got the memo.

Lady Gaga celebrates the premiere of ‘Apple Music Live: Lady Gaga MAYHEM Requiem’ at The Grove

After the procession ended, invitees were shuttled into multiple theaters. Each seat was topped with a Mayhem-inspired zine, designed by Rose Zhang, a senior art director at Apple Music. “The art direction of the campaign followed the Gothic tone of her stage design,” says Zhang. “This quote from Lady Gaga really inspired me: ‘What if we were to lock the set away after we were done with the last show, and over hundreds of years, it fell apart, and some little monster from the future found it—or made an art piece out of it?’”

A few minutes later, a woman came into the theater and yelled, “Everyone take their seats”—interrupting the Little Monsters, mostly dressed in all black, who were conducting photoshoots in front of the black screen displaying Zhang’s art. And then Lady Gaga herself unexpectedly came in to introduce the movie.

“What if we tore the album down and we completely put it back together and reimagined the music in a new way,” Gaga said to the crowd in a hushed, shy register. “To me, this idea that we can take the broken pieces of our lives and put them back together is a lot of why I made this album in the first place.”

The movie showcases Gaga’s musicianship, especially during her performance of “Garden of Eden,” in which she’s wailing on the guitar like her former collaborator Brian May of Queen. Her silver nail polish—reminiscent of the shade worn by Lou Reed (from one New York legend to another) in footage shown during Todd Haynes’s documentary The Velvet Underground—sparkles as Gaga pounds the keys of her piano throughout the film.

The audience rose from their seats to dance and cheer, as if they were at a concert—or a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. A skinny guy in a white tank top and a knit cap was holding a beer in one hand while he lifted a girl over his shoulder with his other arm.

In a testament to the loyalty she inspires, a bunch of Gaga’s band mates were in the audience, plus one of her lighting designers, Ben Dalgleish, and her longtime producer Madeon. “I showed up to this just because I love her,” Madeon told Vanity Fair after the movie. Gaga’s keyboard player, Brockett Parsons, and RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 winner, Symone, were also in the theater on Thursday. Vanity Fair caught up with Gaga’s guitarist, Tim Stewart, who was with his kids, after the film. “Gaga’s fucking killing it,” Stewart says.

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