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31 October 2014

lady gaga's artpop ball | o2 arena



when someone emails you and uses the words "...do you want to come to see lady gaga? nat's boss bought too many tickets and i've offered him a tenner each for them..." you kind of see it as a rhetorical questions. would i normally want to see lady gaga? no, probably not. would i want to see lady gaga for a tenner? yes, absolutely. so, we waited; for confirmation that our bid was accepted, then upped our bids twice, and eventually won four tickets for £60. for those of you playing at home, that's four tickets for the price of one original ticket; laughable.

i met rebekah at the slug and lettuce inside the o2 last thursday night, and we drank two bottles of prosecco and ate way too many carbs while we waited for nat and lp to join us, when we... did shots of something at the slug, grabbed a couple more bottles of wine from the bar inside the arena and went to find our seats. which were - incredibly, actually on top of the himalayas. so, so high up. actually surprised i could breathe real air up that high... haha. ungrateful much? well look, they're probably the worst seats i've ever had at the o2. granted, they set me back £15, but had i paid full price, i might have been well within my right to be annoyed.

...especially if there were four thirty-somethings shamelessly drunk and causing a ruckus in the same row as me, and i was a calm, twenty-something who really loved lady gaga. especially in that case. as it happens though, i'm preeeeeeetty sure there was no-one that fit that description in our row........


let it be said, that i love a bit of cheesy pop as much as the next person, but i have never, ever, ever in my life been a 'little monster'. as in, not a fan of lady g's, at all. i find her peculiar (obvious), and yeah ok, she's had some top choons over the years, but she's never really made me fan girl or anything. i was not expecting to have my mind blown by her - almost ten years into her pop career, i had just sort of assumed she'd be 'good' and that i'd probably 'have a good time'.

this is where i eat humble pie and admit that actually, miss thing was genuinely a fantastic entertainer, a solid performer, and - above everything else, a flippen incredible live singer. and 1 x 'good time' was absolutely had by all. despite her minor rant (including cuss words *shock horror*) about us feeling free to "eff off" if we were only there to hear the hits (we were, just quietly), because this "performance was her greatest work of #art to date", she did still perform all of the hits for her adoring fans. and, it was epic.

live music is live music, and i will give kudos, props and snaps to anyone who gives their life over to performing a show like that every bloody night. girlfriend played the piano, slowed it down and did a nancy sinatra number, sang her tony bennet duet, and just quietly, kicked ass on stage that night. she had the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand, and rightly so too.

we left just before the encore, wanting to beat the crowds to the tube. she'd been on stage almost two hours at that point, and i was tired. lord knows how she felt. 

i will now take my hat off and eat it.

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  1. I once got stuck up at the very top of the O2 (I was there to see My Chemical Romance, but we won't talk about that) and managed to get switched to standing by fortuitously remembering that I have vertigo. SCORE.

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  2. i have all of the love for gaga, to me she is the bees good damn knees

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  3. i have all of the love for gaga. To me she is the bees god damn knees.

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  4. we've all been there (seeing my chemical romance, i mean)... that is quite a score!

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