Lady Gaga Wows At iHeartRadio Music Festival
September 25, 2011 by Gagaism.org
Lady Gaga steals the show with elaborate two-hour set.
It’s safe to say that this weekend’s first-ever iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas delivered the goods. The two-day festival featured an impressive lineup of top-tier artists such as Alicia Keys, Jennifer Lopez, Jay-Z, and Coldplay. Virtually every act gave a strong performance, but when Lady Gaga hit the stage as the last headlining artist of the festival, she made it abundantly clear once again that she can and will steal the show every single time.
Gaga turned her scheduled 45-minute set into a two-hour extravaganza. She created a full concert, complete with brand new costumes, set pieces and props such as a motorcycle piano that is almost certain to become as iconic as her flaming piano from the Monster Ball.
Photo: Getty Images
Early on in the set, Gaga gave a heart-wrenching performance of ‘Hair,’ which she dedicated to Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old high school freshman who committed suicide last week after being bullied relentlessly over his sexuality. It was enough to move almost anyone to tears. Later, Sting joined Gaga on the stage for two incredible duets.
The entire show was streamed live at iHeartRadio.com. It is no longer available for viewing on the official website, but we’ve pieced together a playlist of her entire concert using the best quality YouTube videos available for each song. Special thanks to luixiw, itsjoeyworld, and MrSlduf for uploading the videos!
These will likely be taken down by YouTube, but in the meantime, enjoy!
Watch:
[...] may remember that Gaga dedicated the song ‘Hair’ during the iHearRadio Music Festival to suicide victim Jamey Rodemeyer, who had been bullied relentlessly over his sexual orientation. [...]
[...] can watch Lady Gaga’s moving tribute to Jamey below, or click here to see her entire performance from that [...]
@twitter-138249737:disqus @twitter-68351928:disqus It’s so heartening to see you guys here!!!! I joined the MTV EMA team for Gaga, and although she IS ahead by 10 times to the 2nd place, we still must vote. It would be an injustice if she doesn’t win 6/6 of voting categories (including mega fan page), don’t forget the North America worldwide on the N. America site!
I will keep voting:-) trying to find the post where you explained how to do it in one step, but cant:(
Thanks alffy for being a staunch LG LM and supporter.
1. Go to artist’s page, go to page 5, and click on Lady Gaga.
2. Shrink screen by pressing CTRL-minus so you don’t have to scroll up and down.
3. Press vote for all 5 categories in a row
4. Press F5 key to refresh page.
5. Repeat until locked out.
6. You can vote up to 100/day. After being locked out, Change the date of computer, and you can vote again!
I think what sets Gaga aside from her contemporaries are 3 things:
1) her staunch and authentic loyalty to her craft as a live performer. I mean her vocals were strained at times, maybe due to a cold or something, but she gave it all out. I prefer to listen to a live singer making mistakes than to one lip synching all the time.
2) her relationship with her fans. Her performance of Hair was heart-breaking, although personally, it comes fourth after Paul O’Grady’s, Taratata and Europride. We can easily say now she redefined the meaning of fandom and stardom and their dynamics
3) The 3 f’s as I call then: she’s Fierce, Fearless, Faithful to her artistic vision.
I can’t wait for the BTW tour. Will 2012 ever come?
Yes, you’re dead on with all three of those points. I’m particularly impressed with her fearlessness right now. Her music and visuals in the BTW-era have been amazing so far, but they have strayed far away from what all other mainstream top 40 artists are doing. I love that. She easily could have made a more direct followup to The Fame Monster, but she decided to really challenge herself, her fans, and the music industry yet again.
Top 40 radio right now is so heavily influenced by Gaga’s hits from The Fame and The Fame Monster. In another year or two, other artists will follow her and release pop songs with an 80s rock edge and she’ll be expanding her sound again (No hate to other artists. Just saying, Gaga is a trailblazer.)
Oh, and speaking of fearless, remember the uproar over her BTW cover when it was first revealed? People thought she had lost her mind. Now the image is totally iconic and represents the album and her current state as an artist perfectly (in my opinion anyway.) Whenever she does something that makes people wonder what the hell she is doing, I know it’s going to be something we’ll remember and love years down the road. *cough* Jo Calderone *cough*
I agree 100% with what you said: Gaga is a trend setter (although I prefer your term trailblazer). I get so frustrated sometimes when I visit some websites where people trash Gaga and say that Born This Way and its singles are flopping because they are not reaching # 1. As if this is the only thing that matters!!! For me, the only reaosn why they are not reaching # 1 is because it takes a while for new sounds to become mainstream. Also, I have a strong feeling that BTW sales will improve once she starts touring!
I have been listening to BTW every day since its release and I’m not bored yet. Songs like MTN, BM, HML, and EC are hidden jewels. I hope, from the bottom of my heart that she will release them as singles, although releasing more than 6 singles from an album is very rare. But again, we’re talking about Gaga and everything is possible.
Lyrically, Gaga has reached a whole new level of expression. I think MTN, BTW, Judas, BM, and HU are the stongest from this perspective. Judas’s “I learnt love is like a brick, you can build a house or sink a dead body” is worthy to be in the book of best quotations, while BM’s “love is just a history that they may prove and when you’re gone, I’ll tell them my religion is you” and “we are not just art for Michelangelo to carve, he can’t rewrite the agro of my furied heart” are nothing like I have heard in songs before. As to HU’s “she’s just an American riding a dream, and she’s got a rainbow syrup in her heart that she bleeds, she don’t care if your paper or your love is the law, she’s a free soul burning roads with a flag in her bra” epitomizes the whole BTW theme. Even if BTW is not gonna be the album of the decade in sales, it will be remembered as the album that set the trend for the music of a good portion of the 2nd decade.
Wow, I wrote a lot. I’d better stop now:-)
Thanks alffy and Jarraxe. Don’t forget how the pop stars followed multiple “glamorous” costume changes at VMA this year, following Gaga’s 2009/2010, and Gaga shows up with the 1 intentionally dull Calderone ill-fitting suit!! I mean, whoever heard of a female popstar wearing Brooks Brothers, for crying out loud! Next album, Gaga might do blues/jazz/classical/rock, the other pop stars will be doing electronic pop 80s rock a la BTW, like you said Jarraxe. Really, is that album cover now considered iconic? I still find it hideous, but I think that was intentional for Gaga to question what is art, as any one of the LMs can make a better cover, to be honest, which I think was her intention. She’s a very smart lady and makes us question things!
Hi Jarraze, many thanks for posting all those videos and stringing them together so cleverly. I did catch some of the live stream last night (after searching for one that worked in the UK) but I only saw from Alejandro onwards so it was great to catch up all in one go rather than trying to find all the videos on Youtube. Her performance of Hair for Jamey made me cry, it was her best performance of Hair ever in my opinion. She is such a brilliant live performer, and her and Sting were totally brilliant, especially King (Queen) of Pain, they really need to put out a duet together sometime, their voices really complement each other.
I’ve noticed Gaga is edging back to her rock roots and I think we will see her doing more of it now she is famous enough to do whatever she likes. Hope you enjoyed the show ;o)
Thanks! Yeah her Hair performance was my favorite part of the show, but I also really like how she’s bringing the rock side of her out more while blending it with her pop star side. The visuals really added to that too. I’m so excited for the Born This Way Ball now!
Hi Jarraxe. Finally watched all the youtube clips of the IHeart. I’m really blown away. This is her MOST emotionally powerful and gut wrenching performance. She was at her most musical, genuine, raw and she totally rocked it. I never saw a pop star rock it like her, playing real instruments, no auto tune, no lip synching, giving her ALL. Interacting with the audience, showing her love for her little monsters and tribute to Jamey (RIP). I will never forget Jamey, in part thanks to Gaga.
Jarraxe, I think this performance CEMENTS her as a legend. I feel she can quit today, and still be considered a legend. I don’t know what it was about this IHeart concert, but it was SO musical, and more impressive than the Monster Ball and the VMA Paparazzi, despite being way less high tech. I mean, Gaga was REAL in this concert, which she kept saying to the media that she is real, and she proved it here. She bared her soul. Well, Tony Bennett is right, Gaga is one of the greatest of all time!
Yeah, she showed last night that she has evolved as an artist once again. It kept wanting to clap and cheer while I was watching it, despite the fact that I was just sitting in front of the computer =P.
So, we have a new chat feature here. It’s at the bottom of the screen. Feel free to use it anytime to say hi
I’ll definitely look into the chat feature! Yes, and I echo Saetana, thanks for stringing them together. LOL, I thought it was just the first 7 mins (from the time) and I went through the youtube clips to go through all the performances–the interruptions were quite annoying, to say the least, but thanks to your hard work, I can watch it all in one continuous stream.
I Heart MUST come out with blu-ray.
The chat feature we had implemented did not work out unfortunately. It was slowing the website down quite a bit for some visitors. We’re looking into another one though.
I agree. There needs to be a blu-ray for this.
We’re also launching a new monster community with a forum and more. Since you have been such an enthusiastic supporter of the site, we would love for you to help us beta test it.
If you are interested, send us an email at gagaismdotorg@yahoo.com and we’ll get back to you with the details
It’s an honor. Sent you email. I hope it doesn’t have those HUGE boxes (where people put these ENORMOUS gifs, pictures), with just one line of text, it’s very hard to read what’s going on with these forums as you have to scroll 10 pages to get to the next comment, LOL. This Disqus format is much more user friendly since you can reply.
Hehe, ok. I’ll get back to you soon about the forum. It probably won’t be ready for testing for another week at least and then we’ll test it out for a few weeks probably. It needs to be user-friendly for sure, but I’m not aware of any way to use Disqus for a forum unfortunately.