Photo: WENN.com
Last night the seventh iTunes Festival kicked off at its London home, the iconic Roundhouse with arguably the face of 'the iTunes generation', Lady Gaga.
It has been a quiet year for the New Yorker since her tour came to an abrupt end due to injury in February. Using her recovery time to remember why she fell in love with music before fame and the person behind the guise to create ARTPOP, set for release this winter.
Below: watch Lady Gaga's iTunes performance in full
Gaga chose the intimate venue to debut seven tracks from the record to her beloved UK Monsters in a set that played out like a West End show. Having spent half a million on production the show didn't disappoint as the theatricals kept eyes busy with sharp flamboyant dancers filling the stage whilst ears took in drastically different sounds to what you expect from Gaga, or any pop star in fact, as she stated before the hip-hop flavoured 'Jewels & Drugs' with T.I. who appeared on the screens.
"I make music you love to make you happy but I had to make music to set myself free, to step outside the box pop music puts you in, so I've made music different to what I've made before because I'm a fan of all kinds of music," she tells the audience - which can only be an exciting prospect.
Opener, 'Aura' had eighties Berlin disco vibes running through it as the singer began the set clad in black, strapped in a cage above the crowd like we were witnessing some seedy sex show, she did lose layers of clothes through out the seventy minute set but a sparkly bikini was pretty safe compared to Miley Cyrus' recent 'outfits'. Where some artists spend half the time off stage getting changed, not this one, she showcases a range of looks within a song. The singer pokes fun at herself before performing 'Artpop' when a chair and a mirror are brought on stage replicating a salon and the short black wig is replaced by a huge blonde barnet.
GaGa shared her appreciation for her fans and relief to be back on stage numerous times, announcing "When I'm not you, I Can't Live" before Manicure. It was clear to see she was having fun up there as she seemed to have wiped away that pretentious and precocious character away, cleansing herself for the record.
"Art Pop was written to uncover the pain, in order to grow and become an artist I needed to reveal what was underneath, I needed to climb through an awful lot of swine, I felt like thrash," she announced, before breaking into the powerful, dramatic Queen-esq 'Swine' where her dancers were dressed as pigs and flung into the air, showered with confetti, just adding to the surrealism.
'I Wanna Be With You' felt painfully honest, her vocals intensely released emotions, "I'd rather be poor and happy than rich and alone" is maybe the sign that the self confessed fame obsessive has realised it's not all it's cracked up to be.
There was just time for one more, new single 'Applause', welcomed by the crowd like an old friend it topped off the show which ticked all the boxes. It was one of those 'I was there' nights for the three thousand witness's of an already adventurous artist pushing boundaries even further. ARTPOP is the future.
Below: Little Monsters queue for hours to see Lady Gaga in London
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