Lady Gaga just unlocked another remarkable achievement in a career full of them. The pop star’s performance Saturday in Brazil set a record for the highest attendance ever at a concert by a female artist.
When Gaga performed Saturday at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, more than 2.5 million people were in attendance. The figure was large enough to surpass the previous record for best-attended concert by a woman, which was set by Madonna at the same venue in May 2024.
Gaga’s “Mayhem on the Beach” concert continued a recent run of high-profile engagements for the multi-hyphenate star. She headlined Coachella last month with an elaborate five-act stage show that won acclaim as one of the greatest in the festival’s history. She also played a series of sold-out stadium shows in Mexico City and appeared at major US events including the SNL50 concert in New York and the FireAid benefit concert in Los Angeles.
The flurry of activity in recent months has centered on Mayhem, Gaga’s return to full-throttle pop music after her latest dalliance with jazz and showtunes on last year’s Harlequin. Mayhem includes “Die With A Smile,” her duet with fellow crowd-pleaser Bruno Mars that spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this year. The song won Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at this year’s Grammy Awards, where Gaga and Mars were on hand to perform a stripped-down arrangement of the song.
Later this month, Gaga will headline a trio of shows at Singapore’s National Stadium, followed by this summer’s launch of her Mayhem Ball Tour in arenas across North America and Europe.
“This is my first arena tour since 2018,” she said upon the announcement of the tour. “There’s something electric about a stadium, and I love every moment of those shows. But with the Mayhem Ball, I wanted to create a different kind of experience — something more intimate — closer, more connected — that lends itself to the live theatrical art I love to create.”
Listen to Lady Gaga’s Mayhem now.
