Lady Gaga pulled out all the stops during her final Dive Bar Tour performance, bringing hard rocking dance moves and political commentary to the stage for a spirited set filled with Joannetracks at The Satellite in L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhood.
The 30-year-old kicked off the mini-tour’s last show by premiering live versions of album cuts “Come to Mama” and “John Wayne,” while Mark Ronson assisted the singer-songwriter during a performance of Joanne’s second radio single, “A-YO.”
She also celebrated promo track “Million Reasons” reaching the No. 1 spot on the U.S. iTunes download chart by thanking her global audience for purchasing the track.
“When I saw that, I felt so heard as a woman… and you know what, if I’m heard, that means that you’re heard,” she said, perched behind a keyboard. “So, I just wanted to tell all those women and men who bought [“Million Reasons”] that I can f—–g hear you. I can hear you, and every time I sing this song, I can hear you in my heart singing with me.”
Prior to belting “Angel Down,” which she previously revealed was written in response to the death of Trayvon Martin, Gaga commented on the upcoming presidential election, using the stage to call for peace at a tumultuous time in American politics.
“I wrote this song about people loving each other and taking care of each other, and, you know, the election is coming up,” she said. “I really hope that is a peaceful day, as much as it can be… not everybody is gonna vote for the same person. Everybody has different ideas and thoughts and that’s okay. We don’t have to hate each other because of that. What we have to do is come together, and the reason is because there are a lot of people suffering and there are too many angels down, so let’s not focus on the hate.”
As she sang the song’s final lyrics, she added the line “Trayvon Angel” to its outro.
Ahead of closing the set by rocking through “Perfect Illusion,” Gaga also performed the album’s title track with a short introduction on the song’s highly personal meaning.
“I must have written for a whole year before [Mark and I] got into the studio… we thought about [the fans] every day that we wrote this music,” Gaga said as she stood, microphone in hand, next to Ronson on guitar. “When we made this song we just thought it was a beautiful song and an honest song, but after this record came out and everybody heard this music and came to my father’s restaurant in New York, Joanne, to celebrate, I saw a look in my dad’s eyes that I’ve never seen in my whole life, because when my dad was really young he lost his sister, Joanne.”
She continued: “Sometimes I used to wonder if I ever got to meet my real dad, you know, because sometimes things happen in your life that are so bad that you die, or a part of you dies, and after this record came out, I swear that part of my dad came back to life. I hope that when you hear it when you’re with your families and you think of the loss that you’ve had or the pending loss… I hope this song can heal you like it healed my family.”
Gaga previously played Dive Bar Tour sets in Nashville on Oct. 5 and New York City on Oct. 20. She also performed as last week’s musical guest on Saturday Night Live and appeared on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke on Tuesday night. Gaga next heads to the 2016 American Music Awards stageon Nov. 20 before headlining Super Bowl LI in Houston on Feb. 5.
The pop icon’s fifth solo album, Joanne, was released on Friday, Oct. 20, and is expected to debut at no. 1 on the Billboard 200 when the chart updates Tuesday morning.
via Time.com