Lady Gaga has headlined Coachella before, but it came with an asterisk. In 2017, she was picked to replace Beyoncé, who dropped out after announcing she was pregnant with twins. Gaga and her team had all of two weeks to put together a billboard-worthy set; it was still a spectacle, but she didn’t have the time to fully realize her vision.
Lady Gaga is ready this time.
Fresh off releasing her exhilarating new album Mayhem, Lady Gaga is headlining both weekends of Coachella 2025, beginning this Friday, April 11. I recently spoke to Mother Monster about her plans for America’s most prestigious musical festival, as well as the song from Mayhem she’s most excited to perform live and whether we might hear the return of Ally Maine.
What made you decide this was the right time to headline Coachella?
I’ve been lucky that I’ve had some real success since the last time I performed at Coachella. But also, I love my new album so much, and I’m so excited to perform it live. I can’t wait. So this felt like a great opportunity to do something creative and artistic and just bring my full vision to life.
Is there a song on Mayhem you’re most excited to perform live?
I think I’m really excited about “Killah.” I really love that record. It’s the Gesaffelstein feature. It’s ultra confident, ultra funky, super unique, and cool. I’ve never done anything like it before, so that’s making me feel really excited just to do something I haven’t done yet before.
Is there a temptation to lean towards crowd-pleasing hits instead of deep cuts when putting together the setlist for a music festival compared to one of your own headlining shows?
You know, whether I’m performing at one of my own concerts or a festival, I think people always want to hear your hits. That has to be a part of it. But also, you know, I’ve actually never been someone that will shy away from my artistry given the venue. I think Coachella is an opportunity to do something unique and special. People being able to experience that idea around the world is also really cool. With the way the world is today, I think people worry about outputting content so much, and quickly. And I feel like my art is something that once I do it, I want to make sure as many people as possible can see it, because it takes me a lot of time and thought to put it together. So yes to the hits, but also yes to high artistry.
This is me politely nudging you to play “Hair,” my favorite song of yours.
Michael [Polansky, Gaga’s fiancé] loves “Hair,” too.
Did you consider any other album titles for Mayhem?
I almost called the album Perfect Celebrity, which is the name of another song on the record, but it didn’t end up being right for the album, because the album really is not about fame. That’s one piece of my personal mayhem, but it’s not the whole thing. So it ended up being not indicative of the whole theme of the record, which is like personal mayhem, mayhem in the world, the chaos of life, and how we build resilience and dance through it.
Perfect Celebrity, as a title, could come across as satirical. But that’s not what this album is.
There’s definitely some funny lyrics, some angry lyrics, sort of poking at this idea that there’s two us’s all the time. There’s the real us and the clone us. I think that’s where society has moved. It’s interesting. I feel like earlier in my career, what I did with creating Lady Gaga was seen as very performative, but that’s a lot more normal now.
I’ve always felt like your albums have a “mission statement” song, the track that really sums up the themes of the record. Like on Joanne, I think it’s “Mission Reasons.” Do you there’s a song on Mayhem like this?
I would say that every song on Mayhem needs each other, for sure. To make it all make sense and be cohesive all together, it all needs each other. I would say “Vanish Into You” sums up the album in a lot of ways, because it’s a celebration of a style of music that is very much me, but it’s also done in this both joyful and apocalyptic way. The lyric is: “Saw your face and mine in a picture by our bedside / It was cold in the summertime / We were happy just to be alive / Can I vanish into you?” It’s this beautiful, fun dance song, but it’s also a bit sad. I think the chaos of that is a part of this album.
But you know, every song on this record is very different from the next, and that’s the beauty of it. Maybe the other record I would choose is “Shadow Of A Man,” because that song is about facing the fact that I was usually the only woman in the room all the time for most of my career, and I had to learn how to dance in the shadow of men. And I did. There is an element of that to Mayhem as well. It’s the mayhem of being a woman in the music industry.
This will be your return to Coachella since filming A Star Is Born. Is there a chance that we might hear one of Ally’s songs?
I genuinely don’t want to give anything away about Coachella. I know that is heartless of me, in a way, but I could honestly cry on the phone with you just thinking about how excited I am to do this show, and I want it to be a total surprise, and want everyone to have as much fun as possible.
If your current self could tell early-era Lady Gaga that she will be one of the few people to headline Coachella more than once, what do you think her reaction would be?
“When can I get started?”