MAYHEM is dead. And with MAYHEM Requiem, Lady Gaga made sure to lay the era to rest in the most extravagant (and Gaga) way possible.
Lady Gaga took over the AMC Theater at Los Angeles’ The Grove for a special screening of her filmed concert experience Mayhem Requiem on Thursday (May 14) night. Filmed in January at Los Angeles’ The Wiltern, MAYHEM Requiem was a one-night-only, no-phones-allowed performance during which Gaga reimagined her 2025 Billboard 200 chart-topping album MAYHEM live for a lucky group of selected fans, in partnership with Apple Music. The January show found a group of roughly 1,850 Little Monsters, many of them in costume, packed into the historic theater for the once in a lifetime show, with the mood inside the Wiltern feeling especially intimate, immediate and rare, given that everyone’s phones were tucked safely away.
Now, four months later, everyone has access to MAYHEM Requiem with a new live album recorded on the night of the exclusive performance. With the live project came the filmed concert experience, which showed at one-night-only screenings in select AMC theaters on Thursday.
To mark the occasion, Mother Monster took over the AMC at Los Angeles’ The Grove, an outdoor shopping mall. Decked out in black-and-red corseted dress and fishnet veil, Gaga led a gaggle of her dancers in a funeral procession through a crowd of her Little Monsters. Stopping at the entrance of the movie theater, Gaga paused among for dramatic effect, surrounded by her dancers in movement, as her devoted fans screamed and photographed the moment. All the while, a marching band performed somber, jazz renditions of Mayhem tracks including Billboard Hot 100 hits “Abracadabra” and “Disease.”
Once the crowd was settled inside the AMC’s auditoriums, ready to enjoy Mayhem Requiem, Gaga stopped by to welcome the audience to experience and share a little more about the making of the show.
“[Michael Polansky and I] talked about this idea that the opera house from the Art of Personal Chaos, what if it was reduced to rubble and what if it completely fell apart?” Gaga said, referencing the set and story from her recent arena tour, The Mayhem Ball. Fans who attended the ball — or watched her 2025 Coachella headlining performance — were brought to a historic-looking opera house where MAYHEM was brought to life by Gaga, her band and dancers. With MAYHEM Requiem, which was filmed in between Mayhem Ball shows, the opera house was demolished and the MAYHEM era was brought to its death — and a rebirth.
Gaga continued: “What if we tore the album down and we just completely put it back together and reimagined the music in a new way?” And that’s exactly what fans get with MAYHEM Requiem.
In the filmed MAYHEM Requiem, Gaga and her band take the beloved MAYHEM tracks and reinvented them in exciting new ways. There is none of the elaborate group choreography, heartfelt speeches or audience interactions that Gaga usually brings to her tours. Rather, for this show, the phantom of Mother Monster stripped down and recreated every track on MAYHEM. “Zombieboy” was given a new synth-forward revamp, “Abracadabra” began with a pared-back piano introduction and “How Bad Do You Want Me?” was given new life as a rock track. In her welcome speech, Gaga explained that MAYHEM Requiem was akin to what she’s like in the studio — and that came across to the audience. Each song felt like a studio demo, but in the best way: fleshed out and fully polished, just not the version that made it to the final album.
Although the songs had new sounds, different aspects of MAYHEM Requiem would be familiar to fans — especially those who attended Mayhem Ball. Like the tour, MAYHEM Requiem was split into different acts, in between which Gaga changed from one elaborate outfit into another. The set was the remains of the massive opera house that the Grammy winner brought from city to city on tour, but as she mentioned in her welcome speech, reduced to rubble. And of course, the band she performed with at the filmed Wiltern show is the same group of musicians with whom she toured, several of whom have been on her team for more than a decade.
By the end of the screening, a group of people in the AMC auditorium were particularly excited by MAYHEM Requiem, standing up and cheering as Gaga sang the final song, Hot 100 chart topper “Die With a Smile.” That group of people? The same band members performing the songs on the very screen everyone was watching.
As fans (and Gaga’s band) exited MAYHEM Requiem at The Grove, they were welcomed outside the theater by the same marching band and dancers that escorted Mother Monster to the venue. A group of Little Monsters lined up to take photos with the performers, excited to turn this one-night-only experience into a long-lasting memory.
MAYHEM Requiem the live album and filmed concert experience are both available for streaming now exclusively on Apple Music. A 15-minute companion piece to MAYHEM Requiem featuring behind the scenes footage about the creation of the performance is also now available on-demand exclusively on Apple Music.
