Party for the End of the World

Lady Gaga's recession pop reprise at Coachella 2025

One of the first concerts I ever attended was Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Ball in 2012. I was eleven years old, and my friend’s dad brought the two of us to Staples Center for her birthday. He imminently regretted this decision, when towards the end of her show, Gaga lifted a fully nude fan out of the general admission floor area and onto the stage. “You’re over 18, right?” She asked the woman, before parading her naked body under bright lights in front of thousands of people.

This remains a visceral memory of my childhood, and one that perfectly encapsulates Lady Gaga’s artistry in the 2010s. She self-identified as a freak. She lifted people up who felt alienated by the dominant culture, and she made “freak” mainstream. I just loved her music—at age eleven, I was lacking larger sociopolitical context and perspective.

Lady Gaga is a hallmark of “recession pop,” a term that first appeared in an interview she did with the Irish Independent in 2009. It refers to a specific subgenre of music that gained popularity during and after the Great Recession (2007-2012). Americans craved an escape from financial pressure through high-energy dance pop tracks that emphasized the joys of partying and living in the moment. Think Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance,” LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem,” Kesha’s “Tik Tok,” and the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.”

My generation never completely stopped listening to these songs; they transitioned from being the soundtrack to our bar/bat mitzvah season (2013-2014) to being “throwbacks” we’d play at the end of parties in high school and college. But recession pop as a concept disappeared for almost a decade. It resurfaced and went viral on Tik Tok in late 2024.

We are not in a recession…yet…but Tik Tokkers and economists alike fear that one is around the corner. At least if everything goes to shit the way it’s seeming like it will, we have a formidable lineup of pop divas ready to help us forget our woes. Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, and Charli XCX are a few who have risen to the occasion. Kesha has a new single featuring T-Pain (another recession pop icon), and Lady Gaga is back and better than ever.

I would not go as far as to identify as a lifelong “Little Monster”—I’ve always loved Gaga, but somewhat passively. Born This Way and Fame Monster are nostalgic to me. I stopped paying as much attention to Gaga when she went on her Tony Bennett tangent and started to act. House of Gucci was a flop, but of course I loved A Star Is Born. For a while it seemed to me like she was trying to do a little too much. Her talent unquestionably transcends genre and medium, but where she truly shines is onstage in a make-believe world she conjured, bringing people together and belting a recession pop reprise.

I’d seen Lady Gaga at Coachella in 2017, when she stepped in last minute for Beyoncé as headliner. Her Joanne-era country-pop performance was great (she was ahead of that curve), but that year didn’t afford her enough time for proper worldbuilding. Beyoncé took over 2018 with “Beychella,” her headlining set in which she reunited Destiny’s Child and created an entire documentary about the process of putting her legendary performance together. Gaga knew she had unfinished business in the desert.

This brings me to Coachella 2025. It was my seventh time attending the festival since I started going in 2016 (which, I realize is of course a ridiculous privilege). I’ve seen hundreds of festival sets over the years; when I look back only a handful stand out. I texted in my family group chat in live time during Gaga’s performance, “I’m pretty jaded at this point. It takes a lot to impress me. But this is a top five Coachella performance I’ve seen.”

This isn’t a hot take; the Internet has agreed with me over the past few weeks that Lady Gaga’s Coachella performance set a new standard for what can be accomplished in the desert. She understood the assignment and went above and beyond. Her 2025 comeback puts Gagachella right up next to Beychella, in my opinion—perhaps even a hair above. It was visually dynamic, audibly incredible, and entertaining from start to finish. But most people aren’t talking about (or didn’t pick up on) the deeper meaning she was trying to convey through all of the hullabaloo.

Lady Gaga has always been a political popstar, often using fashion as activism. The iconic meat dress that she wore to the MTV Video Music Awards in 2010 was a bold statement against the “Don’t Ask, Don’t tell” policy. She has shared in interviews that despite not identifying as LGBTQ+ herself, she is a steadfast supporter of the community. They have always been her biggest fans.

At the first Coachella under the second Trump administration, some artists got political, while others chose not to. Clairo famously brought Bernie Sanders out to introduce her and warn young people to pay attention to what’s going on in our country right now, and Green Day changed the lyrics to some of their most famous songs to convey anti-MAGA sentiments. Lady Gaga didn’t have to say a single word about politics because her performance said everything we needed to know.

“In these times of Mayhem, I decided to build you an opera house in the desert,” she shared onstage. The demonic opera unfolded in five distinct acts, with each section exploring a different theme, from darkness to loss to fame and identity. She didn’t divide her music into eras; she seamlessly wove old hits amongst new songs from Mayhem to tell a story.

The reason the music all mixed so well together is that with Mayhem she is returning to her recession pop roots. She knows that what we need right now is pure escapism, although this time, the undertones are darker. Notice the political parallels? Nowhere does she promise “Just dance, it’ll be ok.” The performance began with the words “DANCE OR DIE” flashing across the stage. Message received!

Each scene was more jaw dropping than the last. She began on a high, literally towering over a multi-tiered hoop skirt filled with a birdcage prison of deranged backup dancers thrusting beneath her. She floated across a chess board during “Poker Face,” dueling with her inner demons. Throughout the show, she drew upon a metaphor of a court battle between two queens: one innocent and pure (in white) and a devilish one in black. Who won? Well, darkness, of course.

She tossed on new gowns and displayed an exceptional collection of wigs. She sensually played with skeletons in a sandbox of death, sinking deeper and getting swallowed up by the world around her. The majority of the set felt sinister—even the light and catchy Bruno Mars duet “Die with a Smile” is about life ending—but “Born This Way” was accompanied by a burst of rainbow pride fireworks, showing that there’s always light to be found in the darkness.

Throughout the glorious two-hour set, her mic didn’t switch off once. It was kept on intentionally, through transitions and costume changes, to allow the audience to hear how hard she was breathing. The deep, guttural breaths functioned as a metronome—a steady beat that anchored the music and guided the intimacy of the storytelling. It created a feeling of closeness, even for viewers who were watching from the very back of the crowd.

During Gaga’s weekend two performance she experienced some technical difficulties. She modified her choreography on the fly to account for using a handheld microphone, and she shared with the audience, “At least you know I sing live!” Her marathon vocal performance was a feat in and of itself.

I noticed this year in particular that some performers interacted more seamlessly than others with the videographers tracking them onstage. In recent years, millions of viewers have flocked to livestream Coachella on YouTube. It has become quite difficult to maneuver a set that is visually interesting both in person and on the livestream, but of course Gaga mastered this, as well. The camera became another pawn in her chess game, another satanic character convulsing onstage. She allowed it to exist in the chaos and get up close and personal with her, without detracting from the live performance value.

At the end of the opera, after an epic “Bad Romance” encore, Gaga allowed every dancer and instrumentalist to bow. I’ve never seen an artist give this much visual recognition to their team. The show was almost more akin to theatre than music. I left feeling like I’d watched an entire Broadway musical.

At 38, Lady Gaga has amassed wickedly impressive resume, but in many ways it feels like she’s just getting started. This daring performance cements her as the once in a generation artist we always suspected she might be. What an utterly perfect recession indicator. It was apocalyptic, it was hot, it was a party for the end of the world.