Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden

Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden is a 2011 concert special documenting the February 21 and 22, 2011 shows of American pop singer Lady Gaga's The Monster Ball Tour. Filmed at Madison Square Garden in Gaga's hometown of New York City, the two-hour special was produced by HBO and first broadcast on the channel on May 7, 2011, a day after Gaga's last date of The Monster Ball Tour. It was released November 21, 2011 on DVD and Blu-ray.

Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden features concert footage as well as pre-concert and backstage content. The special received positive reviews; critics praised Gaga's performance yet doubted her sincerity during her on-stage rambling and in pre-concert scenes. They also noted similarities to Madonna's 1991 documentary Truth or Dare. The special was nominated for five awards at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards winning one – Outstanding Picture Editing for a Special (Single or Multi-Camera).

Content

The special opens with a black-and-white introduction that sees Gaga ordering a cup of coffee from a New York convenience store before being escorted by security into a black SUV, where she reminisces about the many times she had been at the arena to watch other acts perform, and realizes that she will now be performing there herself. After being escorted backstage, she removes her makeup and cries as she discusses feeling like a "loser". She then sings the opening lines of "Marry the Night" while preparing to take the stage. Full-color footage of the concert (shot on February 21 and 22, 2011)^[1] is then seen, interspersed with black-and-white backstage footage. The special ends with another black-and-white backstage scene where Gaga and her backup singers perform "Born This Way" a capella.

Release and reception

Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden aired on HBO on May 7, 2011.^[1] According to Billboard, the special was watched by 1.2 million viewers.^[2] It received positive reviews from critics. Jed Gottlieb of the Boston Herald wrote, "[B]etween the orgy of visuals—stripper strobes, androgynous dancers and a very loose, X-rated 'Wizard of Oz' theme—we get some great song and dance numbers: 'Poker Face', 'Paparazzi' and 'Bad Romance'. These are amazing hits, club-thumping tracks that define joy and sadness for a generation of suburban teens and the urban disenfranchised." However, he felt that the show's non-concert content was not genuine, and found the special to be similar to Madonna's 1991 documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare.^[3] The A.V. Club's Genevieve Koski gave the special a B+ rating, claiming that Gaga "proves that she is a performer" and that "she puts on a show", though she felt that the concert was overly emotional and artistically ambitious, and that Gaga's on-stage banter was slightly annoying. Koski also compared the special to the Madonna documentary.^[4] Paul Schrodt of Slant Magazine was more critical in his review, though he gave it a 2.5-star (out of 4) rating. While he positively called Gaga's performances outrageous and "occasionally fierce", he questioned Gaga's authenticity, both on stage and in the pre-concert scenes. Ultimately, he wrote, "Unsurprisingly, HBO's Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden raises more questions about Stefani Germanotta [Gaga's birth name] than it answers, which is probably as it should be."^[5]

The special received five nominations at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards. It was nominated for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special; Outstanding Directing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Special; Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video Control for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special; Outstanding Picture Editing for a Special (Single or Multi-Camera); and Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety, Music or Comedy Special. It won the picture editing award and lost all of its other bids.^[6] The five nominations were among HBO's total of 104 in 2011, which made up over one-fifth of the total nominations.^[7]

Video release

Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden was released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 21, 2011. In addition to the content of the original HBO broadcast, it includes new, previously-unseen footage. The video is a part of a bundled package – along with the 17-track special edition of Gaga's album Born This Way and a remix album, Born This Way: The Remix – titled Born This Way, The Collection, which was released the same day.^[2] In the US, the Blu-ray edition of Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden was available exclusively at Best Buy. The DVD charted on the UK Music Video chart at number four, for the issue dated December 3, 2011.^[8] In the United States, it entered Billboard's Top Music Video chart at the top, selling 26,000 copies of the DVD—the greatest total for a music video since Beyoncé Knowles' I Am... World Tour live CD/DVD sold 37,000 and 31,000 copies in its first two weeks in November and December 2010.^[9] Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden became the fourth best-selling music video of 2011 in the United States.^[10] In Australia, the DVD debuted at number two on the ARIA DVD Chart.^[11] The next week, it remained in the same position, while being certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipment of 15,000 copies of the DVD.^[12]

Track listing

Bonus content

• "Born This Way" (a cappella) – 3:16
• "Backstage at the Monster Ball" – 12:50
• Photo gallery

Charts

Certifications

References

External links

• Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden at the Internet Movie Database