Lady Gaga releases live album ‘Mayhem Requiem’ via Apple Music May 14, with a concert film streaming free and screening at 15 AMC theaters
Lady Gaga has formally closed the Mayhem era, and she did it with a funeral. “Mayhem Requiem,” Lady Gaga’s first official live album, arrived May 14 via Interscope Records exclusively on Apple Music, alongside a concert film that streamed globally at 8 p.m. PT with simultaneous one-night-only screenings at 15 AMC theaters across the United States. The project was filmed January 14 at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles before an audience of approximately 2,300 fans selected through a lottery tied to Gaga’s official mailing list, in a phone-free environment enforced by Yondr pouches. Non-subscribers could stream the premiere on Apple Music for free.
The full performance and its Spatial Audio live album are available on demand exclusively for subscribers. The release arrives as the final act of a year-long era. Gaga first teased the project at the final night of the Mayhem Ball world tour at Madison Square Garden on April 13, projecting a trailer featuring imagery of the tour’s opera-house-inspired set rendered in ruins over orchestral reinterpretations of the album’s material.
The message was explicit: this was not a continuation but a conclusion. “Mayhem Requiem” was billed in promotional materials as “the final chapter of the Mayhem era,” casting Gaga as “the phantom of her own gothic opera.” On the day of release, an obituary for “Mayhem” appeared on the back page of the Los Angeles Times.
A Gothic Reimagining From Piano to Grunge
The concert film, directed and produced by Morningview, presents the full “Mayhem” album in a new sonic register. Gaga spent most of the Wiltern evening at a piano or synthesizers, working through reimagined arrangements that pull the 2025 album in directions its studio versions only gestured toward. The synth-pop immediacy of “How Bad Do U Want Me” becomes a traditional ballad. “Abracadabra” opens as a spare piano étude before expanding outward. The version of “Killah” incorporates elements of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer.” “Die With a Smile” interpolates Kavinsky’s “Nightcall.” The set moves through industrial, techno, grunge, and orchestral textures, each track rebuilt rather than simply performed.
“Mayhem” won Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2026 Grammy Awards, where Gaga performed “Abracadabra” alongside former Foo Fighters and current Nine Inch Nails drummer Josh Freese in a rock-inflected rendition that foreshadowed the aesthetic ground “Mayhem Requiem” now covers fully. The album also earned nominations for Album of the Year, Song of the Year for “Abracadabra,” and Best Pop Solo Performance for “Disease.”
The Year That Built to This Moment
The scale of activity surrounding “Mayhem” over the past year is difficult to overstate. Since the album’s release, Gaga performed a massive free concert at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach, appeared at the VMAs, co-performed with Bad Bunny during his Super Bowl LX Halftime Show, covered Mister Rogers’ “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” and contributed multiple tracks to “The Devil Wears Prada 2” soundtrack, including “Runway” with Doechii. The Mayhem Ball world tour was a five-act theatrical opera, executive produced by Gaga and her fiancé Michael Polansky, with Gaga performing nightly with her own literal opera house set built and transported globally.
“Mayhem Requiem” positions itself as something entirely different in scale and intention: 2,300 people, a historic venue in Koreatown, and the intimacy of watching an artist dismantle the world she spent a year building.
The 15 AMC theater locations for the one-night screening included Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, D.C. Attendees at the Los Angeles premiere received a special-edition “Mayhem” photo book. “Mayhem Requiem” is Lady Gaga’s second concert special in under a year, following “Lady Gaga in Harlequin Live: One Night Only,” which premiered on Christmas Eve 2025.
“Mayhem Requiem” is available now exclusively on Apple Music.
