Blinding white lights flickered, giving the audience just small flashes of Lady Gaga as she took the 68th Grammy Awards stage Sunday.
Gaga’s voice overpowered Crypto.com Arena, her robotic movements captivating the audience as she performed a rock version of her Grammy-winning hit “Abracadabra.”
The “Mayhem” singer is a Grammys stage veteran, having performed more than half a dozen times. She picked up eight nominations for this year’s awards show, including album of the year for “Mayhem.”
Gaga donned a red and black fur long-sleeve top that flowed into a long black skirt, a cage-like dome concealing her head.
Her eye contact hardly wavered during the performance, her eyes often wide as they stared directly into the camera. The camera regularly abruptly panned to her musicians, who held the same wide-eyed stare as Gaga.
She leaned on a long black cane while singing, which she at one point picked up and pointed at the audience like a gun.
The singer had already taken home two awards leading up to her performance, including dance pop recording and remixed recording. Only minutes after leaving the stage, Gaga won pop vocal album for “Mayhem.”
Gaga trailed behind only Kendrick Lamar, who led with nine nominations. The two megastars were set to go head to head for some of the night’s biggest awards.
“Abracadabra,” a lead song on the album, received nominations for song of the year, record of the year and dance pop performance. “Disease,” also on the singer’s latest album, was up for pop solo performance.
Gaga’s 2024 album, “Harlequin,” was nominated for traditional pop vocal album, which lost to “A Matter of Time” by Laufey.
“Mayhem,” Gaga’s seventh solo studio album, was released in March, a month before the pop star headlined Coachella last year. Gaga’s Grammy performance comes in the middle of her nearly yearlong Mayhem Ball tour, which will end in April.
The pop star has won 14 Grammys, including pop duo/group performance for “Die With a Smile” with Bruno Mars last year. Gaga has yet to win for album or song of the year, despite being nominated four times in each category before. She’s in the running for both Sunday.
Last year, the singer joined Bruno Mars on the Crypto.com Arena stage to perform “California Dreamin’” in a touching tribute to Los Angeles after the devastating wildfires. The duo’s “Die With a Smile” was nominated twice that year, including for song of the year.
Gaga performed a tribute to Tony Bennett in 2022 and her Grammy-winning song “Shallow” in 2019. She also took the stage in 2018, singing “Joanne” and “Million Reasons.” Her first-ever performance on the Grammys stage was in 2010, singing a duet with Elton John and a medley of her hit songs from her debut album, “The Fame.”
Gaga kicked off 2026 with tour dates in Japan. During a performance in late January, the singer delivered an emotional speech denouncing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the U.S. and the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement strategy.
“In a couple of days, I’m going to be heading home, and my heart is aching thinking about the people, the children, the families all over America who are being mercilessly targeted by ICE,” Gaga said, according to video footage of the event. “I’m thinking about all of their pain and how their lives are being destroyed right in front of us.”