Lady Gaga cast a spell over Coachella 2025.
Not only did Mother Mayhem close out the first day of the Indio, Calif., music festival on Friday night with an epic headlining set spanning most of her career, but she also released a new remix of her hit song “Abracadabra” with Gesaffelstein, the French music producer with whom she previously collaborated on her track “Killah.”
Gaga (real name: Stefani Germanotta) also brought out Gesaffelstein (real name: Mike Lévy) as her only surprise guest to perform “Killah” with her during the set. The “dark prince of techno” wore his signature all-black suit and chrome mask for his appearance, and Gaga took a moment to dance with him before strutting down the stage to play a drum set held up by her dancers in an electric standout moment.
Watch a video of Gesaffelstein’s surprise appearance below.
The almost-two-hour, theatrical Coachella set was Gaga’s “manifesto of mayhem,” referring to her recently released seventh solo studio album, Mayhem, almost all of which she performed for the set, along with many of her biggest hits, including “Poker Face,” “Judas,” “Alejandro,” and “Paparazzi.”
The singer separated her set into four acts: “Of Velvet and Vice,” “And She Fell Into a Gothic Dream,” “The Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name,” and “To Make Her Is to Lose Her.” Along with the drums, she also played the guitar during her performance “Garden of Eden.”
Midway through her set, she took a moment to address the massive crowd of fans gathered at the main stage. “I love you so much. I wanted to make a romantic gesture to you,” she said. “I built you an opera house in the desert.” She also kept her eye on the clock so that she could sing “The Beast” lyric “11:59” right at 11:59 p.m. PT. — no small feat given that Coachella headliners are notorious for running late.
After she seemed to finish early at 12:40 a.m. PT, she then returned to the stage for an encore titled “Eternal Aria of the Monster Heart,” which featuring only her hit “Bad Romance.”
Gaga will return to Coachella for another set for the festival’s second weekend on Friday, April 18. This show was her second time headlining Coachella — she also performed in 2017 as a last-minute replacement for Beyoncé, who had to drop out due to her pregnancy. Beyoncé headlined the following year.
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
“So much of what I did with ‘Abracadabra’ was about claiming music and imagery that’s my own invention — meaning the combination of those things is my own invention, and I wanted to really own that for myself,” Gaga told Entertainment Weekly in March. “As a woman in music, we’re often told that someone else made us who we are or somehow it didn’t come from us, that we were made that way. But this is who I am.”
Minutes later into the interview, Gaga laughed, saying, “I just realized, too, what I should’ve said to you when I said that I wasn’t made this way. I was born this way.”
Listen to the new remix of “Abracadabra” below.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
The post Lady Gaga releases ‘Abracadabra’ remix after Coachella 2025 headlining set with surprise guest Gesaffelstein appeared first on Entertainment Weekly.
