Lady Gaga has spent the past month or so in Las Vegas for her Jazz & Piano residency, and when one of her recent shows fell on an important anniversary, the singer made sure to pay tribute to the city she’s been calling home.
Gaga’s Sunday night (Oct. 1) concert happened to be on the six-year anniversary of the 2017 massacre at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, which took the lives of 58 victims and injured hundreds in what would become the deadliest mass shooting in American history. The gunman, 64-year-old Nevada resident Stephen Paddock, opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel before taking his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot.
Over the weekend, the pop star took a moment to send a message of support to Sin City while performing her 2011 smash “Born This Way” on the piano. “I just want to remind everyone here what a resilient wonderful city this is,” she told the crowd at the Park MGM’s Dolby Live theater. “It has big hearts, and a lot of hope and believing in the future. And I just would like to dedicate this song to everyone we lost.”
Gaga has just two more dates scheduled for the latest leg of her residency, closing out Wednesday (Oct. 4) and Thursday (Oct. 5). The Grammy winner has been residing in Vegas on and off since late 2018, when she first launched her Enigma stage show. Shortly after, she started up her Jazz & Piano stint, which finds her performing stripped-back versions of her own songs as well as standards from the Great American Songbook.
The musician recently assisted two fellow legends — Mick Jagger and Stevie Wonder — on “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” a song off the Rolling Stones’ upcoming Hackney Diamonds album. In a recent interview about the collaboration, Jagger said that it was “a great experience, her just coming in the room and her just opening up and seeing her bits and feeling her way and then getting more confident.”
Watch Lady Gaga dedicate “Born This Way” to the Las Vegas shooting victims below.
@billboard @ladygaga dedicated “Born This Way” to the survivors and those impacted by the 2017 Route 91 shooting in Las Vegas on its sixth anniversary during her Jazz and Piano Residency. #ladygaga #bornthisway #lasvegas #music ♬ original sound – billboard
