Lady Gaga performed – and delivered a political message – at her concert Saturday night inside the US Airways Center in Phoenix.
When Lady Gaga took the stage for the Arizona leg of her Monster Ball Tour, it turns out, she had a few things to get off her chest, including how she feels about SB 1070, a new Arizona law intended to curb illegal immigration in the state. She even had “Stop SB 1070” scrawled down one of her forearms.
“I didn’t used to be a brave person,” the pop star said. “But you have made me brave. And now I’m gonna be brave for you. Tonight I want you to free yourself. I want you to let go of all of your insecurities. I want you to reject any person or anything or any law that has ever made you feel like you don’t belong.”
She added that she, like so many other performers in recent days, had experienced pressure to boycott the state when it came to mapping out her tour. “I got a phone call from a couple really big rock ‘n’ rollers, big pop stars, big rap artists, and they said, ‘We would like you to boycott playing Arizona because of SB 1070.'”
The Mother Monster’s response? “I said, ‘Do you really think that us dumb _____ pop stars are going to collapse the economy of Arizona?'”
The singer instead presented a different solution to the more than 14,000 fans present. “I’ll tell you what we have to do about SB 1070. We have to be active. We have to actively protest. And the nature of the Monster Ball, is to actively protest prejudice and injustice and that _____ that is put on our society … I will not cancel my show. I will yell, and I will scream louder, and I will hold you, and we will hold each other, and we will peaceably protest this state.”
Lady Gaga also spoke up for the LGBT community, of which she has long been a supporter, during her show. And never one to disappoint her little monsters, the singer showed up with plenty of outrageous costume changes and antics, including pyrotechnics.
