Lady Gaga is a tour-de-force of talent at the Co-op Live Manchester

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Lady Gaga proves she’s a truly world-class act after two sold-out nights at the Co-op Live Manchester, as if we needed any reminding.

The city of Manchester has been flooded with harness-wearing, mesh-sporting little monsters over the past two days.

And that’s because the absolute icon that is Lady Gaga brought her ‘Mayhem Ball’ to the Co-op Live for two nights.

I don’t think you’ll find anyone who doesn’t know who this fabulous woman is. Over the past decade, she’s won an Oscar, headlined the Super Bowl, performed in blockbusters alongside Al Pacino, no less, and her songs are literally ingrained into our minds.

It’s been a whole 11 years (yes, really) since she performed in Manchester, and it’s safe to say she was back with a bang.

The performance was split up into five distinct acts, and each one was as exhausting and exhilarating as the next.

She begins the show by bopping out of a comically huge red dress, but this staging was only the start of what madness was about to ensue.

Luckily, we’d been prepared by the other half of the Audio North team, who had the equal privilege of seeing her on night one and were left similarly speechless.

Throughout the 30-song epic, we had crutches, sand pits, cages, skeletons, enough wigs to produce an amateur production of Annie, and we didn’t question any of it. Why would we? It’s Lady Gaga.

Kicking things off with ‘Bloody Mary’, the two and a half hour marathon didn’t leave any stones unturned.

We had all the bangers, from ‘Just Dance’ and ‘Paparazzi’ to ‘Bad Romance’ and ‘Applause’, it had us wondering why any other superstar even bothers putting a song out these days.

Pop is in a good place at the moment with the likes of Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and so on, but you can make a strong case for Gaga having helped pave the way for every lady in the business ever since.

Gaga truly had us in the palm of her hands (or claws at one point), even more so when she left the stage to de-robe and show her more vulnerable side for the last two songs – beanie firmly on.

It wasn’t just a concert: this was a fully-fledged tour de force of talent that Manchester won’t forget any time soon.

Sometimes there’s no point in intellectualising why someone has that ‘X-factor’; sometimes you just have to take a step back and say WOW.

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Featured Images — The Manc Group