Lady Gaga Says She Performed 5 Concerts With COVID

“I didn’t want to let all the fans down.”

By now, one would hope that quarantining after testing positive for COVID is just basic social etiquette, like holding the door open for the person behind you or waiting for passengers to leave a subway car before getting on. But Lady Gaga may believe otherwise. At the Thursday premiere of her new HBO concert special, Gaga Chromatica Ball, the singer revealed she performed five shows of her Chromatica tour after testing positive for the virus in 2022.

“I did five shows with COVID,” said Gaga, who appeared on the red carpet in a white Selva gown resembling a car part, with bleached brows and black hair, during a Q&A ahead of the screening. “I shared it with everyone on my team,” she continued. (I’ll say). “I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable at work, and you don’t have to perform and you don’t have to work that day, but I’m going to do the show,’ because I didn’t want to let all the fans down,” the singer explained, adding that she felt her fans had put themselves “in harm’s way every day” by coming to her show. So she felt like she should reward them by … exposing them to COVID? “During all my quick changes, I kept going, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’”

On X, the admission has drawn mixed reactions with some fans criticizing Gaga for being irresponsible and putting her audience and crew members at risk. Others defended the singer, pointing out that she raised $128 million for COVID relief in 2020 and arguing concertgoers know there is a risk of transmission in a crowd. Gaga, who released Chromatica in 2020, toured the album in 20 shows across Asia, North America, and Europe between July and September 2022. The concert film, which drops May 25, follows her tour stop at Los Angeles’s Dodger Stadium, where she performed for a crowd of 52,000. Here’s hoping no one tested positive after the fact?

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