Inside The Monster Ball: Lady Gaga Reveals Plans for Ambitious New Tour

Just two weeks after Lady Gaga's Fame Kills Tour with Kanye West was cancelled, the ambitious pop star announced plans for an unprecedented "multimedia artistic experience" called The Monster Ball. The show was originally slated to premiere in London in early 2010, but the singer rallied her Haus of Gaga and is set to launch the trek on November 27th, four days after the release of The Fame Monster. Rehearsals for The Monster Ball begin next week and details about the show have been scarce until now. Lady Gaga revealed the tour's theme, stage design and plans for The Fame Monster in an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone. For more details on the tour, see our story in the next issue, on stands October 28th.

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Can you talk about the songs on The Fame Monster?
This is a new album. It's eight songs, I could have put more songs on it, but I just decided not to because I thought they fit beautifully together. I'm really excited about all my new work, and I've been going through some really wonderful times and some really rough times all at once, so it's been really good for my artistry. On the re-release, I wrote this song called "Speechless,"which I think is the best song I've ever written. It's about my dad, it's a really beautiful ballad. It's piano-driven, and there's no beat on it, it's all live instruments. I produced it with Ron Fair, so we did a full live orchestra, recorded everything with live drums, live guitar and bass with me playing piano. We got that really organic, delicious feeling.

What was the thinking behind The Monster Ball?
I wanted to really put together a show that would be the most beautiful, expensive-looking, delicious show, but that my fans wouldn't have to pay a ton of money to come see. So we're playing a few nights in a row. I've got super loyal fans, so I feel this tremendous obligation to take care of them.

You said it was a pop-electro opera.
Yeah. It's the first ever, so it's really whatever I want it to be. The theatrics and story elements are in the style of an opera. Imagine if you could take the sets of an opera, which are very grand and very beautiful, and put them through a pop-electro lens. The design of the show is very, very forward, very, very innovative. I've been thinking about ways to play with the shape of this stage and change the way that we watch things. So what I've done is I've designed a stage with Haus of Gaga that is essentially a frame with forced perspective, and the frame is put inside the stage.