



After a snippet of I’m On the Edge, she went into a full-blooded version of Poker Face, sung live as she joined a group of dancers on a stage that looked like something from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. That audience was treated to plenty of Gaga’s early work, with the biggest numbers from her early record-breaking albums dominating the song selection by an artist whose recent work has not been well received critically. In Houston, the scene of Janet Jackson’s infamous wardrobe malfunction in 2004, a moment whose merits were argued in the supreme court as recently as 2012, Gaga opted to focus on her own greatest hits, with many including messages of inclusion and acceptance, rather than making protest statements. Little else was known about what she had planned – there were rumors that Bad Romance would be the show-stopping finale others suggested Beyoncé could appear and she had a special dance studio installed in her Malibu home – but other than that not much was known about how her promise of an inclusive display would manifest itself. At the annual press conference for the half-time show, Gaga had promised a performance based on the principles of tolerance and equality.
