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Rivalry between Lady Gaga and Madonna has been reignited once again after the “Bad Romance” singer broke a record for the most-attended free concert hosted by a female singer during her show at Copacabana beach in Brazil on Saturday (3 May).
Gaga broke the record, which had previously been set by Madonna, when 2.1 million attendees flocked to Rio de Janeiro’s shores for the concert as part of a promotional tour for her latest album, Mayhem.
Madonna originally set the record when she gave a concert as part of her Celebration tour on Copacabana beach in May 2024, with 1.6 million attendees.
Respective fans of the two artists have been using the new record set by Gaga as an opportunity to pit the two musicians against each other.
One fan shared a picture of the crowd at Gaga’s show, and wrote online, “Oh Gaga you will never be Madonna,” to which another fan snapped back: “She will never be Madonna because she’s Lady Gaga – and she’s far better.”
Another person said that Gaga’s new record is a testament to the success of her career.
“I don’t think we fully grasp how massive this is… Madonna has a four-decade career that spans generations.. .Gaga managed to attract all in a short time and pull a bigger audience by a wide margin and no one might ever top this… she’s a legend,” they wrote.
Another more neutral fan chimed in, saying: “I’m a Madonna fan since I was eight, and I love Gaga too, they both love each other too, why the confrontation?”
When Gaga released her debut album The Fame in 2008, critics were quick to compare her to Madonna due to her avant-garde performance style and take on the pop genre.
Both musicians have referenced the perceived rivalry between them, with the pair poking fun at the rumours when they appeared in a 2009 Saturday Night Live segment.
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Some fans argued that Gaga’s 2011 song “Born This Way” was an imitation of Madonna’s 1989 song “Express Yourself”, and Madonna went on to call the song a “blatant rip-off” and said it felt “reductive” in an interview with Rolling Stone. Later she performed a mash-up of the two songs in her concerts.
Gaga addressed this in a 2013 interview with Attitude Magazine, saying she was “floored” that Madonna was singing her song.
“Madonna Ciccone was singing my song on stage and I’m 27! As a punk rocker from New York, I’ve basically been hoping that I would become so good that one day I would piss off Madonna!” she said.
Gaga added: “I’m certainly not thinking about anybody but me and my fans when I’m on stage. The fact that I was on her mind at all… I mean, Madonna’s… she’s Madonna. I looked up to her for a long time. I’m not quite sure what her intention was – to do that in the show – but I don’t really care.”
The “Poker Face” singer addressed the criticism in her Netflix 2017 Netflix documentary, Five Foot Two, commenting: “So the thing with me and Madonna for example, is that I admired her always.
“And I still admire her, no matter what she might think of me. She wouldn’t look me in the eye and tell me that I was reductive or whatever… Telling me you think I’m a piece of s*** through the media? It’s like a guy passing me a note through his friend.”
The pair appeared to squash rumours of a feud between them in 2019, when they were photographed together at Madonna’s Oscars afterparty.
