And it was that contrast — the smallest of human interruptions inside the biggest of pop spectacles — that somehow made the night even bigger. Because rewind to the beginning, and this show began in absolute fury.

“Brisbane, put your f*cking paws up,” Gaga said. With that command, Lady Gaga didn’t so much begin her Mayhem Ball show at Suncorp Stadium as detonate it.

From the first operatic seconds of Bloody Mary into the feral pulse of Abracadabra, the energy was immediate and overwhelming. This was the most high-octane crowd I have ever seen at Suncorp, hands in the air on command every 30 seconds like we were being willingly hypnotised. The wristband lights pulsed like a living organism. The pit became a throbbing heart.

What unfolded over the next three hours felt less like a concert and more like a polished Broadway musical colliding head-on with a Hollywood blockbuster. Gothic renaissance ruins. Spiral staircases. Castles, skulls, skeletons and sandboxes. Across an epic 32-song setlist, Gaga tore through two decades of hits and reinvention without a single lull — a rare feat for a stadium performance of this scale.

She emerged in a ten-foot-tall dress, later clawed her way out of sand beside a skeleton for Disease, before returning transformed in chrome shoulder armour and silver crutches for a reimagined Paparazzi, dragging a seemingly endless illuminated train behind her. At times there were 16 dancers on stage alongside her full band, pyrotechnics firing relentlessly as strobes pushed sensory overload to euphoric extremes.

The chaos was precision-engineered. The costumes immaculate. The story arc deliberate.