When Lady Gaga ended her Jazz & Piano residency earlier this July, she essentially promised she would bring it back. The singer has performed different versions of the show at Park MGM's Dolby Live since 2018 and she never seems to stay away for that long.
Unlike many Las Vegas Strip residency acts, Gaga isn't a nostalgia act. She's an in-demand actress who also continues to release hit music. That's different than her contemporary, Katy Perry, who has struggled to release new music.
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Perry ended her Las Vegas residency in Nov. 2023 in order to focus on new music. That hasn't exactly worked as her "Woman's World," single has been a chart flop that has cast her future as a relevant artist into doubt. That's the same situation facing Jennifer Lopez, who actually canceled a planned Las Vegas residency when her current album "This Is Me... Now" failed to connect with her listeners.
Las Vegas has traditionally been a market that's all about nostalgia. Huge artists have been playing there since Elton John and Celine Dion made it cool, but both of those performers were playing the hits, a tradition Rod Stewart, Aerosmith, Sting, Garth Brooks, and many other big-name musicians followed, even though their hit-making days may be in the past.
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Image source: John Shearer/Getty Images for Katy Perry
Las Vegas Strip moves beyond nostalgia
Bruno Mars, Gaga, Carrie Underwood, and Miranda Lambert have all balanced current or recent residencies with continuing to put out successful albums. You could say the same of Maroon 5, but the list of Strip headliners who can also top the charts is not a very long one.
Many Las Vegas Strip resort casinos have moved past relying on Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson impersonator acts, but most top stars who still release new music stick to traditional tours. That could change with U2, a nostalgia act still capable of having a hit, having played a long residency at The Sphere.
That game-changing venue has largely hosted older acts including U2, Phish, The Eagles, and Dead & Company, but there have been strong rumors of Harry Styles considering a run there. It's a challenging venue because it can hold over 19,000 people and very few performers can pack a venue that big for a long run of shows, even in a tourist-dominated town.
Another performer who has a huge run of past hits, and who would be expected to top the charts with a new single or album, Adele, has been playing a 4,000-seat venue at Caesars Palace. Her "Weekends With Adele" shows have routinely sold out at Caesars Entertainment's (CZR) Colosseum, but that run has ended.
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Adele is leaving Las Vegas (maybe for good)
Adele will finish up her Las Vegas residency with a run of shows in November. After that she plans to take a long break from not just her Las Vegas Strip residency, but music in general.
"My tank is quite empty at the minute," the star told German broadcaster ZDF, the BBC reported. "I don’t have any plans for new music at all. I want a big break after all this and I think I want to do other creative things just for a little while."
Adele regularly addresses and interacts with the crowd during her Las Vegas shows as they're really the only time she would play a venue that small.
"'Weekends' is expected to gross more than $220 million when it goes dark, which will place it in the top five of Las Vegas residency productions, ever. The show was brilliantly conceived, the headliner providing some sort of unexpected highlight every weekend (such as the time she described the chafing caused by her underwear)," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
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