During Tuesday night's concert the pop star ripped off a green wig, turned and climbed onto a throne of sorts, while two dressers appeared and began removing the black leather hotpants number she'd been wearing.

The songstress tore off her g-string, twirled and flung it into space, leaving her clad only in fishnet stockings, her curvier figure displayed in all its glory on the two big screens.

The dressers worked their magic, sliding her into a multi-coloured neon ensemble, complete with a plastic tunic (Gaga's nipples having been concealed beneath strips of bright yellow tape), furry booties and an enormous purple pigtailed wig. She resembled Sailor Moon crossed with a My Little Pony doll.

Then she broke into Bad Romance and the crowd - which had been going wild - went even wilder.

So I took this picture of @ladygaga at the #artRAVEBrisbane and thought I'd share. pic.twitter.com/QwWHImhYCz — Joêl † Mon$têr Gypsy (@joelgoodwin94) August 26, 2014

"This is what we came to see - Nude Gaga!" yelled a young lass in the crowd.

It was the best moment of a night that was both familiar and so different. Compared to the epic carnival that the was the 2012 Born This Way Ball, Lady Gaga's 2014 offering, the ArtPop Ball, had a stripped back feel about it.

Gone was the three storey castle set in favour of a lush and rounded set of igloos, supposedly forming Planet Venus, the location for the evening's bacchanal.

Gone was Gaga's participation in complex dance routines - she danced, sure, but having famously broken a hip in early 2013 and taken months to recover, it was more cautious, more natural.

And by the climax of festivities, even Lady Gaga's clothes had, well, gone.

"The more they try to change me, the more I want to be myself," she yelled at her adoring monsters after an all-in singalong to Alejandro.

Lady Gaga had first appeared onstage in a glittering gold unitard and wing ensemble - strangely reminiscent of an oversized Golden Snitch - before ditching the excessive layers for her Bottacelli Barbarella outfit (clam-shell bikini, ridiculously huge wig).

The premise of the show was Gaga as Aphrodite, taking us all to Planet Venus, where we could fulfil the ArtPop manifesto of supporting the artist, putting art first and celebrating the talent inside us all.

About 10 minutes into the show, officially hashtagged #artRAVEBrisbane, many fans of her older albums, The Fame Monster and Born This Way, would have realised they couldn't sing along.

Her ArtPop record has not recieved as much attention as its predecessors.

So the concert's first bracket of ArtPop, G.U.Y, Donatella, Venus and Manicure many would have been left little bewildered. Lady Gaga and her hardcore fans had moved on, but others hadn't.

Thankfully the strains of Just Dance kicked in, Gaga reappeared in a glitteringly white mini-dress with a seahorse keytar, and launched into a bracket of her earlier work that got the crowd very excited. Poker Face was followed by a fragment of Telephone (a disappointment for the devotees of that superb dance number), then Paparazzi.

The ArtPop staging may have been smaller on a Gaga scale, but it was still full of surprises. Inflatable flowers burst from the twin catwalks, confetti cannons went off at regular intervals, and a podium lift allowed Gaga to rise above the crowd in a giant silver hand-shaped throne for Do What U Want.

The costume changes were a highlight, including an incredible pink and black inflatable Kraken dress. Yes, Gaga dressed as a disco squid, and it was fabulous.

The middle section of the show allowed Gaga to get up close with her monsters while she sat at her piano, hidden in a pink icicled fortress of solitude at the end of one of the catwalks. An acoustic version of Dope, an incredibly personal song detailing her struggle with addiction as she recovered from the broken hip, was sensational.

She pulled a young woman named Lisa out of the crowd to join her onstage, after reading a letter she had attached to a pink cardigan and launched at the singer.

This seemed to be the new thing, something that had developed during the ArtPop movement - write a letter to Gaga paying tribute to how she had empowered you, somehow get it onstage, hope she picked it up and read it aloud, at which point she would grant you post-show backstage rights.

It fits the Gaga-as-goddess theme, but it's easy to be cynical. The singer obsesses about her fans more than any other pop star going, and singing an acoustic version of the anthemic Born This Way with Lisa sitting alongside, grinning from ear to ear, was a truly sweet moment of connection.

Lisa disappeared beneath the stage with Gaga, as she changed into the black leather number for the B&D section of the show. Her dancers entertained by firing cannons at the crowd filled with tiny toy unicorns. The girl in front of me caught one, and I almost cried out in jealousy. Over a unicorn toy.

A few acapella lines of the Edge of Glory chorus had many very excited, but a full version was not to be, Gaga instead launching into a fragment of Judas followed by the new songs Aura and Sexxx Dreams. She read another fan letter, asked the crowd to give her dancers a round of applause for their "nice asses", then demanded more energy as the strains of Alejandro began.

"How good is this?" yelled the young lass in the crowd, who had arrived late and missed Gaga's request that people look at the stage and at their friends, not at their phones, because "f--- the internet".

The nude costume change and Bad Romance followed, then Gaga told the crowd she wrote Applause because when she was laid up, she could still hear them cheering, and realised she lived only to make her fans happy. The crowd pulsed in time as the lasers went overtime and more t-shirts and toys were flung at the crowd.

Swine was an odd choice for a finale. But after a long break, Lady Gaga appeared one final time, looking like Agnetha from Abba crossed with an albino Morticia.

She hauled a little girl, no more than eight, onto the stage, showing off her little Aphrodite bikini. "I saw you singing all the words, and I wanted to bring you onstage," she said to the thrilled younster.

The pair resettled on the piano where Gaga again paid tribute to her fans, and began Gypsy, a bittersweet number about the ups and downs of life on the road. Fans danced in huge circles with each other on the floor, adding to the joy of the last moments of the night.

And that was it. Gaga and her band took a bow, then disappeared with the young girl beneath the stage (presumably her parents got her back).

For many The ArtPop Ball tour won't have the real zeitgeist magic of the Born This Way Ball, but it might just be because of a "things were better in my day" attitude.

ArtPop is more of a fan record, having not had as much widespread saturation as previous albums, when Gaga was last seen in an outrageous outfit

It was telling that just before the encore, Gaga ripped off her purple pigtails to reveal a shock of sweaty black hair - her own. She's now recording duets with Tony Bennett, and her solos at the piano were a reminder of just how good her voice is when stripped back and left to soar.

ArtPop just may have been Gaga's last disco hurrah before her transformation into a true torch singer. And it'll be fans' job to keep up.

I love my monsters, gypsy travel day. Hope you are enjoying every moment of the tour as much as I am. #artRAVEBrisbane — Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) August 26, 2014