Lady Gaga now holds the record for the highest-attended concert by a female artist after drawing over 2 million people to a free show at Rio De Janiero's Copacabana Beach on Saturday (May 3). Promoting her new album Mayhem, she beat the record previously held by Madonna's Celebration Tour stop at the same location exactly one year ago today, which had a crowd of 1,600,000. (Rod Stewart's 1994 New Year's Eve show, also held at Copacabana Beach, remains the highest-attended concert in history. That must be a big beach.)
But apparently, Gaga's record-breaking show almost had a very different outcome, as Brazilian police say that they thwarted planned a bomb attack before the concert. Reuters reports that an unnamed group "were recruiting participants, including minors, to carry out coordinated attacks using improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails." The members of that group identified themselves as Lady Gaga fans. Rio state police arrested a suspect who's believed to be the group's leader in the southern state of Rio Grande Do Sul for illegal possession of a firearm. A teenager in Rio de Janeiro was also detained for possession of child pornography.
Thankfully, it looks like everything went according to plan on Gaga's side. See an aerial view of the Copacabana Beach show below.
@skynews Lady Gaga performed in front of an estimated 2.1 million people at a free show on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach, with around 500,000 tourists travelling to watch the concert. #ladygaga #riodejaneiro #copacabanabeach
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