Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Garth Brooks struck a note unlike any we’ve previously heard

TIME

 "When Lady Gaga, the first performer at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, stepped toward the podium to sing, everything about her—that tropical-red pouf of a skirt, the colossal golden dove perched on her shoulder, that milkmaid from MoMA hairdo—was a celebratory announcement: Welcome to the modern age!" says Stephanie Zacharek. "Though the road ahead is rocky, we no longer need to live in dread. Gaga, living completely in the moment, had arrived to point the way toward the future. Inauguration musical performances, in their need to balance solemnity with jubilation, are always tricky propositions. But the Biden-Harris performances—from Gaga, J. Lo and Garth Brooks, performers from disparate backgrounds and different disciplines—struck a note unlike any we’ve previously heard. Let’s call it a sigh of relief building to a cheer of exaltation. Even the cloud-strewn blue of the Washington sky seemed keyed to the moment, and to this particular event, taking place in a spot where just two weeks ago a bunch of clumsy, if dangerous, insurrectionists took a run at democracy and failed." ALSO: Conservative Garth Brooks fans are angry he performed at the inauguration.