In the past few years there’s been a lot of chatter in the pop culture consciousness around Lady Gaga’s shift in sound, performance, and presentation. The Mother Monster had made a name for herself through shocking and avant-garde fashion and performances, illuminating the importance of queer art and spaces, and generating pulsating pop hits that stuck in your brain whether you liked it or not. Since the 2018 collectible anniversary edition release of her debut album The Fame (2008), the undeniable star had (rightfully) taken time to explore other sonic landscapes and career aspirations. From the jazz stylings of her Tony Bennett collaboration Cheek to Cheek, to the Americana-tinged Joanne, she also starred in film and television, lent her voice to soundtracks, headlined a Vegas residency, and released music that drifted further from the dance floor.
So, in the lead up to Mayhem’s release—following her Grammy Award–winning duet with Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile,” a cinematic ballad where nary a gritty beat is heard—Little Monsters couldn’t help but wonder if they’d ever get the most disruptive and pop-centric versions of Gaga back again. But then she dropped “Disease,” a harkening back to her dark-pop era, with electro clashes, menacing lyrics, and chaotic visuals. As she sang, “I can smell your sickness/I can cure your disease,” running through allies in wicked costumes on the track’s music video, fans knew it was a well-aimed warning shot: Gaga was so back, baby.
But the real puncture on the bull’s-eye—the true confirmation of just how deep into dark electropop Gaga was willing to dive—was the album’s second official single release, “Abracadabra.” The rapid dance track, taking its name from a spell and pouring out more gibberish incantations at the chorus, was a staggering and sobering moment for listeners—this is what we’d been waiting for, the kind of satanic panic–inducing, is-she-in-the-Illuminati-affiliation-implying, sharp, clean choreography-exhibiting music that Gaga had gifted us at the start. We’d been waiting since “Bad Romance” for Gaga to speak her own language again (i.e., “Abracadabra, amor-ooh-na-na, abracadabra, morta-ooh-ga-ga”) and to hear the hook-heavy mesmerizing effects of “Born This Way.” And not moments after the music video—which shows two versions of Gaga dancing in red and white with an ensemble of equally high fashion–donning dancers behind her, contorting themselves against the rhythm from the moment she speaks the words “The category is, dance or die”—did the internet light up with the kind of discourse that only her early releases would ignite. The takes were intense, with Variety reporting that “Abracadabra” had saved Gaga’s pop career by bringing back maximalist pop. The reaction made sense, because, as the pop priestess told Elle, “The song has a spell in it.” Less a hex and more of a fight against external forces, she also shared that the song “is about facing the challenge of life and the challenge of the night and finding the magic in it all.”
But “Abracadabra” hasn’t been the only discourse-conjuring moment. For weeks fans speculated that Taylor Swift was featured on the Mayhem track “How Bad Do U Want Me,” with fans also claiming it sounded like it was lifted from Swift’s hit album 1989. Alas, those rumors were proven false. However, when one fan who danced to the upbeat track on TikTok, miming the very Swiftie lyrics “Cause you like my hair, my ripped-up jeans/You like the bad girl I got in me” claimed that the song had reheated Swift’s nachos (a very internet way of saying that she’d emulated the star), Gaga reposted the video in jest.
Elsewhere, Gaga sings about falling in love with Michael Polansky, who inspired her trip back to electropop territory, and whose proposal inspired the love-lucky lyrics of her swoony song “Blade of Grass” (he proposed to her with a blade of grass in her backyard…before replacing it with a $20 million ring). There are also more kinetic dance hits, like the glitchy David Bowie–laced “Vanish Into You” and the aggressively electronic “Killah” featuring French musician and producer Gesaffelstein.
But the biggest and most dazzling highlight of Mayhem is Stefani Germanotta—the artist who despite odds, critiques, and predictable career arcs poured her creativity and otherworldly ability into another pristine album. At her official Little Monsters conference, hosted by Spotify for her fans to ask unvetted questions to the megastar, she was asked what character she embodied in her latest album. “The lady you’ve known for the last 20 years,” she responded confidently. “I think Mayhem for me is an integration of who I am in real life and who I am on stage and how I really started to celebrate bringing those two things together, two things that don’t really go together actually. Turns out that’’s the whole me.” Chills.
Image Via Interscope
