There’s something of 2008 in the air. The recession is back and Lady Gaga is making pop music again. Since that momentous year, Gaga has traversed country, jazz and film, picking up 14 Grammys and an Oscar along the way. Now, she returns to her pop roots with Mayhem. True to its name, the record combusts with synth, glam rock, industrial pop and disco: it’s chaotic (some would even say gaga.) The smorgasbord of influence and genre, however, coheres to reveal a picture of Gaga in her final form — and she’s happy.
Gaga’s last pop record, Chromatica (2020), was besieged by pain, born from her struggles with mental health, heartbreak and the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic. It performed well critically and commercially, but lacked something of Gaga’s distinctive ferocity. Mayhem, however, reveals the missing ingredient: love. Gaga credits her fiancé, philanthropist Michael Polansky, as the catalyst for her return to pop: “He was like ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music.’” Spurred by his support, Gaga has created a record broaching the sounds of The Fame: her inaugural album and most commercially successful. While Chromatica served as a healing mechanism for her trauma, she can rejoice in her craft on Mayhem.
“Disease,” the album’s lead single, signals the return of quintessential Gaga. Over industrial bass, her powerhouse voice belts lyrics laced with her Catholic upbringing: “You reach out and no one's there / Like a god without a prayer” amidst screams, howls and gasps. But it’s only until the album’s second track, “Abracadabra,” in which she intones: "Abracadabra, amor-oo-na-na / Abracadabra, morta-oo-ga-ga,” that the Lady Gaga who sat inside of a latex egg for three days to prepare for the 2011 Grammys is resurrected. With this gibberish mix of incantations, Italian and her own name, Gaga wants us to remember the “Roma, Roma-ma”s of “Bad Romance;” she has resumed her electronic epic on love, death and fame.
Having confidently reasserted her core values, Mayhem erupts. “Perfect Celebrity,” in which Gaga self-consciously dissects the trappings of fame, is reminiscent of the seething bass of the Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer.” “Killah” fuses the funk of Prince with the synth of Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans.” On “Zombieboy,” Gaga swerves into a disco track ripped from the pages of the Chic songbook, complete with a “Hollaback Girl”-esque stomp. “Don’t Call Tonight” features an obviously Daft Punk-style breakdown, while the tight rhythms of “Shadow of a Man” recall the staccato of Michael Jackson. What coheres this concoction of influences, decades and genre? The answer lies in its authenticity. Lady Gaga is riotously celebrating her icons, and having fun doing it. Yet each track remains distinctly Gaga, in both her powerful vocals and needle-sharp artistic vision.
Mayhem ends with the pop-soul collaboration with Bruno Mars, “Die With A Smile.” The jangling ballad is a sonic world away from the opening tracks of the album, but we are prepped with a couple of Gaga’s signature soft rock ballads. These lack the same panache as former hits such as “You and I” and “Speechless,” but meld with the genre-defying sound of the rest of the album. The kitschy mall-elevator lyricism of “Die With A Smile” takes on a new dimension when placed in Mayhem; Gaga smiles for the paparazzi from her deathbed of celebrity. It’s an operatic eulogy to her “Perfect Celebrity,” concluding a meta-dissection of her own stardom.
The only question mark is the hook-filled “How Bad Do U Want Me,” which seems pulled from the desk of Taylor Swift during her 1989 era. Stamped with the watermark of Taylor’s generic melody and structure, the track features backing vocals from someone who sounds suspiciously like Swift herself, even causing speculation of a collaboration online. Perhaps Gaga felt the need to adhere to the dominating pop trends; more likely, she places Taylor at the end of the rolodex of decade-spanning artists in which she finds inspiration. It is true that Mayhem is a critical moment for Gaga’s career in the charts, which have lately been ruled by a younger crowd of pop stars, such as Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Tate McRae. Gaga even alluded to their generational difference in her SNL monologue this weekend, joking: “Charli XCX? She’s 75. Tate McRae is my biological grandmother.” Mayhem was at risk of sharing a graveyard plot with Katy Perry’s 143, which was released in 2024 to complaints of obsolescence and boredom. Gaga’s sound, however, is as fresh as it was in 2009, with an equal flavor of pure weirdness.
There’s no denying that Gaga has matured. In promotional interviews, she is smiley, sporting an enormous oval-cut diamond engagement ring and eager to sing the praises of Polansky, whose lyricism is credited on six tracks on Mayhem. It’s certainly not the Gaga who ate David Letterman’s cue cards because she didn’t like his questions. Mayhem may not pack the same punch as the explosion of The Fame, or even 2013's controversial ARTPOP. But it dismisses the misapprehension that great art requires great adversity. Lady Gaga has evolved beyond the restless, tortured artist, and is finally enjoying herself.
Rebecca Palmer is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at rp675@cornell.edu.
