The year is 2008 and someone has just told you about a new blonde pop princess setting the playbook on fire with a highly curated visual story, razor sharp choreography, and a soulful approach to songwriting and performance. You were expecting another Britney or a Christina, but what you got was Lady Gaga: a fresh departure from the reggaeton-infused pop and sad-boy ballad rock that dominated the airwaves at the time. This scrappy but well-educated 21 year old nobody brought with her a team of up and coming creatives and a classical training in both theater and music.
Now, with nearly 20 years under her belt as a prolific creative force within the pop music sphere, Lady Gaga is approaching 40 (she turns 39 later this month) and her sound has been one long creative mood swing, chaotically traversing across genres. From country to metal, disco to funk, EDM to jazz, the Lady has done it all and while delivering an impeccably executed accompanying visual experience. Always outspoken, and at times highly pretentious, the door to her creative process has always been wide-open for any who were curious about what makes a pop star tick. Indeed, Lady Gaga has been a disruptive force to business-as-usual since she first stepped onto the scene and bled across the VMA’s stage. But only just now are we hearing what an adult, fully-formed Gaga has to offer after her nearly two decades of experimentation and self-discovery.
When we were given the first sampling of what Mayhem would entail, it was back in October with the first single Disease. A dark and even somewhat gruesome visual presentation, this first breath of life of the new album delivered the long-awaited return to what many fans affectionately call “GothGa”. First revealed to us with the release of The Fame Monster back in 2009, this manifestation of Gaga felt like a mask-off creative moment. It was as though she had pulled the wool over the record executive eyes with her tanned pop princess obsessed with fame act and was saying “Psych!”. The weirdo we’ve all come to know had arrived. And with slamming style-defining compositions like Bad Romance and Dance In The Dark, Lady Gaga announced her mission statement: to disrupt the artifice of pop music with authenticity and genuine creative spirit. This theme proliferated into her next album Born This Way, which saw the star rise into a more serious civil rights oriented direction and demand a seat at the table to voice the pain of communities who had lifted her up.
The world hasn’t always known how exactly to receive or interpret Gaga, but even in commercial pitfalls like ARTPOP and Joanne, her determination to do it her way even in the face of diminished mainstream success has always sustained. In fact, those so-called “low points” in her career saw her skyrocket as a cultural icon with a Super Bowl Halftime Show and a burgeoning film career in A Star Is Born. It was during this time that Gaga’s tenacity seemed to cool a bit while she kept her head down and made her own moves. By 2020, Gaga had two collaboration albums with jazz legend Tony Bennett, a successful beauty brand, two perfume releases, 5 solo studio albums, and a global fan base still going strong and loyal. Over time, the eagerness that we once came to know, and cringe over every now and then, had matured into a self-assured strength and focus. Gone for some time has been the Lady Gaga that couldn’t rest until her face and music were inescapable and fame for the sake of it was the mobile goalpost.
The arrival of her 8th studio album Mayhem brings with it a sense that this is not the same person that we first met 20 years ago. Of course, growing and aging is an incontrovertible fact of life, to hear what a fully-grown adult Gaga sounds like musically is a real treat. A true student of herself and of all that came before her, Mayhem is overflowing with references, both to herself and to her idols, but ways that show the references are part of her creative DNA now and not just a current obsession. From the dramatic cadence of David Bowie and the soaring vocal runs of Christina Aguilera to rapid-fire songwriting reminiscent of Michael Jackson, this album is Lady Gaga as an organic stream of consciousness that doesn’t just open the door, but pulls you into her process headfirst. Tracks like How Bad Do U Want Me, which samples Yazoo’s 1982 track Only You, and Zombieboy, a dizzying disco track with high energy 90’s pop influence, Gaga is making it clear that she’s been paying attention to her teachers all these years. She’s collaborated with some very heavy hitters in the past and the evidence permeates throughout each composition, from her time recording with Nile Rodgers of CHIC and E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons to her relationships with rock legends like Queen’s Brian May and Elton John.
Through the deeply personal songwriting of Vanish Into You, Blade of Grass, and Don’t Call Tonight, Gaga is also letting us know that she’s okay. After all of the pain and turmoil, lost love and public scrutiny, she is genuinely happy. Her 2020 work Chromatica explored subjects of mental health more directly than ever before, but had a definite pre-occupation with not being well and suffered from over-conceptualization. This is not the case with Mayhem, which feels like a retrospective of a career well-spent on honing her craft. The second single, Abracadabra, set this tone beautifully and immediately took us back to smash hits like Bad Romance, coming in swinging with a dark but hopeful tone and thorough visual concept, like a magic spell.
Features on this album are minimal compared to her past albums and truthfully, she doesn’t need them. The only guest in sight (aside from Bruno Mars, but I’ll get to that) is French producer Gesaffelstein on the sixth track Killah. The primary message of Mayhem, narratively, seems to be that Lady Gaga is focused on herself and honoring her own journey up until this point. This theme proliferates in the visual accompaniment for the album as well. From warring Gagas in both videos for Disease and Abracadabra, a concept that we haven’t seen since the video for the 2015 single John Wayne, to the cracked mirror concept of the album artwork, this album is clearly a work of self-reflection and all of the facets that go along with that.
But for all its creative merits, Mayhem is not perfect. What I’m referring to is the seemingly last minute addition of Die With A Smile, Gaga’s Grammy winning collaboration with Bruno Mars. Described as an apocalyptic love song, Die With A Smile fits with some of the themes on the rest of the album but has none of the deliciously rich detail and stylistic indulgence that makes it so compelling. As the final track on the album, the immediate sense is that there was some kind of contractual obligation to include it as the closer. Die With A Smile, from its initial release, has always felt more like a Bruno Mars song with a Lady Gaga feature rather than a product of her own creative powerhouse. Having begun her career as a songwriter for other artists, Gaga has always taken a very flexible approach to collaboration, often allowing her collaborators to lead the creative process. It’s a disappointing climax to an otherwise impeccable piece of music.
Blade of Grass, the penultimate track on the album, leaves the listener feeling hopeful by the end. Taking a somber tone but maintaining a wistful romanticism throughout its lyrics, Blade of Grass is the track that she speaks of with the most adoration. This is unsurprising considering it’s about the day her fiancee, entrepreneur Michael Polansky, proposed to her in her backyard, the same backyard where her late friend Sonya was married. It’s my opinion that Blade of Grass is the light at the end of the proverbial Mayhem tunnel that leaves us with the message that this is not the end and that there is hope to be had, even throughout the heaviness of lived experience.
My advice: pretend Die With A Smile isn’t even there and end on a high note.
Written and researched by Daphne Bos
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