On Lady Gaga’s new album, she’s back in pop territory but with an electropop aesthetic borrowed from her contemporaries.
ADVERTISEMENTLady Gaga’s seventh studio album ‘Mayhem’ is an attempt to catch lightning in a bottle. As the chameleonic artist tries to revisit the highs of her 2008 debut ‘The Fame’, the result is a fun pop album that’s more subdued than the zeitgeist-taming work that made her.
Opening with lead single ‘Disease’, Gaga is clearly back in well-trodden territory. Euphoric synths have an industrial thump as they transport the listener into a dark electropop arena, her powerful voice ringing over everything.
Second track and follow-up single ‘Abracadabra’ has more of the thudding beats with Gaga singing in her ballroom warble. It all comes together for a nonsense lyric chorus that combines the titular magical invocation with various oohs and aahs. It’s all very ‘Padam Padam’, Kylie Minogue’s surprise return hit from 2023.
As the album continues, that reference is the problem. When she released ‘Padam Padam’, many had written off Kylie as a hasbeen. Her hit song was a return to form but its relevance was in the Australian star’s adherence to an aesthetic of campy queer anthems that would work in clubs, not in paving her own new path for a late career move.
Similarly, Gaga returning to the poppier stylings of ‘The Fame’ (and the reissue ‘The Fame Monster’) feel more like an attempt to fit into current trends than an iconoclastic smashing of expectations.
It’s easy to understate Gaga’s influence all these years later. When she burst into the scene with ‘Just Dance’ in 2008, the world was presented with an entirely new popstar. Existing somewhere in between Madonna and David Bowie, yet still entirely her own, Gaga paired slick futuristic visuals with hooky tracks.
Neither of the two lead singles have the same incredible immediacy of a ‘Poker Face’ or ‘Bad Romance’. Moving down the tracklist, ‘Garden of Eden’ provides another emphatic chorus; ‘Perfect Celebrity’ a vapid insight into stardom; and ‘Vanish Into You’ feels as broadly soaring as a Eurovision anthem.
They’re all competently written pop songs that balance catchy melodies with singable choruses and Gaga is a standout performer throughout. But nothing compares to the razor-sharp simplicity of a track like ‘Just Dance’. Back then, Gaga would still release lesser album tracks, but there would usually be so many hits that they’d outnumber the fluff.
The first half of ‘Mayhem’ feels more filled with those competent album fillers than the other way around.
‘Killah’ brings some funkier bass and guitars into the mix, nodding at Gaga’s extensive range beyond her pop output. As it builds to a frenetic catharsis before the final bass-slapping chorus, it feels daring in a way the rest hasn’t been.
The rest of ‘Mayhem’ follows this similar pattern. Away from the harsh light of lead singles that MUST generate iconic hit status, songs are given the chance to play in genres Gaga can have fun in.
‘Zombieboy’ brings together the dance-led focus of last album ‘Chromatica’ with the songwriting skills shown from her ‘Joanne’ and ‘A Star is Born’ projects. Unfortunately, these moments of brilliance never really coalesce into something that’s truly memorable.
It’s not helped by a slew of forgettable lyrics. Gone are the blasphemy and euphemism. ‘How Bad Do U Want Me’ has some particularly cringey moments (“You like the bad girl I got in me”) that are reminiscent of the duds Taylor Swift has released lately. Only on checking the lyrics online did it become apparent that some fans are theorising Swift actually features on the track.
All this then leads up to a rather strange ending with Gaga’s collaboration with Bruno Mars, the Grammy-winning track ‘Die With a Smile’. Cut straight from the venn diagram centre between Gaga’s songwriter era and Mars’ ‘Silk Sonic’ project with Anderson Paak, on its own the song is already a classic. As the ending of a somewhat bland album filled with dancefloor hits, it’s a complete anachronism.
With the vast majority of albums being listened to digitally, its inclusion makes little sense. People already know the song and doesn’t need to be here.
ADVERTISEMENTInstead, it confirms a slightly depressing fact about ‘Mayhem’. For all its qualities, Gaga has attempted to use the album to return to being a musician leading the zeitgeist.
Few artists ever get the chance to lead a cultural epoch the way Gaga did in the late noughties. Her music’s embrace of synths, sex and stardom has been channelled by everyone from Swift to Beyoncé. While she managed to keep that burning spotlight on her for her second album ‘Born this Way’, instead of scrambling for diminishing returns, she proved her artistic credentials with increasingly unique albums.
‘Artpop’ and ‘Chromatica’ are underrated gems of pop experimentation, her songwriting for ‘Joanne’ and ‘A Star is Born’ is top dollar, and her duet albums with Tony Bennett are pitch perfect.
Through her varied approach to her music career, her multidisciplinary artistry, and excitingly unorthodox celebrity persona, Gaga has paved her own route to stardom. ‘Mayhem’ feels like the first time she’s looked backwards. It’s not a bad album at all, it’s just not the sort of revolutionary work you hope for with a Gaga release.
ADVERTISEMENT‘Mayhem’ is out now.
