Lady Gaga: Turning Mayhem into Art

Lady Gaga officially brings back pop with her seventh studio album. Highlighting fame, love, and the reason she has earned it.

GENRE: Pop/R&B LABEL:Interscope

via Streamline and Interscope Records

On October 25th, Lady Gaga released the lead single from her seventh album,  A Dance Hit and Electronic Fusion, Disease. The video follows Gaga as she faces different versions of herself and tries to control her deepest fears. Eventually, she gives in and accepts the transformation head-on. The video is chaotic yet beautiful, a perfect description for this album. This is why Mayhem fits like a glove for the name of this album. While the song was known as a “flop,” it received praise from fans and critics. Fast-forward to the 67th Grammy Awards, where Gaga not only picked up her fourteenth Grammy Award for her Best Pop Vocal Duo/Group Performance with Bruno Mars for their chart-topping and devastating love song Die With A Smile; but also debuted her second single off of Mayhem, Abracadabra, followed by a music video for it.  With lyrics like, “Hold me in your heart tonight. In the magic of the dark moonlight. Save me from this empty fight. In the game of life,” there is no doubt that the song continues Gaga’s themes of facing challenges. The music video brings back flashbacks to old Gaga with the choreography and outfits, particularly her 2009 hit, Bad Romance. 

Gaga brought back many memories reminiscent of her 2010s popstar era. She elevated it with many sounds ranging from 2000s pop, grunge, soft rock, funk, and even a ballad sprinkled in there.  There are also major influences from other artists like David Bowie, Prince, Micheal Jackson, and Taylor Swift, the list can go on. As Gaga invites listeners into her vibrant world, she not only showcases her eclectic influences but also emphasizes the joy that fueled her musical desires at the beginning of her career. One of the commodities that Gaga offers is her self-awareness as an artist, and she is not afraid to tell listeners. “I've become a notorious being. Find my clone, she's asleep on the ceiling. Now, can't get me down. You love to hate me. I'm the perfect celebrity” comes from her track Perfect Celebrity as she navigates her life as Gaga versus her life as Stefani. Gaga shows how she navigated her career as a woman in her career in Shadow of A Man,  “Hard to be the yellow in a purple sky (Sky), Peekin' through the eye of the storm (Eye of the storm)... I don’t want to fade into the  darkness tonight”

Obviously, with this album, Gaga wants listeners to have just as much fun as she did with this album. Tracks like Garden of Eden (“My excuse to make a bad decision”), Killah ft. Gesaffelstein and Zombieboy the latter being a heartfelt tribute dedicated to her dear friend Rick Genest, who passed away in 2018. Genest was a prominent friend in Gaga’s life who appeared in her music video for Born This Way. As she sings, “Goodbye, I’ll see you in my dreams” over the funky beat with groovy synths, she wants the memory of her friend to be fun as she continues to tell the stories of her friend. The main strength of this album is the storytelling that Gaga creates.

Photo by Frank Lebon/ design by Sabrina Kaune

Gaga has created many clever lyrics in her career and created visuals that perfectly capture the journey of a track. Blades of Grass can be categorized as one of the stories that she beautifully illustrates. The song follows her as she is conversing with her fiancee, Michael Polansky, and the way she poetically describes their love is a masterclass on songwriting. The way that she embellishes love in all the love songs on this album is devastatingly beautiful and emotionally dramatic. One good one is from Beast: “Turn on the music. Turn off the lights. I wanna feel the beast inside. I know you're hungry, ready to bite. I wanna watch you turn tonight. I wanna feel the beast inside”. What amplifies this song even more is the drama of the instruments; the tension is thick in this song. 

There are also some ideations of her losing herself in her fiancee. Vanish Into You is Gaga completely relinquishing herself to the identity of her lover.  LoveDrug, Don’t Call Tonight and How Bad Do You Want Me? are tracks that follow the one-night stands, being high off of love and yearning for a relationship. One of the highlights of those lyrics is in How Bad Do You Want Me? With this chorus “'Cause you hate thе crash, but you love the rush. And I'll make your heart weak every time. You hear my name, 'cause she's in your brain…That girl in your head ain't real. How bad do you want me, for real?”

The album brought back that pop dance era that Gaga was missing. What would have made this album a little more dynamic is if she had brought more variety to it. The album is clubby which is nice, but a piano or guitar ballad would have done a night job of breaking up the dance beats. Nonetheless, she is back on track and after all these years of artistry, it is always interesting to witness how Gaga will reinvent herself. My rating for this ablum would be a 8.0/10.