By Robert Moran
After five-odd years of Joker-induced nonsense, Lady Gaga – the pop icon – is back.Credit:
Lady Gaga, Mayhem
Last month, when Lady Gaga dropped the video to Abracadabra, the second single from her new album Mayhem, right in the middle of a Mastercard ad during the Grammys telecast (priceless), you could sense the palpitating heartbeats of Little Monsters everywhere. “Mother’s home,” I’m 100 per cent certain they all tweeted at each other.
After a half-decade of Hollywood-induced nonsense – the grandpa swing of Harlequin, her companion album to Joker: Folie a Deux; a second (!) duets collection with the late Tony Bennett – here was concrete proof that Gaga was, finally, returning to her sacred well of maximal pop.
Over squiggly acid synths, booming house beats and a vocal melody borrowed from Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Spellbound, Abracadabra might feel like a Frankenstein-ian facsimile of vintage Gaga, even down to the Bad Romance-esque nonsensical “amor oo na na/ morta oo gaga” chorus hook. But at this point, close enough’s a compliment. Trust Gaga, in 2025, to beat AI at its own game.
After such a spell amid Hollywood fantasies and Bruno Mars features (their maudlin hit Die with a Smile awkwardly closes Mayhem), there’s something to be said for an icon willingly returning to the source. Fan service, some might derisively call it. But if anyone’s earned the right to indulge her particular set of skills, two decades into her career no less, it’s the greatest pop star of the 21st century.
To any pop lover’s encouragement, Mayhem is filled with such callbacks and enthusiastic genre plays. Don’t Call Tonight borrows the Balearic swing of Alejandro, but twists it with some French electro in the form of a Daft Punk-inspired vocoder breakdown. Zombieboy plays like The Fame’s Summerboy but hard – all camp ’80s funk but with a Gwen Stefani chant-along and a Debbie Harry flow.
How Bad Do U Want Me apes the synth hook and lovelorn propulsion of Taylor Swift’s Reputation-era classic Gorgeous – it’s, fittingly, gorgeous, but there’s no way Taylor Swift’s lawyers aren’t calling for royalties this morning. She’s always played magpie, but here it’s explicit: you wanted Gaga to finally re-engage with pop? You got it, and then some.
Lady Gaga, bleached eyebrows and all, at last month’s Grammys.Credit: Getty Images
In a recent interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe – sporting bleached eyebrows like Julia Fox, a severe blunt fringe, and an all-black colour scheme as if she were Goth Aunty – Gaga spoke of her past reticence to return to her signature sound, citing a fear of “artistic stagnancy” (the maligned response to the EDM eccentricity of 2013’s confounding Artpop surely played a part). Chromatica, released weeks into COVID in 2020, had its moments – Rain on Me, of course, and the delightfully weird 911 – but it played its pop a little too dumb, or felt a bit too trusting in the genre’s escapist potential. Mayhem, to its benefit, brings a bit more off-kilter grit.
Vanish into You might be a funk-driven love song aimed at her tech entrepreneur fiancé Michael Polansky, but Gaga’s vocals are unhinged, almost caterwauling. The slinky alt-goth of Perfect Celebrity would play well at Buffy’s The Bronze, and Gaga’s fury is palpable as she takes aim at Hollywood ambition and the cost of fame and attention (“I look so hungry but I look so good”), a thematic return to her classic concerns. Her vampy funk-strut on the Gesaffelstein-produced Killah builds into an acid rave breakbeat and a bloodcurdling scream that would make Addison Rae proud.
In that same interview with Lowe, Gaga discussed her reignited passion for pop (“what is the music of your soul?”), a commitment that feels genuine considering her dedicated promo run for Mayhem – the endless TikTok transitions are one thing, but I never thought I’d see Lady Gaga eating spicy wings on Hot Ones.
At last month’s Grammys, where her acolytes Chappell, Charli and Sabrina were being crowned, she commandeered the stage with proper star nous when she voiced support for the trans community under attack in Trump’s America. This weekend she’ll host and perform on Saturday Night Live, and next month she’ll headline Coachella. To see a generational pop icon back in her appropriate cultural milieu is only a good thing. Let the mayhem flow.
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