By Rami Mansi
Everyone was asking her for new music, “Joker 2” underperformed at both the box office and with critics, the musically-inclined yet detrimentally outspoken Azealia Banks was tweeting about her, and pop music was forgetting its once legendary roots through recent lackluster performances. Gaga had one chance to feed pop music and she cooked a five-course meal worthy of a Michelin star.
After being kindly persuaded to go back to her dark pop roots by fiancé Micheal Polansky, Lady Gaga has come back stronger than ever in her seventh studio album, appropriately titled “Mayhem”. A dark-pop album that is fueled by sub-genres of electronic, 80’s disco, dance-pop, industrial, synth-pop, and soft rock, Gaga is back in her element. But what makes this album so in tune with Gaga’s aesthetic and mindset? Why is Gaga’s fan base divided over this album? Why should you go listen to the album?
This is Rami’s Reviews, where we review all things pop culture; and for this issue: “Category is dance…or die.”
Starting with the music itself, this album boasts 14 tracks, including the Grammy award-winning soft-rock collaboration with singer Bruno Mars, “Die With A Smile.” The first three tracks of the album, lead single “Disease”, follow-up single “Abracadabra”, and fan-favorite “Garden Of Eden”, all stay within the same family of musicality: dark pop songs with a heavy bass line and electronic beats built to dance with your lover on the dancefloor. Moving into track four, the album turns away from its dark pop roots and turns into an electro-grunge anthem that begins the album’s poignant storytelling. The song “Perfect Celebrity” details Gaga’s relationship with the music industry.
Here is where the album takes a dividing turn with listeners, as the next seven tracks show a different side of the album. “Vanish Into You” is a nostalgic melancholic song that contains a lyric that Gaga has considered to be one of her favorites: the oxymoronic line, “It was cold in the summertime.” Going further into the tracklist, we see strong influences of Prince and Michael Jackson in the 80’s pop, disco-inspired, and songs, “Killah”, “Zombieboy”, “Lovedrug”, “How Bad Do U Want Me”, “Don’t Call Tonight”, and the first hinted song of the album, “Shadow Of A Man”. The last three songs all keep the same energy of ballads of varying lyrical energies: the sensually explicit “The Beast”, Gaga’s favorite song of the album about her love with her fiance, “Blade Of Grass”, and the hit collaboration, “Die With A Smile”.
Through all of its sonic twists and lyrical turns, “Mayhem” is a powerhouse album built for the dancefloor of a packed club, singing with your friends at karaoke, or dancing alone in your room. It presents itself as a standout from this year’s releases, from the 2000s-inspired pop beats of rising popstar Tate McRae’s “So Close To What”, the dark ambient Drone album “Perverts” from Ethel Cain, or the avant-garde-techno-trance album from electronic artist FKA Twigs. “Mayhem” stands against the grain as an album built off the authenticity of its artist, so authentic and in tune with her sound Gaga honors herself with the sound she’s built her career off of.
The title of the album, “Mayhem”, is chosen not for its literal definition of chaos, but for a character that Gaga says she created to embody her demons.
In an interview with ELLE Magazine, she says, “The album was called ‘Mayhem’ to memorialize a piece of me and a piece of life that is not always easy to accept, […] I am also a hopeful person. I’m also somebody who is a dreamer, but what I think I ultimately arrived at is; it’s all of the fractures of who we are and the fractures in the world and the mayhem of that brokenness that ultimately teaches us the power of joy, and dancing and crying and laughing and listening to music and holding your friends and your family and repeat!”
This album is Gaga at her best: She is emotional about her love on “Blade of Grass”, she gives listeners the made-for-the-dancefloor hits they’ve been craving with both singles, and she enters into new territory with “Killah”. Gaga is her best when she is not stagnant on one genre, and in this album, genres are simply just a funny concept. However, this diversity does not stick to solely dark pop, as she has done with her second studio album, “The Fame Monster”, which was exclusively dark pop with other electronic subgenres and did not sit well with some fans.
In a popular internet forum entirely based on Gaga’s work, Gaga Daily, some users claim that she had “bait and switched” fans into thinking that the album would only be dark pop with the evidence being the two singles being said genres. However, what fans seem to not understand is the fact that Gaga had been clear from the start on what genres this album would be demonstrating.
As stated in an ELLE interview, Gaga discusses how she played around with the idea of genres in “Mayhem”.
“I don’t know how am I going to get this industrial sort of pseudo-2000s beat to go with this electro grunge sound, and how am I going to get this kind of Bowie funky record to mesh with this 80s synth-pop […]”
The album is a take on the music Gaga grew up with as a music lover born in 1986: Micheal Jackson, Prince, David Bowie. All these musical influences led Gaga to create the sound she did for “Mayhem”, and we should all be thankful for it.
During an era filled with content, social media videos, a new team fueled to help Gaga succeed, and fans all over the world rejoicing, Gaga accomplished her goal of reuniting pop music lovers around the world, to an extent, and bringing back the Gaga everyone loves, but in her free mind and body.
However, a subtle character lies within the deep text of the album, a lingering sense that something is off and not quite perfect; Gaga herself even named the character “Mayhem”. But that feeling, that motif of chaotic energy, is controlled by Gaga’s voice and freedom to enrapture it, and one thing that never left Gaga, no matter what character she took on or whatever criticism she received, is Gaga’s unwavering stance on love and freedom for all.
Making the listener want to vanish into her through her larger-than-life vocals and thundering bass, Lady Gaga truly is the cure to our disease.