Lady Gaga might be modern pop’s most influential chameleon—you never know what genre she might be serving next. Juggling a thriving movie career with music, Gaga has remained a cultural mainstay. Her ubiquity may hide that this is her first studio album in five years. While Gaga is the poster girl for embracing weirdness and spunk, “Chromatica” felt like a mostly-safe dance-pop effort. However, “Mayhem” feels like a different beast—dark, brooding and relentlessly catchy. It pushes on the sonic idiosyncrasies Gaga embraced on the remix version of Chromatica, and the result is one of her best albums in years.
Right from the start, Gaga hops from genre to genre with conviction and panache. “Abracadabra” is a call from the dancefloor (“With a haunting dance, now you’re both in a trance/ It’s time to cast your spell on the night”) from the early 2000s, while “Garden of Eden” is a dark, thumping anthem that mixes themes of temptation with Biblical imagery in a way only Gaga can. The influence of industrial rock is even stronger on “Perfect Celebrity,” a cheeky embrace of fame and the delusion that comes with it. “Killah” features production credits from Gesaffelstein, and I believe this is one of Gaga’s best songs yet—fans of Prince or David Bowie would absolutely dig the amalgamation of sounds here. Even the relatively straightforward songs strut and morph into weird segments—be it “Zombieboy” (which can give Dua Lipa a run for her money) or “How Bad Do U Want Me.” While Gaga’s voice reaches for the stars and is always a highlight, the real star of Mayhem is the forward-thinking production, making it an album for headphones. “LoveDrug” and “Don’t Call Tonight” are ruminations on loss and desire, blending electropop and goth to impressive results—the latter even employing a Daft Punk-esque vocoder feature. The final leg of the album brings some contemplative ballads, with “The Beast” being a towering highlight. The album ends with the massive hit “Die With A Smile” with Bruno Mars—a vocal flex of gargantuan proportions, and a stunning replay-worthy ode to romance.