When it comes to pop music legends, you cannot have that conversation without mentioning Lady Gaga. She has made timeless hit after timeless hit, released classic album after classic album and has established herself as a household name. 

This time around, we have the 6th and most recent album from the Mother Monster herself “Mayhem” 
In the 5 years since her last album titled “Chromatica”, Gaga has remained active. Starring and writing the soundtrack for “Joker 2” as well as releasing her own EP titled “Harlequin”, and finally contributing on the soundtrack for the 2022 film “Top Gun Maverick”. 

Chromatica came at a time when very few artists were deciding to release music, because Covid-19 shut the planet down, forcing a lot of artists to not tour with their new pieces of work, which further emphasized the small number of major projects that came out that year. However, Gaga decided against it and gave us one of the better albums of that era of music. 

Following the release of “Abracadabra”, the 2nd single of this record released after the Grammy’s, many people thought that mayhem was going to be a return to the fame monster era, just with a 2025 twist to it and quite frankly, they nailed it on the head with this. 

Not only is she going back to her era of greatness, she’s reintroducing themes that made several pop artists famous. “Garden of Eden” for example, takes the thumping, chanting style lyrics and combines them with the dark themes of temptation (hence the biblical setting). 

“Perfect celebrity” is another track that takes fundamental inspiration from other musicians such as 9 inch nails, as their heavy and intense electric guitar themes are prominent in this track as Gaga explains the negative sides to the fame that she’s gathered for herself. 

“Vanish Into You” follows suit with its dark and overall edgy aesthetics. Shining through that however, is the roller disco vintage feel of ABBA. It’s very clearly an ABBA inspired track but with the oddity of Gaga which feels like her artistic signature. 

“Zombieboy” is another song that feels like it could be played at an 80’s roller derby rink, drawing heavy influences from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” with its overall spooky imagery within the lyrics of the song. But again, it has that Gaga oddity that makes you know that you’re listening to a Gaga song. 

The biggest fault that I find Gaga crashing herself into, is the fact that she starts relatively slow (aside from Abracadabra), begins to pick up speed as the record goes on, and then right as the chance to end strong comes, she ends it with a bleh?

“The Beast” and “Blade of Grass” are two songs that are just okay at best. They aren’t tracks that you would show your friends to get them hooked on this album, but they also aren’t tracks that a Gaga “Hater” would show you for them to deter you from listening. 

At the end of the day, these two feel almost too basic to fit not only in this record but in Gaga’s discography as a whole. You miss that patented quirkiness that you see in a hefty majority of the tracks we get from Gaga. 

We then get to the closer, “Die With A Smile” 

If you know me in any capacity as a music fan, you know how much I love this song and how much I will never shut up about this duo. Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga mesh so well on this track, that it’s not hard to imagine why this song is a Grammy winner. 

With all of that being said, why is it closing out this record? 

I get the fact that the commercial appeal and overall success of the track, makes it a shoe-in to be included in the record, but when the rest of the tracks are so chaotic and just overall crazy, you don’t throw in a tame, less intense ballad to close out the album. Aesthetically it doesn’t make sense and logistically it doesn’t make sense.

With all of that being said however, I did really enjoy this record. I would’ve liked for the overall themes of chaos and mayhem to persist throughout the record, but for what we got, it’s very solid.

It does feel as though we’re entering into a new creative era for Mother Monster, and as a fan of hers and as a fan of Pop Music, I am very excited to see where this takes her.