MAYHEM

– Lady Gaga –

No introduction is required for one of the most iconic pop divas in this century’s musical landscape. Totemic culture industry and artistic figurehead in disciplines of fashion, songwriting, production, acting and dance, Lady Gaga, has at long last bestowed upon us her heavily anticipated latest LP. Seething with an abject and chaotic hunger, MAYHEM exhibits a menagerie of monstrous characters throughout its tracklist, not quite grounded in reality but deeply human in psychology. One of Gaga’s most sonically eclectic records to date, influences from a hundred years of popular music can be unearthed here, while a heaving pressure is yet maintained to push pop music’s boundaries.

Leading up to the release, listeners had already been subjected to MAYHEM’s first two tracks during the album’s promotion cycle, and we knew we were in for a kick up the rear right away. Disease instantly transports us to a sort of industrial desert, dry and thirsty in both lyric and production. Detailing an animalistic and unquenchable desire, themes of sickness and abjection are immediately established atop a loud and bouncing bed of electronic drum sounds and phrygian melody. Next, the operatic and mystical Abracadabra proved to be the stand out single of the pair, immediately topping Billboard’s Hot Dance/Pop Songs chart, and for good reason. Featuring one excellent and energetic moment after the other, the track’s house inspired groove and theatrical performance is as irresistibly danceable as it is eerie.

Garden Of Eden, while not so outstanding as the previous two tracks, still delivers a high energy performance with a strong hook and pop structure, however it pales in comparison to one of record’s major highlights, Perfect Celebrity. The dark chord progression, super-charged vocals and reflexive commentary on Gaga’s iconic status all meld together, creating an instant dance-pop classic rounded off perfectly with a head-bopping coda. Following up, a stronger disco and funk influence is introduced in Vanish Into You with delayed guitars over a driving drum groove. The track does well to straddle the more uplifting and darker tones of the record culminating in a sense of yearning, expressed both lyrically and musically, highlighting Gaga’s more honest and vulnerable qualities. 

Transitioning into the central portion of MAYHEM, listeners are smacked right square in the nose by the Gesaffelstein produced Killah, easily the most experimental and unique track offered up. With the pop icon herself revealing it as the song she’s most proud of on the record, we get a sense of her artistic freedom and expression which sometimes can be lost in the face of peak stardom. Repetitive and full of attitude in its hypnotic groove, Gaga’s genre pushing creativity and collaborative instincts are in full swing here, even replacing a typical bridge section with an industrial synthetic breakdown, simultaneously building up in intensity and breaking apart like a rocket launching into space. All this achieved without sacrificing any strong pop hook or steering clear of provocative themes of desire and sexuality, Killah succeeds greatly in its reaffirmation and exploration of Gaga’s artistic identity.

Returning to some more classic pop bangers, Zombieboy and LoveDrug each transport listeners directly back to the dancefloor the songs were conceived in, emulating the sweaty energy of these spaces where Gaga’s music thrives. Themes of based, feral desires are particularly evident on the former track with persistent allusions towards the most animalistic of human drives and emotions, “put your paws all over me”, “boy inside a cage”. Not to mention the killer chic-inspired instrumental here, undeniably groovy and hard hitting, even topped off with a screeching guitar solo. The former of this pair of tracks is notably more modern in production but still taps into a similar rawness of emotion, consistent with the chaotic motifs of the album.

Kicking on to the latter half of the record, How Bad Do U Want Me displays, again, Lady Gaga’s variation in songwriting ability but unfortunately to the degree of borderline plagiarism. From the hopeless romantic subject matter to the ditsy and basic vocal melodies with sometimes deadpan, nearly sarcastic deliveries, it’s as if listeners are airlifted directly from the album to a Jack Antonoff era Taylor Swift work. While the attempt to diversify and expand her sound is acknowledged, here it does not pan out effectively, diminishing from the cohesion of the album overall.

The proceeding string of tracks do little to rectify this blip in quality. Don’t Call Tonight and Shadow Of A Man are decent enough pop tunes but lack any of the danger and boundary pushing attributes of previous songs. The latter of the two offers a stronger hook with more reflexive lyrics concerning her identity and status within the industry, however its wedging between mediocrity does little to bolster its virtues. The Beast reaffirms the monstrous motifs evident throughout the record, this time in the context of a moment of confession, but the slow burning instrumentation feels tired and dated; paired with the over the top vocal performance, it’s a shoulder shrugger of a cut.

Undoubtedly the strongest point of the record’s latter half is the bittersweet piano ballad, Blade Of Grass. Inspired by a romantic moment shared between Gaga and her now fiance in her house’s garden, the song ruminates both the darkest and happiest times spent in this space, highlighting the push and pull between chaos and resilience evident throughout the record. A bright but serious moment, nicely bringing the tone down to a warm and calm simmer just before the album’s closer. Die With A Smile has been dominant in the cultural zeitgeist months before the release of MAYHEM so listeners were left unsurprised here. In collaboration with Bruno Mars, the track exhibits more of a romantic throwback aesthetic atop a pretty run-of-the-mill structure, not particularly inventive and a stark departure from the intense production throughout the majority of the album. While it does act as a thematic conclusion where, in Gaga’s own words, the “mayhem dies”, this reads as more derivative and naive than emotionally poignant. Better left as its own stand-alone hit.

MAYHEM absolutely possesses a plethora of high-energy, compelling avant-garde pop, which Gaga has built her career on, and several tracks here are classics already in their own right, but moments of safety and complacency do, unfortunately, obscure the overall piece. The 53 minute run time could quite easily have been trimmed to mitigate the diluting effect that the more mediocre or unsuccessful moments have, and a record which remains totally ear-catching, cohesive and full of fun sonic variations could have emerged. Alas, while still a very much worthwhile listen for long-time fans and anyone enthralled by high-octane dance-pop, MAYHEM ultimately held itself back through the very reserve it was trying so hard to avoid.

67/100

Alex Collins