Lady Gaga Mayhem review: ‘Bold, versatile and never boring, Mayhem is a return to form’

Lady Gaga is back with her seventh studio album Mayhem, out now.

When Lady Gaga arrived in 2008 blood-smattered and strewn with raw meat, she was a confusing, polarising force. Fans of maximalist pop were fascinated, middle America clutched its collective pearls.

Yet she had the talent of an all-time great to back herself up: a rip-roaring voice, a knack for kooky song-writing and catchy hooks, theatrical prowess and an artistic vision. She arrived in Hollywood aged 23 and went straight to waiting in the wings for EGOT status.

While this sort of cultural superconnector status would be a blessing for most in the industry, it started to seem like her shortcoming. Between 2013 and 2018 particularly, her career hit a fork in the road, and she tried to travel all paths. Though she committed admirably and ambitiously to bombastic avant-pop (Artpop), jazz crooning (Cheek To Cheek, with Tony Bennett), an awards-baiting TV turn (American Horror Story), wholesome Americana (Joanne) and major blockbuster (A Star Is Born) in just five years, her audience split.

Could she straddle the bond with ardent Little Monsters of her early career, those enamoured with her oddities, while simultaneously appealing to the entertainment world’s more straight-laced mainstream?

With her seventh studio album Mayhem and its rollout, Gaga answers the question with ease: yes, she can.

Across her press run for Mayhem, which has been notably busier than is the norm for a pop star or her stature, Gaga has alluded to this division in her career and her fear of returning to the histrionic pop of her early career.

Yet Mayhem isn’t – as the internet might say – Lady Gaga reheating her nachos; she’s eating another meal entirely. In the high-concept, fashion-focused music videos for lead singles “Disease” and “Abracadabra”, Gaga’s freak flag flies at three-quarter mast, satiating those who craved a return to her gloriously nonsensical early pop. On the record-smashing, Grammy-winning “Die With A Smile” with Bruno Mars, she taps into the crowd-pleasing soft rock of “Million Reasons” and “Shallow”, with obvious success.

In terms of promotion, she’s veered between US darling Saturday Night Live and a press conference for her Little Monsters. She’s set herself up to straddle.

“How Bad Do U Want Me” = dreamy, 1989-era Taylor Swift synthpop

Elsewhere, Mayhem is surprisingly versatile. Explosive noughties debauchery rules on the “Poker Face”-ish “Garden of Eden” (“My excuse to make a bad decision, bodies getting close under the lights”); “Killah” embodies Prince’s sexy funk (unsurprising, given it features French producer Gesaffelstein, famed for work with Pharell Williams and Daft Punk); and “ZombieBoy”, an unlikely tribute to her late friend and “Born This Way” music video co-star Rick Genest, feels like, dare we say it, classic glam-rock meets The B-52s.

Eighties Michael Jackson on “Shadow Of A Man” brushes shoulders with dreamy 1989-era Taylor Swift synthpop on “How Bad Do U Want Me”.

Despite the fusillade of inspiration – disco, new-wave, 1970s soft rock, French electronica, etc! etc! – Mayhem somehow manages to sound not only cohesive, but typically Gaga. Here, she shows that having eclectic tastes and broad talents is no bad thing. It bubbles with catchy hooks, and, most importantly, never bores.

“Perfect Celebrity” stands bolt upright from the pack

The record’s nucleus though is “Perfect Celebrity”, a song so vivid in its capturing of Gaga’s history and position in popular culture today that it’s a wonder why it wasn’t chosen as the album’s title (it originally was, she told Zane Lowe recently). “I’ve become a notorious being. Find my clone, she’s asleep on the ceiling,” she roars on the pre-chorus, a nod to her trouble balancing her identity as an outlandish pop colossus and the woman, Stefani Germanotta, behind the moniker.

“Choke on the fame and hope it gets you high. Sit in the front row, watch the princess die,” she slurs on verse two, a lyric instantly appeasing Little Monsters who survived the Artpop era. If you know, you know.

There’s a few niggles. “Perfect Celebrity” stands bolt upright from the pack as it’s really the only song that feels like a proper reflection on this stage of her career and the past five years of her life (since 2020’s Chromatica); lyrically, the rest of the record feels comparatively opaque.

The final few tracks, “The Beast”, “Blade of Grass” and “Die With A Smile” are also comparatively low energy, meaning Mayhem feels like it peters out, rather than rounds off with a bang. Mayhem alludes to chaotic disorder; this record ends with more neatly-packaged resolution.

Ultimately though, the album is a crowd-pleasing return to form, bold in its musical swipes and crafty in the way it’s delivered. If the future of Gaga’s career has felt clouded over in recent years, Mayhem is the sun poking through.

★★★★☆

Mayhem is streaming now.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.