Finding method in Lady Gaga’s MAYHEM

When Lady Gaga released “Disease” in October 2024, many declared that the old Lady Gaga was back. Her seventh album, MAYHEM, hearkens back to The Fame Monster and Born This Way, almost emerging as a mature older sister. But does Gaga need to retread past ground to move into the future?

Don’t get it twisted — MAYHEM is good. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart and led to Gaga’s biggest week ever on streaming platforms. The album is full of earworms, and each song is uniquely Lady Gaga. However, I can’t help but feel something is missing.

In many ways, it is a return to form for Gaga. Thematically, Gaga revisits what made her first albums pop: sex, love and identity. Throughout the record, Gaga wrestles with love and desire, sometimes asking to “be your girlfriend for the weekend,” and other times asking her partner to declare himself with an engagement ring made of a blade of grass.

MAYHEM explores sex and love separately from one another, a dynamic perfectly encapsulated by tracks 5 and 6, “Vanish Into You” and “Killah.” In “Vanish Into You,” Gaga longs to become one with her partner, while in “Killah,” she threatens to kill him with her prowess in the bedroom.

“Perfect Celebrity,” on the other hand, takes on the themes of identity and fame. A strong grunge track inspired by The Cure’s “Never Enough,” “Perfect Celebrity” is a definite follow-up to “Paparazzi,” a reexamination of the fame Gaga chased that has turned her into a “notorious being.” There is nothing ‘wrong’ with the song: it’s catchy, it has good lyrics and it makes you want to rock out. But it’s not “Paparazzi,” which is the ultimate problem.

Despite not being a fan favorite, the standout track from MAYHEM is “How Bad Do U Want Me.” Gaga breathes fresh life into the 1980s synth-pop sound, begging her partner to want her for the bad girl she is, not for the good girl he desires. Gaga’s “How Bad Do U Want Me” resembles a common narrative: a woman wants her partner to stop romanticizing her and to see her for who she is. It sounds like old Gaga without trying to recreate or redo anything from the past.

Throughout MAYHEM, there is a push and pull. It wants to recreate the success of Gaga’s early albums while also forging a new path. You, the listener, want this new Gaga to be a second coming of “Poker Face,” except there’s never going to be a recreation of that. That was the Lady Gaga who wore a meat dress to the VMAs; this Lady Gaga has an Academy Award. She is fundamentally a different person now because of the success she has seen. Gaga is still avant-garde and outspoken, but her music is bound to be different now. And that is not a bad thing. Art should evolve with an artist as their career goes on. To demand the same product over and over again is boring. More artists should dare to try something new, as Gaga did with Joanne and her albums with Tony Bennett. MAYHEM doesn’t feel like a step forward, it feels like an unnecessary redo of the past.

All of that being said, the album’s lead single “Die with a Smile” is now a Grammy Award winner and the longest-held number-one song on Spotify. By all measures, this album is a success, and it is worth a listen. It just might not be the cure you were looking for.