Lady Gaga promises pure chaos in her seventh studio album, “MAYHEM,” a 14-track release divided by authentic, autonomous anthems and pop culture parodies.
Debuting Friday, March 7, “MAYHEM” marks Gaga’s return to her experimental pop roots after a hiatus spent acting in films like “A Star is Born” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.” The album was long awaited by little monsters — Gaga’s devoted fanbase — and casual listeners alike, coming almost five years after her sixth studio album “Chromatica.”
“MAYHEM” begins with four tracks that feel undeniably Gaga. With electronic beats, bold lyrics and nonsensical vocalization, songs like “Disease,” “Abracadabra” and “Garden of Eden” are the heart of the album.
“Perfect Celebrity” is an addition to Gaga’s long-lived musing on a life of fame. Singing, “I’m made of plastic like a human doll / You push and pull me, I don’t hurt at all,” Gaga calls back to the “Chromatica” track “Plastic Doll.” The lyrics, “So rip off my face in this photograph (Perfect celebrity) / You make me money, I’ll make you laugh (Perfect celebrity)” tells the other side of her voyeuristic song “Paparazzi” from the album “The Fame.”
These four songs are dance-worthy club jams sure to excite any diehard monster-lover.
Each track means something different and extremely personal to Gaga. In an interview with The Associated Press, Gaga said, “Something that was really important to me on this was really taking from myself my own inventions. I was the creator. This was my work. It was just not a character I was playing. It was something that I made.”
However, as the rest of “MAYHEM” unfolds, the songs clash in a cacophony of pop culture callbacks that feel almost counterproductive to Gaga’s stripped-back end goal. Without an outrageous persona to bind the album together, Gaga looks to other pop sensations for guidance, though the outcome is unfortunately inharmonious.
Capturing the sounds of artists like Prince and David Bowie for songs like “Killah” and Michael Jackson for “Shadow of a Man,” Gaga has been accused of cheap impersonation and ingenuitive tribute to influence. Either way, the result is a plethora of new sounds for Gaga.
The album skirts from ‘80s funk to industrial rock to 2000s pop, promising a little something for almost every listener while inadvertently robbing “MAYHEM” of a unified sound.
“How Bad Do U Want Me” with its Taylor Swift-esque chord progressions and lighthearted lyrics, such as “‘Cause you like my hair, my ripped-up jeans / You like the bad girl I got in me,” feel laughable next to the edgy, dark style found in “Abracadabra.”
“LoveDrug” and “Don’t Call Tonight” feel shallow and overplayed, full of empty cliches about love and being strung along.
In “LoveDrug,” Gaga sings, “So I’m gonna dance until I feel alright / I just need a dose of the right stuff / I just need a hit of your love drug.” In “Don’t Call Tonight,” she sings, “You pull me close and knock me down / Then I beg to come back around / I’m so addicted to your lies, oh.”
“Blade of Grass” stuns as a sweet, somber dedication to the artist’s fiance Michael Polansky, but as the longest song in the album, it drags its repetitive, wilted chorus along the four-minute and 17-second playtime.
Ending on the cinematic pop-rock ballad “Die With a Smile,” Gaga shares her curtain call with featured artist Bruno Mars.
While “MAYHEM” pushes the boundaries of Lady Gaga’s sound and style, the album overall feels less like a complete, polished work and more like an unusual collection of Gaga-fied pop hits.