Anna Dorsey | Staff Illustrator

Pop music today is not the same as it was in 2008. Trashy, glitter-soaked dance floors have been traded for cleaner, tidier aesthetics. Boisterous, loud singing has been swapped for a lighter, breathier timbre. And, perhaps due to the illusion of intimacy that social media provides, superstars just don’t hold the same otherworldly power that they used to. Even though artists like Charli XCX and Chappell Roan are bringing back a retro, sleazier kind of fame, it feels like the late aughts are a bygone era of music, both in terms of sound and image. Such changes might beg the question: Is there still a place in today’s pop landscape for a star whose peak was arguably 15 years ago? 

Thank God for Lady Gaga, who unequivocally answers “yes” with the release of her new album “MAYHEM.” To understand this project, it’s first important to see that Lady Gaga is not the same pop star that she was in 2008 or 2011 or 2013. Although she burst onto the scene fired-up and unafraid to cause controversy — see the meat dress she wore to the VMAs or egg-hatching Grammys performance — her image has softened in the years since, thanks to award-winning acting roles and forays into jazz and soft rock. Her last full-length album, “Chromatica,” saw her return to a more flamboyant image, but the music, while fun, remained sanitized, absent of the grit and edge that accompanies Gaga’s best work. It might just be a timing issue; in today’s age of overexposure, audiences just aren’t as shocked to see a performer bleed out on stage or stand up for LGBTQ+ rights, a core tenet of Gaga’s career. What once startled viewers just isn’t as startling nowadays. 

“MAYHEM,” although uneven in quality, sees the return of Gaga’s signature sound and contains some of her best work in over a decade. The glorious and should-have-been-lead-single “Abracadabra” is a genuine return to original form, with a melodic, thumping, and ecstatic headbanger aesthetic reminiscent of “Judas” or “Bad Romance.” As with the best Lady Gaga songs, much of it is nonsense — “Abracadabra, amor-ooh-na-na, Abra ca da bra, morta-ooh-ga-ga,” she speaks in the chorus. But it’s less about meaning and more about feeling, which she captures like lightning in a bottle. 

Similarly thrilling is the highlight “Perfect Celebrity,” which sees Gaga snarling and smashing her steel stilettos into an industrial-pop barbed-wire beat, akin to Courtney Love’s gutsy glam rock. In an interview, Gaga revealed that when she made this track, she almost scrapped the rest and made a whole album of electro-grunge, which her fiancé, Michael Polansky, talked her out of. It’s hard to say if an entire album of this sound would have been better than what “MAYHEM” is in actuality, but Gaga’s ferocity here hasn’t been seen for over a decade and is a welcome change of pace from her tamer performances of recent years.

“MAYHEM” has the coherence of a greatest hits album, which is seemingly done on purpose. The crunchy, sputtery “Garden of Eden” could have been on 2008’s “The Fame,” the boring balladry of “Blade Of Grass” could have gone on “Joanne,” and “Perfect Celebrity” would fit in the unhinged furiosity of “ARTPOP.” But there are new influences, too. Gaga has never created something as funky and Bowie-esque as “Killah,” and the glycerin-coated disco of “Zombieboy” is also relatively uncharted territory. Despite “MAYHEM” lacking a consistent sound, there’s a trend across all tracks: Gaga’s towering vocals (begone, fad of breathy singing!). She soars like a mountaintop siren on “Vanish Into You,” slips into falsetto flips on the infectious chorus of “LoveDrug,” and flaunts operatic flourishes on the backend of “Abracadabra.” It serves as a reminder that, unlike many of her peers, Gaga has such a surplus of raw talent — beyond the synthesizers, the kicks, and the pizazz of instrumentation, all she needs to carry a tune is her own voice. 

So, “MAYHEM” is perhaps the thesis statement of Gaga’s career, a Xerox transfer of what has made her such a compelling force for the last 15-plus years. Yet the crux of the issue with “MAYHEM” is a through line that has plagued Gaga for much of her career: her image, publicity, and performances are often far more interesting than the music itself. Not to say that the music isn’t good — if MAYHEM proves anything, it’s that Gaga still has it, that amorphous, slippery, and magical pop star essence, over 15 years into her career — but it’s also a subtle disappointment, an acknowledgment of artistic flaws that feels contrary to who Lady Gaga is. 

Much of said disappointments lie in the album’s second half. These tracks aren’t bad per se, but they are boring, which is a mortal sin for Gaga. “How Bad Do U Want Me” sounds like a vault track from Taylor Swift’s “1989” era, “Blade of Grass” is a by-the-numbers ballad with no distinct flavor, and “Don’t Call Tonight” has a weak melody with an above-average bridge that tries to pull it out of skip territory but ultimately can’t shoulder the weight. It’s not that Gaga couldn’t have cut these tracks, either  — “MAYHEM” is 14 songs long and would have been a much tighter, cleaner album if Gaga had trimmed it down to, say, 10. 

Maybe, in part, it’s a marketing issue. Of “MAYHEM,” Gaga said that we wouldn’t know what we were getting into, which is true. But then — why this lens of promotion? The first tracks she previewed at the Paris Summer Olympics were the album’s hardest-hitting and most industrial inspired, the promo images for the album were strange and horror adjacent, and the two lead singles — no, I’m not counting tacked-on-for-streams “Die With A Smile” — were both hard-hitting, bombastic dark-pop. Was the mayhem she wanted the mayhem of our expectations being subverted? Or had she not conceived the album’s full concept before she started promotion? It’s unclear. 

Ultimately, though, despite “MAYHEM” not fully plunging into the chaos it seemed to promise, it’s an abundance of proof that Gaga remains in a league of her own: a pop star for the ages whose contribution to the pantheon of music stardom is irreplaceable. In a recent acceptance speech for the iHeartRadio Innovator Award, Gaga promised that she was “just getting started.” For that, we are all grateful.