Mayhem

About

“That is who Lady Gaga is to me,” Lady Gaga tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of creating <i>MAYHEM</i>. “Maybe to someone else, it might be the Meat Dress or something that I did that they remember as me. But for me, I always want to be remembered for being a real artist and someone that cares so much.” In that vein, Gaga set out to make her latest album—which she calls her “favorite record in a long time”—its own thing. “<i>ARTPOP</i> was a vibe. <i>Joanne</i> was a sound. <i>Chromatica</i> had a sound. All different. <i>The Fame Monster</i> was more chaotic. <i>The Fame</i> was theatrical pop. <i>Born This Way</i>, to me, had more of a metal/electro New York vibe to it,” she say. “I actually made the effort making <i>MAYHEM</i> to not do that and not try to give my music an outfit, but instead to allow myself to be influenced by everything.” Indeed, <i>MAYHEM</i> traverses—and oftentimes melds—the various flavors of Mother Monster’s career, from the disco scene of her earliest work to her singer-songwriter era and back again. The opening track, singles “Disease” and “Abracadabra,” revisit dance-floor Gaga to thrilling fanfare. The spirited “Garden of Eden” follows the trend of what she calls “2000 throwback.” With its sparkly synth, “LoveDrug” might be seen as the brighter and shinier elder sibling of her early cut “LoveGame.” She even specifically admits the “electro-grunge influence” seeps its way in—especially apparent in “Perfect Celebrity,” “Vanish into You,” and “The Beast.” The latter even shows shades of <i>Joanne</i>, but “Blade of Grass” and her Bruno Mars duet “Die with a Smile” really put her former folk-pop-rock persona on display. It’s also all incredibly personal to her. “The album is a series of gothic dream,” she say. “I say it’s like images of the past that haunt me, and they somehow find their way into who I am today.” Below, Gaga takes us through several tracks (all in Spatial Audio), in her own word. <b>“Abracadabra”</b> “I think I didn’t want to make this kind of music for a long time, even though I had it in me. And I think ‘Abracadabra’ is very much my sound—something that I honed in [on] after many year, and I wanted to do it again. I felt like being stagnant was just death in my artistry. And I just really wanted to constantly be a student. Not just reinvent myself, but learn something new with every record. And that wasn’t always what people wanted from me, but that’s what I wanted from me. And it’s the thing that I’m the most probably proud of, if I look back on my career, is I know how much I grew from record to record and how authentic it all wa. The thing that was most important to me was being a student of music, above everything else.” <b>“Perfect Celebrity”</b> “It’s super angry: ‘I’ve become a notorious being/Find my clone, she’s asleep on the ceiling.’ It’s almost comical, this idea that any time I’m in the room with anyone, there’s me—Stefani—and Lady Gaga asleep on the ceiling, and I have to figure out which body to be in. It’s kind of intense, but that song, that was an important song on this album because it didn’t feel honest to me on <i>MAYHEM</i> to exclude something that had that kind of anger in it because then it felt like I was trying to be a good girl or whatever and be something that I’m not actually. Part of my personal mayhem is that I have joy and celebration, but I’m also sometimes angry or super sad or really celebratory or completely insecure and have no confidence.” <b>“Shadow of a Man”</b> “That song is so much a response to my career and what it always felt like to be the only girl in the room a lot of the time. And to always be standing in the shadow of a man because there were so many around me that I learned how to dance in that shadow.” <b>“The Beast”</b> “In that record, it is me or someone singing to their lover who’s a werewolf, but what I believe about this i, this record is also about [my fiancé] Michael [Polansky] and I, and that this song is also about me and being Lady Gaga. What the beast i, who I become when I’m onstage, and who I am when I make my art and the prechorus of that song i, ‘You can’t hide who you are. 11:59, your heart’s racing, you’re growling, and we both know why.’ It’s like somebody that is saying to the beast, ‘I know you’re a monster, but I can handle you, and I love you.’” <b>“Blade of Grass”</b> .

via Apple Music

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