American singer-songwriter Lady Gaga released a new album “MAYHEM” on March 7, 2025 via Streamline and Interscope Records.
The album comprises 14 songs, featuring collaborations with French DJ Gesaffelstein and American singer-songwriter Bruno Mars.
She worked with producers such as Andrew Watt, Cirkut and Gesaffelstein on the album and recorded it at Rick Rubin's studio Shangri-La, in Malibu, California.
Before the release of the new album, while she had created her own musical style across several genres, such as the collaborative jazz albums with the late Tony Bennett and some soundtrack albums, this time, she returned to the dark pop sound that became her trademark on the debut album “The Fame”.
Lady Gaga told Vogue about the album, “The album is chaotic from a genre perspective-it is genre-bending, and I think in that way is a deeply personal look into my mind as a producer and the way I think about music. When I write and produce and sing songs, I am always drawing upon my knowledge of the history of music, and so many artists and producers that came before me. In that way, this album is a celebration of a lot of the music that made me who I am, because when I returned to a darker pop style of pop, all my early experiences with music came out.”
Lady Gaga told Zane Lowe about the process of making the album in an interview, “So to give you an idea of how I made this album, it’s that after I made [one of the first songs], 'Perfect Celebrity', then I was like 'We need to change all the production'. I wanted to change everything. And then I went back, and I said 'No, we shouldn’t change anything'. Because if I was to simply decide I was gonna now make an entire electro grunge album, it would be just to like try to saint myself as random and cool in the middle of my project. I actually thought that was boring and not at all what MAYHEM is all about. The true chaos of who I am is that I actually am a lot more than this concepts. The more chaotic and freeform, the more it feels like me.”
She continued, “ARTPOP was a vibe. Joanne was a sound. Chromatica had a sound. All different. The Fame Monster was more chaotic. The Fame was theatrical pop. Born This Way to me had more of like metal-electro-New York vibe to it. I actually made the effort making MAYHEM to not do that. Not try to give my music an outfit. But instead allow myself to be influenced by everything. And that was how I discovered my songwriting and production abilities as a kid. So that was a special experience. And still, some of that electro grunge influence made it still onto other songs that are industrial or 2000s, like 'Garden of Eden'.”
She added, “The album is a series of gothic dreams. I say it’s like images of the past that haunt me, and they somehow find their way into who I am today.”
Lady Gaga explained about some tracks for the album.
“Disease” “I think a lot about the relationship I have with my own inner demons. It’s never been easy for me to face how I get seduced by chaos and turmoil. It makes me feel claustrophobic.
“Disease” is about facing that fear, facing myself and my inner darkness, and realizing that sometimes I can’t win or escape the parts of myself that scare me. That I can try and run from them but they are still part of me and I can run and run but eventually I’ll meet that part of myself again, even if only for a moment.
Dancing, morphing, running, purging. Again and again, back with myself. This integration is ultimately beautiful to me because it’s mine and I’ve learned to handle it. I am the conductor of my own symphony. I am every actor in the plays that are my art and my life. No matter how scary the question, the answers are inside of me. Essential, inextricable parts of what makes me me. I save myself by keeping going. I am the whole me, I am strong, and I am up for the challenge. Happy Halloween.”
“Abracadabra” via Apple Music “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 years, 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 was. The thing that was most important to me was being a student of music, above everything else.”
“Perfect Celebrity” via Apple Music
“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 MAYHEM 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.”
“Killah” featuring Gesaffelstein via Rolling Stone “Probably 'Killah.' I love the production on it so much. The only live instrument on the whole record is a guitar, and it is just so much fun. It is so confident. But it was unlike any feel or groove that I’d ever worked on before. And also the truth is, I’m not that confident all the time. I’m someone who definitely can feel deeply insecure, but on that record, it’s like peak confidence. And that’s part of the journey of Mayhem as one night out. If you think of the album as one whole night, it’s like that moment in the night when you’re just feeling your best.”
“Zombieboy” via Rolling Stone
“I think that Rick [Genest] just was an inspiring person. And when I was working on this song, which is ultimately a big celebration song, that word just popped into my head. And that song is all about the moment in the night when you and your friends all realize that you’re going to wake up not feeling well the next day because you’re having too much fun, so it’s about being a zombie in the morning.”
“Shadow Of A Man” via Apple Music
“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.”
“The Beast” via Apple Music
“In that record, it is me or someone singing to their lover who’s a werewolf, but what I believe about this is, 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 is, who I become when I’m onstage, and who I am when I make my art and the prechorus of that song is, ‘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.’”
“Blade Of Grass” via Apple Music
“Michael asked me how I would want him to propose to me one day. We were in our backyard, and I said, ‘Just take a blade of grass and wrap it around my finger,’ and then I wrote ‘Blade of Grass’ because I remembered the way his face looked, and I remembered the grass in the backyard, and I remember thinking he should use that really long grass that’s in the center of the backyard. Those moments, to me, at a certain point I was into the idea of fame and artifice and being the conductor of your own life when it came to your own inner sense of fame. I had to fight a lot harder to make music and dance a little bit later into my career because my life became so different that I didn’t have as much life around me to inspire me.”
“Die With A Smile” featuring Bruno Mars Lady Gaga: “Bruno and I have a lot of mutual respect for each other and were talking about collaborating. I was finishing up my own album in Malibu and one night after a long day he asked me to come to his studio to hear something he was working on. It was around midnight when I got there and I was blown away when I heard what he had started making. We stayed up all night and finished writing and recording the song. Bruno’s talent is beyond explanation. His musicianship and vision is next level. There’s no one like him.”
Bruno Mars: “Getting to work with Gaga has been an honor. She’s an icon and she makes this song magical. I’m so excited for everyone to hear it.”
