Good Romance: how did Lady Gaga's new album turn out?

On March 7, Mayhem was released, the sixth solo album by the 13—time Grammy and Oscar winner, one of the best-selling musical artists in the world, Lady Gaga. The record is positioned both as a "return to the roots" and as an album "inspired by the electronic industry." The release date of the album is unknown on Russian platforms, but the album has already appeared online. Izvestia reviewed the release and concluded that it was probably Gaga's best album.

Split personality

The scandalous opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris caused a flurry of discussion and indignation, which overshadowed Lady Gaga's performance in the public consciousness. However, apparently, it would not have remained in the spotlight anyway, even if the ceremony had gone off without incident. The American singer performed her version of the Mon truc en plumes number by ballerina and singer Zizi Jeanmer, who noticeably imitated the original. The performance turned out to be exquisitely neat and classic — going against the most popular image of Gaga as an exuberant, provocative pop singer.

And this, of course, is by no means an accident: the life of Stephanie-born Joanne Angelina Germanotta has long been accompanied by a creative split. On the one hand, it's a solo career based on the aesthetics of camp and glam.: the immortal hits of Just Dance, Paparazzi, Alejandro, Born This Way, extravagant concert shows with vivid images and clips overloaded with vivid imagery. Chromatica's album perfectly fits into this context — the last major solo release at the moment, which was released during the period of covid restrictions.

On the other hand, Gaga has been working for many years as part of a huge parallel creative project, the purpose of which is to expand the image of the singer and present it as part of high culture, departing from the usual aesthetics. The starting point was the album Cheek to Cheek (2014), recorded in a duet with Tony Bennett, the late classic of American jazz and pop vocals. It was followed by a short tour in which Gaga performed another French classic, the immortal La Vie en Rose by Edith Piaf. Later, she took part in major Hollywood film projects such as "House of Gucci" and "A Star is Born," the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination and a victory in the same award for best song, the sensual Shallow.

A good example of the separation of the two trajectories of Gaga's career are her Enigma and Jazz & Piano concert residencies at Dolby Live in Las Vegas. Enigma lasted from the end of 2018 to the end of 2019 and was a grandiose staged show in the aesthetics traditional for Gaga: with arrangements in the spirit of the electroclash of the late noughties, revealing outfits and sexualized choreography. Jazz & Piano, which took place intermittently at Dolby Live for several years, was a more restrained and classical, typically "Vegas" residence. And yes, you guessed it, as part of this project, Gaga performed her hits and covers in minimalistic jazz arrangements.

Perhaps the role of Gaga in the movie "Joker: Madness for Two" came as close as possible to the usual wild camp - but with reservations: it was still a highbrow project. Suffice it to recall that the film became one of the most popular sequels, overcoming the reputation of a simple "comic book movie", and it participated in the competition of the Venice Film Festival, claiming the main prize. It is also worth noting the soundtrack performed by the artist herself, consisting of song standards and more like a logical continuation of her collaboration with Bennett. What is this but a game of high culture?

Parallel lines intersect

Of the major albums that make up Gaga's canonical discography (not including soundtracks and collaborations), one stands out stylistically in particular. This is Joanne (2016), in which the singer made an attempt to abstract from the usual dance-pop music and turned to the American guitar tradition of the late 1970s, inspired by Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. This was also a clear attempt to give Gaga's music a higher status, as was Cheek to Cheek, an experiment aimed at fitting the artist into the great American song tradition, but of a different period.

Of course, Joanne sold out in huge numbers and, like everything Gaga does, had a huge impact on Western popular culture (for example, the sudden country albums by Kylie Minogue and Justin Timberlake, which followed Joanne). Moreover, this album became a kind of prelude to the aesthetics and content of the movie A Star is Born.

However, Joanne's place in the canon of Gaga's solo recordings is most vividly revealed by the fact that not a single song from this album was included in the setlist of her last stadium world tour. Joanne has become a kind of retreat, an anomaly, rather than a fusion of "camp" Gaga with her "high culture."

What is Mayhem?

Mayhem, Gaga's new album, at first glance seems to be a continuation of the singer's usual solo work. Before its release, the artist said several times that the music would be inspired by industrial and the album would be an example of "genre diversity." However, the first two singles — powerful, dramatic and at the same time extremely danceable Disease and Abracadabra — rather hinted at the return of the very Gaga that everyone knows well. Powerful beats, fast tempos, and even the allusion in Abracadabra to the famous tongue twister that sounds like a reference in Bad Romance — everything created the feeling that the record would turn out to be some kind of reminder of Gaga, who pierced the pop industry space like lightning in the late noughties and early tenths.

But the more you listen to Mayhem, the clearer it becomes that the album is truly unusual and represents a successful synthesis of the provocative Gaga, addressed to connoisseurs of popular culture, and the adult Gaga, who has been confirming for many years that she is more than just a pop star.

Interestingly, this synthesis is not achieved at the expense of the very "genre diversity" that the artist herself spoke about before the album was released. No, the songs on Mayhem — except for the final duet with Bruno Mars, Die With a Smile, which was released separately six months ago and managed to receive a Grammy nomination — are rather sustained in a single sound and stylistic key. This is not eclectic: the palette of sounds is deep, organic and filled with many shades, influences that are gathered into a single sound.

Gaga's familiar electroclash, house, eighties funk in the spirit of Chic or Prince, and even — yes, albeit a little — industrial, echoes of which can be heard in the more pop moments of Nine Inch Nails — these are the elements that make up the Mayhem sound picture. All these styles, genres and hints are perfectly balanced, do not overshadow each other, effectively shaping the compositions. For this, it is worth praising the album's main producer, Andrew Watt, whom Izvestia criticized in a review of The Rolling Stones' latest album.

But the most important point that really brings Mayhem closer to the status of a pure example of the intersection of two Gaga hypostases is the unexpected lack of provocation and, in a good way, circus content. Yes, this is dance music, but adult music is created from experience, not from a desire to try on extravagant costumes and shock. And this is logical: Gaga, after all, will soon be 40, she is preparing for a wedding and is clearly entering a new stage of life.

The theme of the album also speaks about this. Only one composition is devoted to such familiar topics as sexual liberation, parties and everyday realities of life in celebrity status (Garden of Eden, Zombieboy and Perfect Celebrity, respectively). Everything else is romantic, self—confident, sometimes nostalgic, but not at all pained songs, in which only occasionally there are metaphors of magic or horror.

They are even easier to present as jazz standards than Bad Romance or Paparazzi, largely due to their directness, both melodically and textually. If in the old days Gaga used three references to Alfred Hitchcock films to convey the desire to have sex in her hits, then in Vanish Into You, another song that plays the melodic element of Bad Romance, she sings about simple, mundane feelings that arise inside a relationship. She hasn't talked about such emotions since the days of Joanne and the soundtrack to "A Star is Born": "I saw our faces / In the photo by the bed. / It was cold in the summer. / We enjoyed life. / Can I just disappear into you?"/.

In favor of Mayhem as not just a continuation of Gaga's legacy, but a new stage of her work, one can read — again unexpectedly — the composure and intelligibility of the material. The artist's previous albums were plagued by the same problem: apart from the hits, there were few truly amazing songs on them. There are no tracks on Mayhem that are stunning, but if you consider the album as a single piece, it turns out to be solid, exciting and stylish from start to finish. This is also a sign of creative maturity — the ability to move from the particular to the general.

The public will certainly continue to wait for Gaga's new roles in prestigious films, as well as fresh releases in her parallel career as a performer of jazz standards. However, Mayhem confirms that there is not much difference between camp and evening wear.