Lady Gaga’s seventh studio album needs more MAYHEM

MAYHEM isn’t bad though, and I want to stress that fact before I get into it. Lady Gaga has always delivered excellence in whatever music she puts her mind to, from jazz to bubblegum pop, from Americana to Broadway. This top standard and the high bar she’s set for herself is what listeners now hold her to, and MAYHEM, while solid, lacks its very name by nature. What this album does successfully is harken back to old-school Gaga with a fond familiarity – she’s reinvented several wheels at this point, so why not revisit a classic?

The influence of the 70s and 80s is more than clear across the track list, but each iteration lacks the grit and edge that both “Disease” and “Abracadabra” have brought us over the last few months. “Vanish Into You” is peppered with hints of David Bowie and Artpop’s runway classic “Fashion!”, but the final product is rather twee with its stage-ready and predictable chords – the percussive screams do make you smile though. “Killah” too, while funky and grungy in all the right places, is a pretty soft version of Gesafflestein’s usual dark and spacious production on his tracks with The Weeknd – coming out more like Prince with a fuzz pedal.

The funk doesn’t stop there either, and hearing Gaga’s take on Kool & The Gang’s “Get Down On It” on “Zombieboy” (“Get your back up off the wall!”) is a pleasant surprise. Tracks like this and “Shadow Of A Man” are top scoring on the record, and while each don’t live up to the chaos, darkness and mayhem that the album’s campaign promised, they more so create a cult classic 80s film version of it – think MJ’s “Thriller” meets Max Martin. “How Bad Do You Want Me” follows in this vein, taking influence from Yazoo’s “Only You” and blending it with Taylor Swifts signature writing style, resulting in a track that could easily fit on 1989.

There are moments on MAYHEM where there’s a feeling that she’s holding back. In many interviews leading up to its release, Gaga stated how she was previously scared to return to this side of her as the characterisation of it so often took over, however she felt safe to do so now – but you can tell she’s still hesitant. While she goes all out on her vocal delivery on “Perfect Celebrity”, it’s perplexing that she goes into her head voice for the main hook of “LoveDrug” instead of using the driving force of her chest voice. The whole record feels like the beginning of an incredible idea but it only gets to 80%, missing out on the 20% that her works like Chromatica managed to find.

The closing act of the album is a mixed bag, with more Prince inspiration appearing on “The Beast”, but then losing momentum as “Blade Of Grass” tries to relive the glory of “You And I” from Born This Way, and then the collaboration with Bruno Mars is tacked onto the end, closing out the album rather softly. The inclusion of “Die With A Smile” raises the question of if the album was toned down to make the track fit in its closing spot, but I guess that’s something we’ll never know – and anyway, it certainly doesn’t feel out of place with the final product.

MAYHEM is more like an inspired album rather than one that inspires, and where Gaga usually flips the game on its head, she’s stuck to the rules this time. LG7 feels like it’s come and gone, and where we’re usually saying ‘wow she’s amazing’, it’s more like a resounding ‘wasn’t that nice’ – not bad, not life changing, but a record I’ll be playing for a while I’m sure.