“Perfect Celebrity” is just one scenario in which Gaga observes the bifurcation of her identity on MAYHEM. It’s a big enough theme that the album’s various covers feature fragmented portraits of Gaga; in interviews and videos, her look for this era is both blonde and brunette. In “Don’t Call Tonight,” she catches a glimpse of someone else’s eyes in the mirror where hers should be. While celebrities moaning about celebrity is often dull, or even hypocritical (serving in part to make them, ahem, more famous), Gaga is more interested in fame as a psychological vampire, an outsized fragment of her identity that complicates external expectations, romantic relationships, and self-doubt. In its exploration of numerous ways identity can fissure, MAYHEM invites listeners into Gaga’s interior, making relatable life experience that is, by any measure, rarefied.
Duality, fatality, and religious imagery form existential threads that help the sonically varied MAYHEM sound coherent. To StereogumGaga rattled off some inspirations for the album: David Bowie, Prince, Earth Wind & Fire, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead. A game of spot the reference (Nelly Furtado’s “Manearter” in “Garden of Eden,” Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” in “Zombieboy”) is included in the entry fee. With co-producers Cirkut and Andrew Watt, basslines sound alternately abuzz and rubbery (and often fed through analog synths). There are flirtations with piano house (“Abracadabra”) and disco filtered through a much straighter lens, like a rock band doing a one-off funky fling each time (think Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” or even the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah”). One of three Gesaffelstein collabs, “Killah,” finds its groove via equal parts floppy funk and grinding industrial, a cousin of Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans” and KMFDM’s “Money.”
For all the album’s overt raucousness, it still conforms to tried and tested pop songwriting, as well as dynamic manipulation, and lacks the randomness that would qualify as actual mayhem. Almost every song builds through its intros, verses, and pre-choruses so that the tracks are brickwalled by the time they hit the chorus. Gaga does this because overloading the senses works—it creates a larger-than-life sound that coordinates well with her overall persona, a too-muchness that’s spitting distance from camp. Brickwalling for effect solidified as one of Gaga’s sonic signatures on Born This Way. All these years later, she remains a crusader in the loudness wars.
Gaga’s mixture of humor and earnestness is, if not outright mayhem, then energetically disruptive. Alongside the themes of fame and identity crisis is a rhapsody for a werewolf (“Last week, you left somebody dead, you’re so misunderstood”) and the possibility of turning an object of affection into a skin suit (that would be an era-defining look for sure). Gaga’s absurdist sensibilities have long been an underrated facet of her work—probably because she’s so good at delivering them with a straight face. The many ways she wields her voice—another Born This Way throwback—render these songs as one-act plays big on theatricality. She delivers the last bit of “Killah” with a pronounced Dracula quaver and approaches the verses of “Vanish Into You” with a self-consciously corny swagger (its chorus is augmented with backup vocals so high, they’re shrieky and surreal). She purrs like Debbie Harry and shouts like Courtney Love, and she isn’t afraid to get ugly. On “Blade of Grass,” a song about her engagement to Polansky, she sounds so frazzled you have to wonder what would have happened to her if love hadn’t intervened. Her full-throated sincerity sells her Grammy-winning, chart-topping Bruno Mars duet, “Die With a Smile,” a passionate sing-along that’s the best-case scenario for Gaga’s MOR tendencies. At MAYHEM’s resolution is love.
It should come as no surprise that an artist who revels in maximalism has stuffed her album, and MAYHEM may have played better if its tracklist were whittled down from 14 to, say, 10. Still, it is among Gaga’s strongest ever full-length statements. For all its range, there is a clear guiding vision, one both seductive and punishing. Gaga’s singular brand of loud, soul-bearing bubblegum teeters on the edge of art and commerce, taking big risks while seemingly unafraid of chart failure. Almost twenty years into her recording career and more famous than ever, she is right where she’s supposed to be.
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