Last month, Lady Gaga dropped her music video for “Abracadabra”—the second lead single off her new album, Mayhem, out on Friday—in the middle of the Grammys. With its pulsating electronic beat and avant-garde fashions (that archival Olivier Theyskens!), the song had Little Monsters putting their paws up in awe. The consensus was instant and unanimous: Mother Monster, the risk-taking and darker-pop Gaga that we first fell in love with in the late 2000s, was officially back.
Of course, true fans know that Gaga never really went away—she only evolved. There was her country-western era, with 2016’s Joanne; the two jazz albums she made with the late Tony Bennett; her Hollywood-movie-star era, as she shot and promoted A Star Is Born and House of Gucci. Yet while her sixth studio album, 2020’s Chromatica, had eerie dance records to spare, Mayhem serves as a true return to form—delivering Gaga’s rawest and most experimental music to date.
It’s aptly named: Beholden to no single genre, the album ping-pongs between tracks like “Garden of Eden” and “Zombieboy,” two sexy pop bangers certain to be hits in all the gay clubs; “Perfect Celebrity,” an angrier and more cathartic track about the complexities of fame; “Disease,” her thumping lead single about grappling with inner demons; and tender love ballads like “Blade of Grass” and “Die With a Smile,” her record-breaking (and Grammy-winning) hit with Bruno Mars.
That eclectic mixture of moods was entirely intentional: With Mayhem, Gaga tells Vogue, she finally allowed herself to create a body of work without any limitations. “We are all asked to define who we are and explain ourselves. I’ve had a really hard time with that in my career,” she says. “I’ve found it really hard to answer those question. So, I allowed myself to be lots of contradictory things.”
Here, Gaga talks to Vogue about the album’s most challenging songs to write, using fashion for storytelling—and what you can expect from her upcoming Coachella headlining set. (“I’m going to give it everything I’ve got,” she teases.)
Vogue: The first thing that struck me about Mayhem was how wild it felt, in terms of its genre and sound. Why did that approach seem right?
