Dance music. People have been dancing to music for as long as there have been people. But in the history of people, no person has made dance music sound and feel the way that Lady Gaga makes it sound and feel. Part of that sound has been her unabashed nods to her musical influences. Mayhem continues this practice, but this time, the influences are as big as they are varied – 70s glam rock and disco, 80s punk funk and synth-pop, 90s industrial, and four-on-the-floor EDM beats turned up to 11. It’s music for the body for sure but it’s also music that makes you go, “What is even happening right now?”
Here are ten of my thoughts about Mayhem.
This album is what I call a “closer,” i.e., an album so good that I can’t listen to anything else for at least a couple of hours. My whole body and central nervous system need a reset after listening to Mayhem.
Her vocals: while Gaga’s middle-aged voice is less pure than what it was in 2008, she is a considerably better singer. Probably due to exploring jazz with Tony Bennett, she is melodically more adventurous, and her timing is so “in the pocket,” impeccably in sync with the beat and lyrics, especially difficult on an album of this nature.
Prince would have liked the song Killah.
I like the slower change of pace of the last two songs, “The Beast” and “Die With a Smile.” They are great contrasting bookends to the intensity and explosiveness of the rest of the album.
I don’t consider the duet with Bruno Mars as part of the album. It’s a fine song, but clearly an earlier released one-off that was bolted onto the end of the album.
I love Washington Post music critic Chris Richards’ descriptions of Gaga’s four basic modes in the album: zesty disco Gaga, mid-tempo ’80s Gaga, forlorn balladeer Gaga, and original recipe.
Things I thought on my first listen to the new album that Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos wrote before I did and better than I would have:
- “Gaga feels like her most authentic self from start to finish on this album.”
- “She’s made one of her most sonically challenging and uniform albums yet.”
- “An artist with an unshakeable sense of self and identity who can self-reference without it feeling like a cheap play for nostalgia. Because even when Gaga is thinking about the past, her eyes are always glued towards the future.”
I cannot sing that thing she does with “Abracadabra”.
Ray's Musings 