On her sixth album, pop’s queen of the dramatic reinvention did something more shocking than meat dresses and humanoid motorbikes: Lady Gaga looked back.
Unlike the smooth tech-house flavour of its predecessor Chromatica, and diametrically opposed to the dinner jazz of her work with Tony Bennett, on Mayhem she returned to the operatic electroclash that powered her first two albums. There are synths that sound like a Dyson on its last legs. There are the kind of trashy guitars that contractually can only be played by someone sporting a lime mohawk, low-riding leather trousers and nothing else. There is the baby talk of her biggest hit Bad Romance, only where that was “Ro-ma, ro-ma-ma / Gaga, ooh la la” it’s now “Ama ooh na-na / Abracadabra, mutta ooh Gaga”. You can see the difference, right?
