As Lady Gaga With working on your new album “Mayhem” started, she felt the dark, ominous energy of her first two albums.“”The Fame Monster “ and “Born this way” They lured back.
“It was really power volunteer,” she said Eim interview with Rolling Stone. “I might have moved away from the last four albums. And tried out different things. But here I returned to these Gothic dreams. “
On “Across Mayhem “ Gaga uses the haunting aesthetics and the sounds into which her fans fell in love when she swallowed rosaries at the beginning of her career. And posed with corpses. The texts and videos for “Abracadabra” and “Disease” alluded to it. But they also represent a refined gaga at the age of 16, 14 Grammys and now seven albums experience.
“I wanted to take old paths and at the same time break new ground. What is difficult to achieve in my opinion, ”she says about Mayhem. ‘There are a few moments on the album where some people may say:’ Oh, that reminds me … ‘because I have a style. But musically I tried to go to a new place. “
Industrial radio track with Gesaffelstein
She describes “Killah” as her proudest song, an industrial radio track with Gestaffelstein. Towards the end of the album, “Blade of Grass” creeps in an uncanny love song about the marriage proposal of her fiance Michael Polansky. And she honors the late Rick Genest. Also called zombie boy by a song after the emblematic Born this way-Model names.
With a naked face, braided hair and sitting comfortably under an expansive blanket, Gaga spoke to Rolling Stone About their uncertainties. And why they Mayhem made an album that is about finding resistance in the middle of chaos.
Congratulations too Mayhem. Was there a certain song that she got out of her comfort zone here?
Probably “Killah”. I love the production of this song so much. The only live instrument on the entire album is a guitar. And it’s just so much fun. It’s so confident. But it was different from any feeling or every groove that I had ever worked on. And the truth is also that I am not always so confident. I am someone who can definitely feel deeply uncertain. But on this album it is like a maximum of self -confidence. And that’s part of the trip of Mayhem As a night. If you imagine the album as a whole night, it is like this moment in the night when you simply feel best.
So it’s about being a zombie in the morning
When I saw the title list, it moved me that Zombie Boy [das Model und der Künstler Rick Genest, der im Video zu „Born This Way“ zu sehen ist] inspired a song title. Quiet in peace. Tell me about this song.
I think Rick was just an inspiring person. And when I worked on this song, which is ultimately a big celebration song, this word just came to mind. And this song is about the moment of the night when you and your friends all notice that you won’t wake up well the next day. Because you have too much fun, so it’s about being a zombie in the morning. But I think that of course he was a great inspiration.
Lady Gaga – “Killah”:
In one Rolling-Stoneinterview In 2010 you have the creation of Born this way compared to baking a cake with bitter jelly. They said: “The message of new music is now more bitter than before. Because the sweeter the cake, the more bitter the jelly can be. ” I wonder how they Mayhem See this type of analogy.
It still makes a lot of sense today. Because there is something dark under the plate. There is a subliminal inconvenience that is difficult to deal with. Born this way was much more an album about social justice. Mayhem In the end of my resilience acts. And also of chaos. We have to be resistant through chaos. So it is both. I believe that on this album I dealt with bitterness more with bitterness than I may have done in some of my previous records.
I wrote music on napkins in the middle of the day
You mentioned that the album reflects you today. How would you describe Lady Gaga in 2025?
I would say Lady Gaga in 2025 is really in her art. I’m much more relaxed. I feel more comfortable in my skin. I fully integrated myself. I am also Lady Gaga and Stefani. And that’s a completely different feeling. In the past I always had the feeling of embodying two different people. And I would have collapsed if I had been one of the two. Now I really feel like myself.
The other day I went to this bar in New York and wrote music on napkins in the middle of the day when I was about 19 or 20 years old. What, I know, is too young to be in a bar. But I was. I have always returned there. And was sad and almost alienated me to my community and what I had built there. And it almost felt like it was an eternity. When I was there last week, it was the most intact that I had felt in a long time. And that was really nice. It was nice to be there. When I feel creatively fulfilled, I feel the most like myself.
“If I make an application to you,” he said, “what should I do then?”
And the idea that you may regain a little bit of what was once.
Definitely, and also to have a fulfilling life. I have a fulfilling life with my partner and my family. And all of these things are simple. They have had the experience of returning really positively instead of simply taking up like another world.
You end the album with two love songs. “Blade of Grass” and “The with a smile“. It’s like a happy ending.
Yes, yes. And the first love song, “Blade of Grass”, is much more incary and more excited. I wrote it after Michael made me an application. But the song was a memory that I had about how we stood in the back yard. And he said, “If I make an application to you,” he said, “What should I do then?” And I said: “You can just wrap a blade of grass around my finger in the back yard.” And I said, “I’ll say yes.”
But in this back yard, in our home, so many things happened. It was the memory of the past that followed me. And the loss of friends. The loss of beloved people. I had a friend who married in my back yard and died of cancer. So I remembered that this happy moment and this happy thing in my life also happened in a place where it was a bitterly sweet moment, where I also thought about it.
So it was uncanny, tense, really threatening chords. But then “The With A Smile” is really hopeful. Dreamy and classic. And that ends the chaos. The nice thing about the album is that chaos does not repeat itself. It ends.