Mayhem (Lady Gaga album)

Mayhem (stylized in all caps) is the sixth solo studio album by American singer and songwriter Lady Gaga and her eighth overall. It was released on March 7, 2025, through Streamline and Interscope Records. Recording took place at Rick Rubin's Shangri-La studio in Malibu. Gaga collaborated with producers such as Andrew Watt, Cirkut, and Gesaffelstein, resulting in an album that has a "chaotic blur of genres", mainly synth-pop, with industrial dance influences, and elements of electro, disco, funk, industrial pop, rock and pop rock. Thematically, it explores love, chaos, fame, identity, and desire, using metaphors of transformation, duality, and excess. Visually, the era was characterized by a dark, avant-garde aesthetic with gothic and cyberpunk influences.

The album was preceded by two singles: the lead single "Disease", released on October 25, 2024, and the Grammy-winning track "Abracadabra", released on February 3, 2025, with the latter reaching number five on the Billboard Global 200. Mayhem also features the Grammy-winning global number-one duet with Bruno Mars, "Die with a Smile", as well as "The Dead Dance" on its digital reissue. To promote the record, Gaga made several televised appearances, and created The Art of Personal Chaos, a theatrical concert production. An initial iteration of the show served as the basis for major 2025 performances, including Coachella and a free Copacabana Beach show that drew a record-breaking crowd. An expanded version was incorporated into her eighth concert tour, The Mayhem Ball (2025–2026). Both incarnations of the show received significant praise. Gaga also staged a one-off concert, Mayhem: Requiem, in Los Angeles in January 2026.

Mayhem received critical acclaim, with reviewers deeming it a strong return to Gaga's pop roots, particularly reminiscent of The Fame (2008). It was applauded for its production, stylistic diversity, artistic boldness, and cohesive blend of genres and concepts. It became Gaga's highest-rated release on Metacritic. Mayhem received multiple nominations at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, and won Best Pop Vocal Album. The record topped the charts in 23 countries and reached number two in France, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In the United States, it became Gaga's seventh album to top the Billboard 200, achieving the largest first-week sales of 2025 for a female album, a record it held for six months, and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. It also received gold and platinum certifications in several other territories. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Mayhem was the ninth global best-selling album of 2025.

Background

In 2022, Gaga embarked on the Chromatica Ball and began working on new material. For several months prior to the album's announcement, Gaga shared photographs on social media of herself in a recording studio. In March 2024, Gaga spoke publicly about the project for the first time, stating in an interview that she was "writing some of the best songs I can remember."

The following May, she released the concert film Gaga Chromatica Ball (2024), which contained a snippet of new music at the end. Gaga has said that the upcoming pop album was made "from a place of happiness". Her fiancé Michael Polansky recommended that she create a pop album and "lean in to the joy of it". In mid-2024, Gaga began offering additional teasers for her new project. In July, she surprised fans by playing snippets of two unreleased songs after her performance at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics. During a December 2024 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Gaga announced her duet with Bruno Mars, "Die with a Smile", would be part of the album.

Development

According to Gaga, the inspiration for the album stemmed from a period of deep introspection and personal challenges. Gaga, Andrew Watt and Polansky are listed as the executive producers of Mayhem. She described the album as "a transgressive journey through genres" that reflects her diverse musical influences and life experiences. In an interview with Rolling Stone on December 10, 2024, Gaga characterized the project as an eclectic work that amalgamates various genres, styles, and emotions, all guided by her profound love of music. She elaborated:

The album is imbued with my love for music: a diversity of genres, styles, and dreams. It leaps from one genre to another in a manner that feels almost corrupt, and it culminates in love. That's my answer to all the chaos in my life: I find peace in love. Every song I wrote emerged from surrendering to different dreams tied to my past, almost like a recollection of all the bad decisions I've made throughout my life. There are moments where we sonically push the sound to extremes, and others where everything revolves around love. That, to me, represents true chaos. It's sometimes difficult to see the light, but I think what makes inner chaos more challenging is when you occasionally catch a glimpse of the sun. For this reason, the album offers a bit of everything. It's a complete experience.

Regarding her inspiration, the artist stated, "The album started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music my earliest fans loved," further comparing the creative process to "reassembling a shattered mirror: even if you can't put the pieces back together perfectly, you can create something beautiful and whole in its own new way." Gaga has called the album, which was inspired by industrial dance music, "chaotic" and "genre-bending". An unspecified song from the record has been described by Jonathan Van Meter of Vogue as "intense and ominous... old-school Gaga banger, unsettling but also buoyant". French DJ and record producer Gesaffelstein collaborated on the album.

Writing and recording

In May 2024, during a Q&A session following the premiere of her special Gaga Chromatica Ball, Gaga revealed that she was deeply immersed in writing and recording the album. She described the material as "completely different from anything I've done before" and emphasized her exploration of breaking musical genres and incorporating new creative influences. Gaga explained that each song is a reflection of her own internal chaos, presented with a celebratory tone aimed at connecting with audiences in various settings, from a party to an intimate moment at home.

She later stated that she wrote and recorded over 50 songs for the project, selecting 14 for the standard edition. During a "Little Monster Press Conference", Gaga revealed that the first song she wrote for Mayhem was "Vanish into You", while the last was "Die with a Smile". She referred to it as "a return to an earlier process" involving live instrumentation and analog experimentation. The album was recorded at Rick Rubin's studio Shangri-La, in Malibu, California, where Gaga also made Joanne (2016) and the soundtrack to A Star Is Born (2018). Additional recording sessions took place at The Village Studios in West Los Angeles, Henson Recording Studios in Hollywood, and Shampoo Press & Curl Studios. All tracks were mixed at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach and mastered at Sterling Sound in Edgewater, New Jersey.

Producer Cirkut told Billboard that the goal with Mayhem's lead single, "Disease", was to capture "the essence of Gaga" with "a fresh spin on it". He described it as "bold and aggressive", aiming for a dramatic, theatrical sound that "immediately impacts the listener". Producer Watt called the recording process "spontaneous", recalling how "Gaga hears something, grabs the microphone, and flows". He added that "Abracadabra" was created on the spot, with Gaga developing the melody and structuring it on piano. According to Gaga, the song came together within minutes, in contrast to other tracks on the album that required longer development, reinforcing her description of the project as a return to an instinctive, live-driven approach. Regarding her collaboration with Mars, Gaga said she received a call one night during the recording sessions, and they met at a nearby studio. That night, they completed "Die with a Smile", drawing on 1970s-style harmonies and artists like Carole King and James Taylor. Watt said the session was entirely live, with Gaga writing chords and bass lines while Mars played guitar. Although initially not planned for the album, Gaga described the track as the "missing piece" that unified its themes of love, chaos, and reconciliation, while Watt affirmed it was always meant to be part of the project, since it was recorded during the Mayhem sessions.