Thought I’d branch out, try something completely different, and the new Lady Gaga album was a chance to broaden my horizons a bit. having already started to hear Abracadabra non-stop since its release the night of the 2025 Grammy Awards, I was a little curious what the full album would be like. Turns out, not too shabby indeed.
I haven’t picked up a dance-pop album since Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” (2020) was on repeat play on the gym’s stereo system, and while decent, I don’t think Mayhem quite hits the heights of that album, though they share some similarities. I quite like the first three tracks (“Disease”, “Abracadabra”, and “Garden of Eden”) and the latter’s callbacks to Lady Gaga’s own “Bad Romance” provides a nice link to her earlier work. Checking the archive, this is the first Lady Gaga album I’ve owned, though obviously her music has been ubiquitous in the 21st century.
The album unfortunately falls off a bit after that. there’s still some decent tunes: “”Killah” sounds funky enough to appear on a Prince album and “Zombieboy” is topical enough to show up on some geek-related soundtrack at some point in time. The remainder of the album blurs together a bit, unfortunately, at least to my untrained ear. What could have been an all-time classic 8-song album, or a good 10-song one feels bloated with the 14 tracks on it. A tighter track selection would’ve served this album well. Still decent enough dance pop, happy enough to see it come up in the shuffle. 8/10
*: I realize I didn’t mention the Bruno Mars duet “Die With A Smile” from 2024 as this has been played tons, but I appreciate the inclusion of the single here, rather than being off on its lonesome in the ether.
**: Choosing to show the CD rather than the case, and it looks like there was a bit of a missed opportunity there to go full “death metal spiderwebs” with the logo, which would have been a nice way to push those boundaries just a bit further. C’est la vie.