{"id":1621,"date":"2025-03-06T21:57:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T22:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/?p=1621"},"modified":"2025-03-13T18:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T18:34:10","slug":"lady-gaga-my-mayhem-is-that-theres-lots-of-mes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/06\/lady-gaga-my-mayhem-is-that-theres-lots-of-mes\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady Gaga: 'My Mayhem Is That There's Lots of Me's'"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If The Fame <\/em><\/em>was a manifestation, MAYHEM<\/em><\/em> is Lady Gaga\u2019s<\/a> temperature check \u2014 and a confident one at that. Now, nearly two decades into the pop star\u2019s mountain-like career, we\u2019ve seen her lunge in all directions to fight against, escape from and through it all, create her own artistic reality. At times, this has meant landing on entire planets that only exist in Gaga\u2019s mind (and, by proxy, all of ours). We followed her into the past and also the future, traversing the many shifts and immersing ourselves in the whiplash of Gaga\u2019s evolving designs. MAYHEM<\/em><\/em> sees Gaga sitting with herself in full scope \u2014 where she came from, but more importantly where she is today as a result of that journey \u2014 to address the world as a multi-faceted musician whose influences are as vast and chaotic as she is. <\/p>\n

The \u201808 energy of Gaga\u2019s debut album that catapulted her to stardom is felt throughout this project, only now from the perspective of a 38-year-old woman who\u2019s experienced more than she ever could have anticipated at the beginning. There\u2019s a simplicity to that time, which she recently emphasized to Zane Lowe<\/a> while at Lower East Side\u2019s Welcome to the Johnsons, where she first explored her identity and started inventing Lady Gaga. \u201cI\u2019m not here anymore,\u201d she says, \u201cbut MAYHEM<\/em><\/em> definitely began here.\u201d Then, dancing felt easy (\u201cgonna be okay!\u201d), sex was just a game and wealth seemed out of reach \u2014 an innocent downtown fantasy that Gaga wielded with fake blonde hair and enough references tucked inside her catsuits to bury Stefani Germanotta \u2014 at least temporarily.<\/p>\n

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Gaga\u2019s not dressing this era in one particular look or overly expansive narrative; she\u2019s leading music-first with an encyclopedic knowledge of all the greats and an honest reflection of who she is. Now, there\u2019s more urgency to a night out on the dancefloor when Gaga repeats, \u201cHit the lights, DJ, c\u2019mon,\u201d like it\u2019s a religious commandment in \u201cGarden of Eden.\u201d Whereas she once did it \u201cfor the fame,\u201d singing about a \u201clife of material\u201d with praise, Gaga interrogates what happens when it\u2019s finally achieved on \u201cPerfect Celebrity\u201d \u2014 an angry, stadium rock anthem where she admits, \u201cI\u2019ve become a notorious being,\u201d and one we\u2019re all responsible for. Then, there\u2019s Gaga\u2019s much deeper relationship with love, which is at the heart of MAYHEM<\/em><\/em> and a response to her fianc\u00e9 Michael Polansky \u2014 the discovery of love (\u201cVanish Into You\u201d), the fear of love (\u201cHow Bad Do U Want Me\u201d) and the acceptance that she has it (\u201cBlade of Grass\u201d). <\/p>\n

All this is backed by instrumentation that sounds familiar, albeit developed, to that of Gaga\u2019s discography at large. There\u2019s the \u201970s funk-inflected lip curl of David Bowie and Prince, juxtaposed against The Cure and Radiohead, rock bands who defined Gaga\u2019s taste as a songwriter throwing back PBRs in New York dive bars. There\u2019s early-2000s dance-pop that tastes like a straight shot of vodka and from-the-earth, gritty industrial that rattles like the walls of a gothic rave. Gaga executive-produced MAYHEM <\/em><\/em>with Polansky and Andrew Wyatt, which explains it being so unapologetically her \u2014 not just one Gaga, but many Gagas at once that pull from years of absorbing music. French DJ Gesaffelstein is the only featured artist on MAYHEM<\/em><\/em>, fueling this sonic push-pull with a rebellious grit and Gaga\u2019s menacing declaration that she\u2019s, above all, a \u201cKillah.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ahead of album release, PAPER<\/em><\/em> called up Gaga, bare-faced with messy blonde braids and a black beanie, to talk about MAYHEM. \u201c<\/em><\/em>My fans have wanted me to feel confident for a long time, and I do,\u201d she says, \u201cso here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The album is amazing, I’ve been processing it all morning. For me, \u201cPerfect Celebrity\u201d really stuck out as something special. In it you say, \u201cYou love to hate me, I’m a perfect celebrity.\u201d Is there a specific experience that inspired wanting to write a track like that?
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It’s so interesting you ask that because when I made [\u201cPerfect Celebrity\u201d], I was shocked by what it was about. It poured out of me: \u201cI’m made of plastic, like a human doll\/ You push and pull me, I don’t hurt at all\/ I talk in circles cause my brain it aches\/ You say, \u2018I love you,\u2019 I disintegrate.\u201d It was a song I’d been wanting to write, but that I was maybe nervous to write. What that song is ultimately about is that, for myself and for many people now, there’s the real us and then there’s the clone of us that we project to the world \u2014 and having a complicated relationship with that, and almost raging out on that record about it.<\/p>\n

And also being mad at myself, like that record is a little bit like, Why do I do this? I don’t understand why? Why am I a part of this thing that I have all this rage about?<\/em> And also that being a celebrity nowadays, there’s an element of being able to hate the celebrity that’s part of entertainment. It’s been a long time since I’ve grappled with fame on a song. I haven’t done it for a long time, so I returned to it and it’s something I’m super nervous to talk about. Because I feel really grateful for the career that I’ve had and I love being an artist, but it kind of just came out on that song.<\/p>\n

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One of the through lines on MAYHEM<\/em> that I recognized was you grappling with love, and whether or not you deserve love \u2014 whether or not you’re capable of the experience of love, but ultimately still wanting it and having it right now. What do you think MAYHEM<\/em> says about your relationship to love? <\/strong><\/p>\n

What MAYHEM<\/em> says about my relationship to love is that sometimes I’m a complicated person, and I don’t know that I’ve always been that easy to be with. My partner has this unique situation with me, where he’s in a relationship with both Stefani and Lady Gaga, and I’ve tried to integrate myself into one person. But my mayhem is that there’s a lot of me’s, and I’ve tried to express that in my videos so far for this record. You know, in the [album] art with the broken glass, the fragmentation, the cut up imagery, like what does it mean to be completely broken? But broken people find other broken people and then we fall in love, and then we hold each other together the best that we can.<\/p>\n

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The Gesaffelstein collaborations feel like a long time coming. In a way, I was surprised at how light some of the tracks are, like with \u201cKillah.\u201d I almost anticipated you two coming together to make something really dark. What was that process like for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He’s on a few songs on the album. We did \u201cGarden of Eden\u201d together as well, and we did \u201cBlade of Grass\u201d together. He loves classics, and there was this special moment that we shared over making music and collaborating together because I can relate to people being like, \u201cI want you to be Gaga. I want you to do your Gaga thing,\u201d and me sort of going like, \u201cI don’t really know what that means. It\u2019s like a stereotyped idea of what you want me to do.\u201d And I was doing that to him. He loves classic music, he has a timeless soul. <\/p>\n

So I brought an idea that Michael and I had started together, \u201cBlade of Grass,\u201d into the studio and worked on that with him, as well. And \u201cKillah\u201d is, like, totally Gesaffelstein\u2019s thing, but it will be so surprising to people, because it’s in a way that he’s never done it before. \u201cKillah\u201d is an industrial funk song, I’ve also never done a record like that before. Gesaffelstein and I are both dark in that we’re just rebellious with our music. So it’s not about one sonic aesthetic, it’s about our energy. But, yeah, \u201cKillah\u201d is an ultra-confident song. I love that song, I loved making that song and I can’t wait to perform that song. And the bridge is one for the books to me.<\/p>\n

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Also the outro \u2014 the outros in general are so crazy and indulgent. I wanted to talk about those, specifically, and what you set out to accomplish there \u2014 and your production involvement with MAYHEM <\/em>at large. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I co-produced the entire album and I was very excited to do outros on the record, because I want to dance, and I’m so excited to be dancing again. I feel like I rediscovered that on the Chromatica Ball, but I was not able to really dance in the same way for many years. So yeah, I wanted to build the performances into the music. There are some truly great outros on this album. I know it sounds probably weird to talk about your music that way, like I’m talking about my own record with so much pride, but I think it’s okay. My fans have wanted me to feel confident for a long time, and I do, so here we are.<\/p>\n

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The album title is so interesting after listening to it fully. Without diving too deep into the lyrics, it’s sonically a dance album \u2014 and especially when you’re in the middle section, it has this real \u201970s funk, bright feeling, but then it’s called MAYHEM<\/em>. Why did you feel that made sense for this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because it seemingly all doesn’t go together. Since the beginning of my career, I’ve had people say, \u201cWell, what is your musical style? What is your visual style? Can you explain to me who you are?\u201d Like, \u201cHelp me digest you.\u201d And the answer is, \u201cNo, I’m not going to help you digest me,\u201d because I’m a chaotic artist, and my art is chaotic, and my influences, when you put them all together, they don’t make sense unless I’m the one that’s touching all of them and putting them all together.<\/p>\n

So for me, MAYHEM<\/em> was about actually embracing that about myself. And also not being literal; calling the album MAYHEM<\/em> and having every record be dark, right? That is actually not what mayhem feels like to me. To me, personal mayhem and mayhem in the world is when you have opposing forces and you need tension. There’s got to be light to be tense with the dark. There has to be fragility to interact with something that’s intense for it to feel chaotic. So the album is more chaotic because of the variety of influences and the fact that it’s not homogenous. In the way I’m talking about Gesaffelstein, too, and his desire to be seen by me in the studio. I really related to that, and I wanted to bring that to this album as well, the whole me.<\/p>\n

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My fans have wanted me to feel confident for a long time, and I do, so here we are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Photography: Kevin Lebon<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If The Fame was a manifestation, MAYHEM is Lady Gaga\u2019s temperature check \u2014 and a confident one at that. Now, nearly two decades into the pop star\u2019s mountain-like career, we\u2019ve seen her lunge in all directions to fight against, escape from and through it all, create her own artistic reality. At times, this has meant landing on entire planets that only exist in Gaga\u2019s mind (and, by proxy, all of ours). We followed her into the past and also the … Continue reading “Lady Gaga: 'My Mayhem Is That There's Lots of Me's'”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1627,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions\/1627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}