MAYHEM: The Official Discussion Thread (Act II) It’s MAYHEM in here 👹

[tezbear91 745]

My MAYHEM Review

So I've been on this forum since pre Born This Way. Been through all the album hype which is always fun. Don't post too much these days but I thought I'd give my 2 cents on what I think. 

The album has been on all weekend so I've had a lot of time to process it. 

Disease 10/10

Abracadabra 10/10

Garden Of Eden 10/10

Perfect Celebrity 10/10

Vanish into You 8/10

Killah 9/10

Zombie Boy 10/10

Love Drug 9/10

How Bad Do You Want Me 3/10

Shadow of a Man 9/10

Don't call Tonight 7/10

The Beast 6/10

Blade Of Grass 8/10

Can't Stop The High 8/10

Kill For Love 7/10

 

Overall I love the album. The back half does dip in excitement. I feel she could of put one more darker industrial style bop towards the back and then ended the album with Blade Of Grass. Die with a Smile was pretty obviously put on for the streams but it's a business so I get it.

HBDYWM is just completely not my vibe. Not into Taylor Swift at all. Happy it's getting positive reviews! I ordered my MAYHEM hat last night! Hopefully it's not massive 🤞🏻

Edited 5 hours ago by tezbear91

[chromaticangel 18]

Guys I just came to the conclusion that this definitely is my favorite gaga album............

[dynamite 51,824]

Hey have you guys heard lady gagas new album

[Tazme Pillay 111]

Mayhem is a true return to form.

I adore this album. There’s a performance to it that I feel has been missing since ‘Joanne’ - this attack, the way she’s performing her voice - it’s high high camp. I think that’s actually the key to unlocking this entire album and era - it’s camp theatricality of the highest order: most of the songs function by meshing tropes together which, I will say time and again, is what Lady Gaga does best, at her best. We go from Prince, to Bowie, to ABBA, to Springsteen often in the span of a single song - it’s the same sort of unashamed maximalism and theatre kid bravado that makes an album like ‘Born This Way’ so daring and audacious. 

And goddamn, is this album not one of the most audacious she’s ever made? It’s HIGH AF camp in a way that I don’t think everyone is going to immediately understand, but in a way that makes me so excited because it truly is the return of Gaga - more specifically, the return of that grungy, louche Lower East Side irony that made her so captivating to begin with, and which makes her pop so singular even when it’s trading in cliche (which Mayhem does a lot of). 

I just feel so happy because I know this is the album she has always wanted to make. She’s making music so unashamedly influenced by her heroes and idols, allowing these references to direct the sound into whatever itvs something like Chromatica which was her doing a very specific sound

The only track I cannot get behind is ‘How Bad Do U Want Me’ - I think it actually causes the album to dip and pulls you out of the theatre for a moment in a way that makes the backend of it suffer for me. We didn’t need this track. ‘Don’t Call Tonight’ unfortunately fell victim to the aftershock of my opinion on ‘HBDUWM’ - taken on it’s own, it’s a ****ing awesome song. But right after that Taylor Swift Snatch Game, it feels less impactful than it could and should be.

I honestly feel like the bonus tracks, particularly ‘Kill For Love,’ should have taken the place of Track 9 on the standard edition - it baffles me how a track like ‘Kill For Love’, which is much more in line with the theatricality of the rest of ‘Mayhem,’ was not put on the standard track list. 

‘Shadow Of A Man’ is god tier - one of the best of her career l. ‘Killah’ is the COOLEST song she, or perhaps any pop star in recent memory, has ever made and possibly in my top 3 from the record - it’s that ****ing good. It blew me away - those who don’t get it or don’t enjoy it may lack some points of reference for it to make sense to them, which I understand - it’s not a song that relies on mainstream leaning contemporary references at all. 

‘Perfect Celebrity’ is up there with my favourite Gaga tracks of all time as well - it feels very much like a dark and quite delicious conclusion to the thesis started by The Fame. While the expectation may have been a stronger 90’s industrial / post-punk influence (which, tbh, is totally there through most of these tracks) - she’s actually made a glam rock album. She’s resurrected glam rock from its cold, cocaine and quualude dusted grave, given it a polish and some new shoes, and delivered it to the world anew. ‘Mayhem’ is going to shift the direction of pop, away from the sort of relatability / para-social/ confessional direction it has been going in which has become the norm, and back toward the gauche, kitschy, and plastical fantastical sort of escapism.

She loves performing the whole “lady vs Gaga” thing - and thankfully they rather frustrating dichotomy is not given much space here. This is just Gaga. This referential, pop music pastiche with a glitter and grease punk glamour makes ‘Mayhem’ quite easily the coolest album she has ever made. Only Lady Gaga and Lady Gaga alone could have made this album - while ‘Chromatica’ and ‘Joanne’ for instance, can be applied to another artist quite easily - this is Gaga. IT’S SO ****ING GAGA. This is a return to form if ever there was one.