Business Insider:Lady Gaga bait-and-switched fans with her new album 'Mayhem'

[TheARTPOPball 316]

9 hours ago, lucc said:

Well, this has been said by a lot of people, but I didn't want to say anything before I had time to really listen to everything and assimilate. And although I still think her songwriting is excellent here, it is just not the sound I was expecting. I am an old fan who wanted electronic, electropop music like her early work, and got EXTREMELY hyped for this album, based on the singles. Just to be... kinda disappointed... cause the whole rest of the album is nothing like that. It's not that the music is bad, it's just not what I was really hyped for. I think that needs to be said... I guess the Gaga we got at her early years was a Gaga who wanted to make it. Now she's made it, she's having fun and doing what she wants... So maybe the Gaga I fell in love with doesn't really... exist? Does that make sense to anyone else?

She proved with abracadabra alone, that she is still capable of producing music like that. So i feel like it’s a little bit far fetched to say that gaga doesn't exist. There are sprinkles of old gaga all over the record. People are categorizing “old Gaga” as the fame monster. But there was the Fame before that. In the interview with Zane, Gaga is back in new york city where she was writing her first album, not TFM.

[Lava 3,315]

15 hours ago, Zombiecat said:

Shadow of a man getting it's flowers 

Diva, I just know you were hype when you saw zombie boy on the tracklist..

[Zombiecat 15,695]

2 minutes ago, Lava said:

Diva, I just know you were hype when you saw zombie boy on the tracklist..

honey i only just changed my name to this yesterday  i was catnikko before teehee

[Creyk 17,729]

When we only had the song titles, not the songs themselves, we saw titles like : zombie guy, shadow of a man, killah, the beast, how bad do you want me. 

Do these song titles really scream bright cheery disco-pop to you? We had a snippet of Shadow of a Man released by her and it sounded like a smooth dark song...but only the first 17 seconds of the song are like that, then it turns into something completely different.  A song title like Killah made you think it was going to be a groovy fun song? A song title like zombie guy made you think it will be a cheerful disco song? 

No. They make you think the song will be dark, sinister, industrial. Songs like Bloody Mary, Heavy Metal Lover, Monster.

She also explicitly said she went back to the art of darkness.

We had every reason to expect a fully dark-pop album and that is what she should have done.

To say people have no reason to be disappointed is extremely intellectually dishonest.

[Starmie25 17,145]

32 minutes ago, Creyk said:

We had every reason to expect a fully dark-pop album and that is what she should have done

This feels a tad entitled ngl.

[gagafan1234 9]

I think people are saying Mayhem sounds similar to The Fame maybe because of the songwriting, which I also loved. But the genre and type of sound/production sounds very different to me.

[Tony31511 305]

I hate to say this but this album cycle seems kinda… calculated. She KNOWS we have been wanting dark-pop like TFM and BTW. That’s why she released singles like Disease and Abracadabra before the album to get us hyped. And she also went for this dark, black hair, “gothic dreams”, sinister aesthetic to get us excited. Then the album drops and… it sounds nothing like anyone expected. It just feels so misleading? I don’t know…

It’s still a great album and I appreciate how she’s trying something different. But I wish she didn’t get our hopes up by baiting us with a possible return to dark pop-Ga.

EDIT: I’m sure I’ll get criticism for my feedback but this is just how I honestly feel. I think as a fan it’s ok to sometimes be disappointed. Not everything she does will appeal to everyone and it’s perfectly normal! I still love Mayhem and every day I’m warming up to it more.

Edited March 9 by Tony31511

[southpaw773 3,170]

Business Insider doing entertainment is like me going to Vogue for stock tips 

[LG2008 4,689]

On 3/7/2025 at 7:33 PM, River said:

I mean, the album, production and vocal wise is more C2C, L4S, ASIB and Harlequin than actually LG1-6, only Abra is old Gaga, but still holds the new Gaga.

Mayhem is really not back to old self kind of album..

Garden Of Eden and Zombieboy definitely have The Fame vibes, Killah also feels like The Fame but because of the heavy Bowie influence on the production...

Garden Of Eden literally sounds like Private Audition, that's early Gaga. She delivered what she promised and some are still talking nonsense 

[AsleepOnTheCeiling 6,163]

7 hours ago, Creyk said:

When we only had the song titles, not the songs themselves, we saw titles like : zombie guy, shadow of a man, killah, the beast, how bad do you want me. 

Do these song titles really scream bright cheery disco-pop to you? We had a snippet of Shadow of a Man released by her and it sounded like a smooth dark song...but only the first 17 seconds of the song are like that, then it turns into something completely different.  A song title like Killah made you think it was going to be a groovy fun song? A song title like zombie guy made you think it will be a cheerful disco song? 

No. They make you think the song will be dark, sinister, industrial. Songs like Bloody Mary, Heavy Metal Lover, Monster.

She also explicitly said she went back to the art of darkness.

We had every reason to expect a fully dark-pop album and that is what she should have done.

To say people have no reason to be disappointed is extremely intellectually dishonest.

I still think y'all are reaching. Y'all ignored that DWAS was on the album claiming it wouldn't fit when everyone involved in the project said it would. "I definitely didn't adhere to any one genre. But the beats are all pretty hard", Gaga for Elle's AMA. So that itself explain the SoaM snippet as well as her saying it's a bunch of different things. It's hard to say she didn't revisit dark pop with Abracadabra, Disease, and Perfect Celebrity. 

 

There's so many parallels to her older music, the hate doesn't even make sense. Don't Call Tonight has a lot of the same delivery and production as Alejandro. Garden of Eden is like Paparazzi. We don't even have to go there for Disease and Abra. Teeth and Killah are similar in aspects, including imagery. Just say you were expecting an industrial album if that's what you mean. But Gaga was pretty straightforward with what to expect. Y'all made assumptions based on track titles. And that's the issue. Assumptions were made, and anything that contradicted those assumptions got ignored (ie Elle AMA, other interviews, DWAS being on the album). 

6 minutes ago, Tony31511 said:

I hate to say this but this album cycle seems kinda… calculated. She KNOWS we have been wanting dark-pop like TFM and BTW. That’s why she released singles like Disease and Abracadabra before the album to get us hyped. And she also went for this dark, black hair, “gothic dreams”, sinister aesthetic to get us excited. Then the album drops and… it sounds nothing like anyone expected. It just feels so misleading? I don’t know…

It’s still a great album and I appreciate how she’s trying something different. But I wish she didn’t get our hopes up by baiting us with a possible return to dark pop-Ga.

Gaga gave Disease and Abracadabra to fans as gifts. After ASIB and DWAS, do you really think her label would have chosen those two as singles? I assume not. Gaga chose Disease and Abra as treats to make fans happy and fulfill wishes for the sound and the choreography. If it was up to the label, we'd probably have Vanish Into You and HBDUWM as the singles instead. Fans are going to buy the sh*t either way, she's not trying to deceive you.