Pitchfork includes Mayhem in their Best Albums of 2025 list

[monstertoronto 11,292]

Maybe they don’t hate her anymore. Pitchfork has included Mayhem in their list of Best Albums of 2025. It’s a rolling list so they seem to update it month by month. Mayhem is one of their March picks, with just four other albums. 
 

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-music-2025-so-far/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR66ieXvc8q3Nu1MZrTcL0UBXKEr4cWF51Ma1z5cjRfarNIErb8Gow-9nyeVlQ_aem_-gC6AwBmJJLO9zWv2I46ZQ

[Brazilwood 4,307]

She uses live drums and guitar licks and BOOM. If Lady Gaga was an indie band of smelly white men they would score it 11.

[ActualPatient 2,369]

Just now, Brazilwood said:

She uses live drums and guitar licks and they fall for it. If Lady Gaga was an indie band of smelly men they would score it 11.

smelly men 😂

[Mars 2,564]

I love a list that mentions Oklou, Gaga and Marie Davidson 

Top tier 

[Pandacadabra 9,153]

Has Pitchfork been mean to Gaga? I only remember postive ratings from them. I think the lowest they gave to a Gaga album was 6 out of 10, that was for Joanne I think. Didnt they give a high score to ARTPOP?

[elegidadedios 4,445]

AOTY idc what y'all say

[NickiMinajStan 6,894]

Never heard of Pitchflop, but promo is promo 

[PartySick 171,094]

1 hour ago, Brazilwood said:

She uses live drums and guitar licks and BOOM. If Lady Gaga was an indie band of smelly white men they would score it 11.

Well, smelly or not, they're right about one thing: analog production will always create better music than digital production.

Having the sound played on a real instrument before flowing through a studio and into the capture to be tweaked and mastered is always gonna sound better than clicking and dragging a sound out of a folder somewhere.

[Brazilwood 4,307]

1 hour ago, PartySick said:

Well, smelly or not, they're right about one thing: analog production will always create better music than digital production.

Having the sound played on a real instrument before flowing through a studio and into the capture to be tweaked and mastered is always gonna sound better than clicking and dragging a sound out of a folder somewhere.

I meant it in terms of the end product, not so much of the writing process, when the instruments sound like themselves. They prefer that I think. When a guitar sounds like a guitar. When a song sounds like played by a band. You can do that just by clicking. I was talking more in terms of aesthetics.

In the writing process, I agree with you that using an instrument to write is always better, even if it is not gonna appear on the end product.

[PartySick 171,094]

18 minutes ago, Brazilwood said:

I meant it in terms of the end product, not so much of the writing process, when the instruments sound like themselves. They prefer that I think. When a guitar sounds like a guitar. When a song sounds like played by a band. You can do that just by clicking. I was talking more in terms of aesthetics.

In the writing process, I agree with you that using an instrument to write is always better, even if it is not gonna appear on the end product.

You can't though. 

There are so many tiny imperfections in having a real instrument played that makes music sound a million times more organic and soulful.

Even something as small as the temperature of the air in the studio while they're recording can give the sound a different quality. You can't fake that with computer generated sounds.

It's why the jazz albums, Joanne, Harlequin, and Mayhem all have so much more vibrancy, depth, and life to them than an album like Chromatica.

[elegidadedios 4,445]

5 minutes ago, PartySick said:

You can't though. 

There are so many tiny imperfections in having a real instrument played that makes music sound a million times more organic and soulful.

Even something as small as the temperature of the air in the studio while they're recording can give the sound a different quality. You can't fake that with computer generated sounds.

It's why the jazz albums, Joanne, Harlequin, and Mayhem all have so much more vibrancy, depth, and life to them than an album like Chromatica.

As a Chromatica defender I hate to agree with you 

[Brazilwood 4,307]

38 minutes ago, PartySick said:

You can't though. 

There are so many tiny imperfections in having a real instrument played that makes music sound a million times more organic and soulful.

Even something as small as the temperature of the air in the studio while they're recording can give the sound a different quality. You can't fake that with computer generated sounds.

It's why the jazz albums, Joanne, Harlequin, and Mayhem all have so much more vibrancy, depth, and life to them than an album like Chromatica.

We're deviating from my point  But I know that and agree with you. For example recording a live sax is gonna sound better than a sax plug-in because of the air, the clicking of the keys, etc. Writing a rock song using pre-recorded drum samples is gonna lack soul and the human stuff that makes it good. Even the room, the pick, the mic, etc alters the timbre. We agree. 

The point I was trying to make was just about the sounds on the end product. Gaga puts out a more band-y piece of work and Pitchfork eats it up. I think they tend to sh*t on pop and more feminine aesthetics.

Side note: some producers do try to write live instruments with only pug-ins. Not saying it's good, though. My boyfriend wanted to record his song, he contacted the producer asking if it was possible to record drums in his studio, and the guy was like "we don't need to, let's just use a plug-in, even Metallica doesn't record their drums anymore" and my boyfriend was not having it.

Edit: production has so many facets that we were not understanding each other. When I said you can do that just by clicking, I meant using samples and one-shots, not generating the sounds through a synth. Now I understood what you said. You can't synthesize good sounds for acoustic instruments. You're correct. 

[monstertoronto 11,292]

9 hours ago, Pandacadabra said:

Has Pitchfork been mean to Gaga? I only remember postive ratings from them. I think the lowest they gave to a Gaga album was 6 out of 10, that was for Joanne I think. Didnt they give a high score to ARTPOP?

Mayhem is literally the first album they have given Gaga an 8