Unpopular opinion: Mayhem

[GagaUnderYou 5,014]

On 1/9/2026 at 7:03 AM, warhol killah said:

If it was Zombieboy instead of The Dead Dance as the Wednesday track I feel like it would have been higher on the charts - considering if Zombieboy wasn't released during the album release.

The album cover is a let down considering the visual masterpiece of her last cover for Chromatica, and some of the alternate covers do not deserve to be an alternate, like this one:

 

personally the worse one for me along with the standard lol

[Ziggy 12,552]

On 1/8/2026 at 6:10 PM, Schwerk said:

Garden of Eden is not it

- The lyrics are cringy as if sung from the perspective of an overexcited teenager and wannabe Brat (the way she says adrenaline). Seeing it live made me like it better, but the mediocre guitar playing wasn't doing it for me either. Its almost as if shes posing to be a rockstar instead of just being one. Love the melody of chorus and her vocals but I never got the hype of this song. 

Lovedrug is underrated

- Her voice is like a warm blanket and during the tour it felt like it was a love song to us her fans and it really made me emotional.

Lyrically its her least interesting album 

- I love the album sonically but there is no lyrics that speak to me personally unlike previous albums. I sometimes miss her double entendres, she is a master at them. Killah is a lyrical highlight to me, especially when I as a woman schooled the gays on here what 'make the curtains cream' actually means. I love it when she plays with words like that. 

 

Yeah killah is like…the one clever song on the album. Though I like the lyrics on the beast a lot, too. Feels like a sequel to monster. I see why killah’s a favorite of hers bc with the breakdown, the scream, the ridiculous lyrics. It’s firing on many Gaga cylinders. It’s interesting bc I like mayhem a lot but it definitely among the least interesting lyrically even if they’re generally pretty tightly written pop songs. 
 

Actually I’d also add the image of the clone on the ceiling in perfect celebrity is a good image and very evocative. But for every good one like that there’s a “hard to be a yellow in a purple sky”

[Duella Dvil 10,746]

On 1/8/2026 at 10:53 AM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Kill for Love WASHES LoveDrug, I fear. TDD and LD are roughly the same tier, but I think TDD fits better on the standard tracklisting for the purposes of thematic and aesthetic cohesion 

You're right and you should say it, there's a reason KFL was included in Coachelexicobanapore and

[Ziggy 12,552]

On 1/8/2026 at 6:46 PM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

A-W-O-L

 

Ugh this just reminds me of how beautiful she was in this video 

[Cavadour 2,562]

18 hours ago, PartySick said:

Bruh is this what it is? Any time I load a Mayhem track into a program the wave form is basically one solid block from beginning to end

Exactly. The mastering of the official release follows a current trend called 'brickwall'. Dynamic range is quite inexistant. This is part of the 'loudness war' that gradually affected digital music production, pop in partcular since the 90's.

Simply explained, all the softer parts of the music get a huge increase in volume while the loudest parts get limited just below the distortion threshold. The result is a constant high sonic volume, devoided of nuances.

Many will argue that this is a stylistic choice in the case of Mayhem. We all want bangers, don't we ? Nevertheless, listening to that unofficial japan remaster just shows how much a mastering in which elements like verses, choruses and mainly all instruments and vocal tracks can shine independently from each other, are breathing life into the songs.

We could draw an analogy by comparing a river with its calm stretches and swirling rapids at the outlet of a penstock.

Now the choice is yours, and Gaga has made hers with Mayhem. Who am I to dare to question it?

 

Edited Monday at 12:50 PM by Cavadour