Mom Monster is Mom-ing once more.
Girl Gaga’s seventh solo studio album “Mayhem” — which was launched to the delight of Little Monsters in every single place on Friday — returns the 38-year-old diva to the dance-in-the-dark strikes of her early profession.
Earlier than she started crooning classics with Tony Bennett. Earlier than we ever heard of “Joanne.” And earlier than she went Hollywood with “A Star Is Born,” “House of Gucci” and, yikes, “Joker: Folie a Deux.”
And for individuals who have needed the previous Gaga again, it’s a nostalgia journey that completes the journey after the 2020’s pandemic-plagued “Chromatica.”
Gaga makes her old-school intentions clear from the leap.
“I could play the doctor, I could cure your disease,” she sings on the one “Disease” that opens the album.
If that sounds acquainted, effectively it harks again to “I want your ugly, I want your disease” from her 2009 smash “Bad Romance” — on the quick listing of most iconic songs in her catalog.
“Bad Romance” was featured on “The Fame Monster” — the second of three albums the place she might seemingly do no incorrect, sandwiched between 2008’s “The Fame” and 2011’s “Born This Way.” And you may hear echoes of all three of these LPs on “Mayhem.”
“Perfect Celebrity” performs like a synth-rock replace of “Paparazzi,” with Gaga musing on fame once more 17 years later.
“LoveDrug,” with its trippy dreaminess, is styled similar to “LoveGame” from “The Fame.”
“Zombieboy” — a euphoric celebration anthem about indulging in dance-floor debauchery that can have you ever feeling like a zombie the subsequent day — is called after the late tattooed muse who appeared in her “Born This Way” video.
And “The Beast” tells us that Mom Monster is embracing her darkish facet once more.
There’s positively a throwback gothic vibe to haunting tracks resembling “Disease” and “Abracadabra.” The latter — a dizzying whirl of bewitching beats — even borrows from the 1981 Siouxsie and the Banshees track “Spellbound.”
These tracks in addition to “Garden of Eden” even have an industrial edge to them that’s extra soiled rock than the beautiful pop of, say, Sabrina Carpenter.
In the meantime, “Killa” lets Gaga’s internal freak out over an electro thump. The lady who as soon as rocked a meat gown on the MTV Video Music Awards continues to be the Queen of Bizarre.
Nevertheless it’s onerous to beat the bangers of previous, and there are some forgettable (for her) moments. Nonetheless, it is a welcome reminder of simply how Gaga grew to become Gaga.
