To promote her seventh canonical album, MAYHEM, Lady Gaga launched a charm offensive. From holding court in a fans-only press conference to turns on SNL, Hot Ones, and Vanity Fair’s lie detector series, she has projected an endearingly down-to-earth persona. She even received a question about “reheating nachos”—gay stan chatter suggesting she rehashed old musical ideas in her single “Abracadabra”—with grace. “My nachos are mine and I invented them, and I’m proud of them,” she told EW.

Talk about truth in advertising: MAYHEM is its own charm offensive, a massive attack of good vibes. It is a project designed to remind listeners why they fell in love with her in the first place, before the jazz belting or the traditional singer-songwriter gravitas or movie stardom. Inspiration from fiancé Michael Polansky, entrepreneur and one of the album’s executive producers, to return to her pop roots prompted an internal survey—Gaga told EW that instead of seeking to reinvent her sound, “I started to think about what makes me me? What are my references? What are my inspirations?” MAYHEM, then, isn’t the sound of someone reheating her nachos on the sly and trying to pass them off as fresh—it’s a full-on cooking show devoted to the art of nacho-reheating.

If it sounds strange to say that it’s good to have Gaga back, it’s probably because she’s never really stayed away for too long. Between her proper sixth album, 2020’s Chromatica, and MAYHEM, Gaga played her Vegas residency and toured the world; was the best thing in two bad movies, 2021’s House of Gucci and 2024’s Joker: Folie à Deux; and released a companion album for the latter, the covers-heavy Harlequin. She has the rare distinction of appealing to both rockist and poptimist ideals, practically in equal measure. On one hand she plays the piano, executes high concepts with ease, and writes her own (often autobiographical) material. On the other, she is fascinated by artifice, puts major emphasis on the visual component of her image, loves synthesizers and programming, and is an unabashed scholar of fame. She is a champion of underdogs (calling for trans compassion in her acceptance speech at this year’s Grammys, for example) but also a good case for celebrity exceptionalism and the draw of meritocracy. She is just like us, except obviously better.

Gaga’s expressed trepidation to return to pop is all over MAYHEM—one of its prominent themes is inner conflict. You can watch multiple Gagas face off against each other in the videos for two of its vicious singles, “Disease” and “Abracadabra.” In album highlight “Perfect Celebrity,” she observes her public-life counterpart “asleep on the ceiling,” haunting her private persona. Over a melange of sound that she has accurately dubbed “electro grunge” she snarls, “You love to hate me! I’m the perfect celebrity!” Her rage is a surprise reveal, given how generally loved, scandal-averse, and unfailingly polite Gaga has been. Like Madonna’s 1998 Ray of Light, MAYHEM plays with the concept of fame and the oddness of its condition without drawing firm conclusions. The potentially lofty rendering of this identity war does not get in the way of a good time, and the album often has the energy of a wrestling match. Whereas Beyoncé physically separated the “real” her and her exaggerated performer persona on 2008’s two-disc I Am… Sasha Fierce, Gaga smashes her two sides together on MAYHEM.

“Perfect Celebrity” is just one scenario in which Gaga observes the bifurcation of her identity on MAYHEM. It’s a big enough theme that the album’s various covers feature fragmented portraits of Gaga; in interviews and videos, her look for this era is both blonde and brunette. In “Don’t Call Tonight,” she catches a glimpse of someone else’s eyes in the mirror where hers should be. While celebrities moaning about celebrity is often dull, or even hypocritical (serving in part to make them, ahem, more famous), Gaga is more interested in fame as a psychological vampire, an outsized fragment of her identity that complicates external expectations, romantic relationships, and self-doubt. In its exploration of numerous ways identity can fissure, MAYHEM invites listeners into Gaga’s interior, making relatable life experience that is, by any measure, rarefied.

Duality, fatality, and religious imagery form existential threads that help the sonically varied MAYHEM sound coherent. To Stereogum, Gaga rattled off some inspirations for the album: David Bowie, Prince, Earth Wind & Fire, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead. A game of spot the reference (Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater” in “Garden of Eden,” Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” in “Zombieboy”) is included in the entry fee. With co-producers Cirkut and Andrew Watt, basslines sound alternately abuzz and rubbery (and often fed through analog synths). There are flirtations with piano house (“Abracadabra”) and disco filtered through a much straighter lens, like a rock band doing a one-off funky fling each time (think Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” or even the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah”). One of three Gesaffelstein collabs, “Killah,” finds its groove via equal parts floppy funk and grinding industrial, a cousin of Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans” and KMFDM’s “Money.”

For all the album’s overt raucousness, it still conforms to tried and tested pop songwriting, as well as dynamic manipulation, and lacks the randomness that would qualify as actual mayhem. Almost every song builds through its intros, verses, and pre-choruses so that the tracks are brickwalled by the time they hit the chorus. Gaga does this because overloading the senses works—it creates a larger-than-life sound that coordinates well with her overall persona, a too-muchness that’s spitting distance from camp. Brickwalling for effect solidified as one of Gaga’s sonic signatures on Born This Way. All these years later, she remains a crusader in the loudness wars.

Gaga’s mixture of humor and earnestness is, if not outright mayhem, then energetically disruptive. Alongside the themes of fame and identity crisis is a rhapsody for a werewolf (“Last week, you left somebody dead, you’re so misunderstood”) and the possibility of turning an object of affection into a skin suit (that would be an era-defining look for sure). Gaga’s absurdist sensibilities have long been an underrated facet of her work—probably because she’s so good at delivering them with a straight face. The many ways she wields her voice—another Born This Way throwback—render these songs as one-act plays big on theatricality. She delivers the last bit of “Killah” with a pronounced Dracula quaver and approaches the verses of “Vanish Into You” with a self-consciously corny swagger (its chorus is augmented with backup vocals so high, they’re shrieky and surreal). She purrs like Debbie Harry and shouts like Courtney Love, and she isn’t afraid to get ugly. On “Blade of Grass,” a song about her engagement to Polansky, she sounds so frazzled you have to wonder what would have happened to her if love hadn’t intervened. Her full-throated sincerity sells her Grammy-winning, chart-topping Bruno Mars duet, “Die With a Smile,” a passionate sing-along that’s the best-case scenario for Gaga’s MOR tendencies. At MAYHEM’s resolution is love.

It should come as no surprise that an artist who revels in maximalism has stuffed her album, and MAYHEM may have played better if its tracklist were whittled down from 14 to, say, 10. Still, it is among Gaga’s strongest ever full-length statements. For all its range, there is a clear guiding vision, one both seductive and punishing. Gaga’s singular brand of loud, soul-bearing bubblegum teeters on the edge of art and commerce, taking big risks while seemingly unafraid of chart failure. Almost twenty years into her recording career and more famous than ever, she is right where she’s supposed to be.