WORTH A LOOK? *****

Mother Monster’s best single since Born This Way in 2011 finds her experimenting with industrial house and sampling/giving songwriting credits to Siouxsie and The Banshees as she tees up new album Mayhem.

• Read on for reasons including how we haven’t been this excited in years for a new Gaga album

Musically Abracadabra pulls off the neat trick of simultaneously reminding of its composer/performer’s gothic influences while also including the nonsensical yet possibly demonic chanting of perhaps her biggest worldwide hit Bad Romance.

Lyrically she’s as uncompromising offering: ‘In her tongue she said: ‘Death – or love tonight?’ as well as: ‘Like a poem said by a lady in red you hear the last few words of your life’.

The video (see below) even sees Gaga dressed as said ‘lady in red’ appearing to have had got 1 over on a dancing Gaga all in white.

The song also has multiple hooks and calls to the dancefloor that will remind of Gaga at her most successful during The Fame and The Fame Monster periods at the start of her career when the template was predominantly electronic dance music while chanting: ‘Feel the beat under your feet, the floor’s on fire.’

Gaga describes the ‘lady dressed in red’ as symbolising ‘everything that challenges you and makes you question whether you can overcome it’ adding ‘in many ways, it’s about how to deal with that challenge within yourself, and often, the world around us can reflect it as well. I wanted to explore the question: ‘What does it feel like to thrive rather than just survive all the time?’

New album Mayhem also featuresJanuary’s song of the month for us Disease and we don’t think we’ve been this excited in years for a Gaga album. Now she just needs to confirm a Glastonbury headliner slot and how many nights she’s playing in London on her next tour.

She last brought the Chromatica Ball to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2022 and we said: ‘Penultimate song and charttopper Rain On Me is a reminder that she can still boss a dancefloor at the top of her game while show closer Hold My Hand from Top Gun: Maverick is the sound of her proving she can be as thrillingly mainstream as any pop star.’

• Pictures via Facebook courtesy Lady Gaga Tickets
• Have you seen a Lady Gaga show? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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