WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

Tracklist: Disease; Abracadabra; Garden Of Eden; Perfect Celebrity; Vanish Into You; Killah; Zombieboy; Love Drug; How Bad Do U Want Me; Don’t Call Tonight; Shadow Of A Man; The Beast; Blade Of Grass; Die With A Smile

Lady Gaga’s 7th studio album pulls the magician’s trick of reminding fans of Mother Monster at her most successful while also pushing her boundaries musically into more credible territory before, we anticipate, a greatest hits album, world tour and then a career break.

• Read on for reasons including Mayhem can lay claim to being the best album of 2025 so far

Key track for us is Killah, which she debuted with some visual flair on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live and boasts the strum of Prince’s guitar from Kiss and some of the attitude of David Bowie in its commercial yet credible vibe.

Zombieboy is all 80s R’n’b production with 70s disco bells that finds her in a lane that isn’t the Hollywood ballads and jazz duets that had come to dominate her output in recent years.

The inclusion of worldwide and US charttopper Bruno Mars duet Born With A Smile as its last track is perhaps an indication that commercially it was felt imperative to add it while artistically it fits little in this company but that’s perhaps a point for discussion in 6 months’ time rather than now while we’re bathing in the fountains of the year’s best album of 2025 so far.

The real hits Disease and Abracadabra, both singles of the month for us, lent in hard to the idea that she was reclaiming her Bad Romance-era imperial phase while perhaps toying with an upcoming greatest hits phase where her musical journey and its many experimentations would come full circle.

Abracadabra is a perfect video and song completed with a surprising Siouxsie and The Banshees credit that fits like a glove with the notion of respecting those who have influenced Gaga in her pursuit of often leftfield and gothic success.

Perfect Celebrity reflects on that gigantic meat-wearing dress, look-at-me success she had and yet how she also craves to Vanish Into You later in the album when escape from a public persona so well-known became appealing.

It’s perhaps her work with French music programmer, DJ, songwriter and producer Gesaffelstein here which most impresses.

Her fiancé Michael Polansky recommended that she create a pop album and lean in to the joy of it’. How Bad Do U Want Me? reminds these ears in its verses of Yazoo’s Only You.

Gaga said: ‘The album started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music my earliest fans loved,’ comparing the creative process to ‘reassembling a shattered mirror: even if you can’t put the pieces back together perfectly, you can create something beautiful and whole in its own new way’.

2025 may still to have completed its 1st quarter but Mayhem can already lay claim to being its best album thus far. Can’t wait for those London dates soon.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Lady Gaga Tickets
• Have you seen a Lady Gaga show before and what did you think of this album? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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