It has been nearly five years since Lady Gaga released Chromatica, one of the longest waits between albums of original music. So Mother Monster gave her fans the gift of one sure bit of good news to hold onto in these chaotic times, a balm to the soul in a world gone mad, when she confirmed that LG7, titled Mayhem, was finally coming out on March 7. Ok, so maybe “mayhem” is not exactly a balm to the soul, but it sounds like Mayhem may be precisely the music we need right now. Our Lady appears on the latest transatlantic Elle covers, February for the US, March for the UK (that’s some time difference!), and the whole piece is chock full of Gaga gold. A few highlights:
What Mayhem sounds like: It’s euphoric, like a sharp inhale. I feel it in my chest, my heart. “We need this!” I tell her. She smiles, sweetly relieved that I love it. The sound is hard to pin down. She describes one track as a “happy apocalyptic tune” and says her influences include “‘90s alternative, electro-grunge, Prince and Bowie melodies, guitar and attitude, funky bass lines, French electronic dance, and analog synths.” From a genre perspective, she says, “Mayhem is utter chaos!” She adds the record “…breaks a lot of rules and has a lot of fun.”
The color palette you choose, can profit you: When making music Gaga sees a wall of color — a phenomenon known as synesthesia. “As I’m writing, it assembles in my brain, then through the recording it becomes a full piece of color,” she says. “Every song is a different shade. A lot of the songs on this album have a maroon, brown color to them. ‘Bad Romance’ was like that — it was reddish.”
She followed the songs this time: Whereas in the past Gaga might have approached a new album with a fully formed idea of the work she’s about to make, knowing what it’s going to be called and even what the art will look like, with this, she tells me “I was actually pretty hard on myself about not walking into the studio with any preconceived ideas that I was going to strangle onto. Mayhem is about following your own chaos into whatever cranny of your life that it takes you to. And in that way, it was about following the songs.”
Demons are always with you, and that can be ok? She tells me that making Mayhem was a process of rediscovery. “The chaos I thought was long gone is fully intact and ready to greet me whenever I’d like. Part of the message of even the first song on the album is that your demons are with you in the beginning and they are with you in the end, and I don’t mean it in a bleak way. Maybe we can make friends sooner with this reality instead of running all the time.”
On Mayhem coinciding with the shambolic election results: “What’s bizarre is I did not write this album thinking that this would happen. I prayed it would not. But here we are.” … I ask how she’s been feeling. “The main thing is I have so much compassion and love for so many people who are afraid today. … I know for a lot of people, this election was devastating for their existence, so community is going to be the number one thing. I am one of many people who support the [LGBTQ and other marginalized] communities. And we’re not going down without a fight. We will stick together. It’s going to be hard, but I’m up for it. We’re up for it. And I just want everyone to know how deeply they’re loved and not invisible.”
Her mantra for younger artists coming up: “The whole you matters. Who you are at home is just as valuable as who you are when you’re onstage. And no matter what anyone says to you, you can value who you are outside of all of this.”
Oh my Gaga, I’m completely enchanted by the synesthesia conversation. Saying “Bad Romance” was “very reddish,” seems like such a quintessentially Gaga statement. She delivers Dada (as in the art movement) so well. But of course now I want a full catalog of Gaga’s songs by color. Has Pantone ever approached her about naming a Color of the Year? Heck, they should collaborate on a coffee table book! (Why do I have all of my best ideas for rich people I don’t work for?) Anyway, this interview has me well and truly excited. She filmed an “Ask Me Anything” video for Elle UK, and there she digs even more into the style of the new music. She described necessary balance/tension, saying “Disease” had such strong, hard music that she felt the lyrics had to be extra soft and vulnerable. And then she uttered this gorgeous statement: “You have to create wind when it’s raining rocks.” That’s the songwriter I remember from Born This Way! Not that we know that line is a definite lyric, let’s just say I like the colors I’m hearing so far.
Photos credit: Avalon.red, Backgrid and via Instagram/Lady Gaga