Lady Gaga has arrived in Australia for her long-awaited Mayhem Ball Tour – her first time performing here in more than ten years. Gaga is playing five shows across Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. Fans are beyond excited, with tens of thousands waiting in queues to buy tickets.
For a pop star whose legacy spans almost two decades, many are wondering how Gaga has remained so influential – and why Mayhem (2025), her seventh studio album, is so special to fans.
As someone who has written a book about Lady Gaga, my short answer is that Mayhem brings Gaga’s past into the present by reviving the gothic synth-pop aesthetic of her earlier albums.
More importantly, this reconnection with the past is a powerful rekindling of Gaga’s “born this way” message of self-love, pride, and the importance of community.
A return to darkness
The gothic synth-pop style is recognised for its catchy melodies coupled with heavy electronic beats, bass lines and synthesisers, as well as dark subject matter (lyrics and iconography that reference love, death and/or the occult, such as zombies, vampires, monsters and so on).
This style of music characterised Gaga’s early albums, The Fame Monster (2009), Born This Way (2011) and ARTPOP (2013). After almost a decade of exploring genres such as jazz (2014 album Cheek to Cheek) and soft-country rock (2016 album Joanne), Gaga returns to her synth-pop roots in Mayhem.
The album is littered with intertextual references to her early work. In Abracadabra, she emphasises the song’s title through her unique Gagarian style of gibberish, referencing themes of love (“amor”) and death (“morta”):
Abracadabra amor oo na-na, Abra coo-da-bra, morta oo Gaga.
The line takes us back to the iconic earworm opening of Bad Romance, a song that similarly comments on the dark sides of love: “rah rah ah-ah-ah, ro mah ro-mah-mah, ma-ma, Gaga oh la la, want your Bad Romance”.
Visually, Abracadabra revives a gothic colour palette of red, black and white – hues that are characteristic of the Born This Way era.
The song’s music video also showcases three key gothic-style fashion pieces emphasising these colours: a red, wide-brimmed latex hat covered in spikes; a white catsuit with a black cross across the front; and a trailing white lace cape with a dramatically high collar.
The outfits reflect Gaga’s roots in avant-garde fashion, and her ARTPOP era in particular.
The video is also notable for its high-angle, wide-camera shots used to capture the angular and sharp dance choreography performed by Gaga and her dancers. These scenes hark back to the dance scenes in the Born This Way music video.
Mayhem is also thematically and lyrically similar to Gaga’s early career-defining albums. In Don’t Call Tonight, the chorus includes lyric and melodic revivals of her hit track Alejandro from The Fame Monster.
Similarly, the Mayhem track Perfect Celebrity is a clear critique of fame and its dark sides – a topic explored extensively in both The Fame Monster and its predecessor The Fame (2008).