Lady Gaga is back with a new album, called Mayhem, that she says was inspired in part by Nine Inch Nails because of its industrial influence and the gothic flavoring of the record. “The album is a series of gothic dreams,” she has said about the album. “I say it’s like the images of the past that haunt me. And they somehow find their way into who I am today.”
It is certainly pop music, but the NIN influence is felt, and it’s a genius way of approaching songwriting and production from Lady Gaga. The first half, with the album singles “Disease,” “Abracadabra,” and “Perfect Celebrity,” in particular, leans heavily on the industrial feel.
The album plays as if it’s one night out on the town, and there is a particularly “dance floor” feel to a lot of the songs. “Zombieboy,” for example, is about that time in the night where you know the fun you’re having is gonna result in feeling like a zombie the next morning. It’s also a tribute to her late friend, Rick Genest, who she affectionately nicknamed “zombieboy.”
Lady Gaga's new album influenced by Nine Inch Nails
While it is an album, that is a return to some of her dance-hop roots, something that reflects the transformation from insecurity, to confidence, back to insecurity, one of the most touching songs on the record, and her favorite on the album, “Blade of Grass,” is about her fiancé, Michael Polansky, proposing to her.
The story goes that he asked her how she would want him to propose, and she said for him just to wrap a blade of grass around her finger. He went one better and got her green engagement bands.
I’m not usually a fan of the more poppy, dancey records that superstars put out. But Lady Gaga holds a special place in my heart, whether it was her moving performance in A Star Is Born, her stunning rendition of “La Vie en Rose,” or the way she carries herself in her many collaborations, including with Tony Bennett, I admire her greatly as a modern musician and a leading lady in the greater music industry.
This album is a triumphant return to her roots, though she says that what she is most proud of is that she puts out albums that she feels she wants to be working on, not everybody else. I think this will be a fan favorite, however, and it will be to this generation as Michael Jackson was to my generation, I believe.