# Lady Gaga: Mayhem review – a wholesale rewind to core career values

Pop stars spend their careers impaled on the horns of a perennial dilemma: whether to reinvent themselves and show range, or stick to core value variations. With _Mayhem_, her sixth solo album, her 10th overall,  has dumped the former strategy, which was stuttering of late, for an emphatic reiteration of the latter.

_Mayhem_ marks a wholesale return to dancefloor freakiness, complete with self-quotes (), and a hard-edged electronic takedown of fame () that would not have been misplaced on her debut album, 2008’s _The Fame_.

Almost everything here has Little Monster claws. Goth Gaga brings with her ,  and , plus a handful of convincing funk diversions (). But other spectres hover over this banquet: Madonna, most obviously, but also  – who has been channelling authentic outsider club-pop for the decade Gaga has been pursuing jazz and acting – plus , self-made convenor of the queer party people. Most unexpectedly of all, it’s hard to tell whether the Taylor Swift-alike  is intended as homage or satire, but it sits a touch oddly on a record that purports to know who the real Gaga is.


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