Mayhem is the type of fan service that doesn’t dilute the artist herself. Gaga feels like her most authentic self from start to finish on this album: There’s no characters, concepts, or aesthetic impulses overshadowing the songs. Instead, she’s made one of her most sonically challenging and uniform albums yet: a mix of Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Prince and her Fame Monster-era self, rolled into the year’s strongest pop release yet.
Gaga’s main collaborators on the album were Andrew Watt and Cirkut (as well as her fiancé Michael Polansky, a muse who gets an executive-producer credit for the full LP). But the real dream team arrives when she links with French DJ and producer Gesaffelstein on “Killah,” a song that fuses Bowie’s “Fame” and “I’m Afraid of Americans,” showcasing how he’s always been her biggest blueprint.