The Joker sequel, twinned with Lady Gaga's accompanying Harlequin album released last year may have conquered few hearts, but as her fans are well aware, none of that has put a brake on the singer's love for creating new music.
With Mayhem, Gaga's latest album, having been released on March 7, the year ahead is full of promise for the artist who once extolled the virtues of bad romance in 2009. But just who is the woman behind the wall of makeup, this artist who skyrocketed to fame in 2009/10 and can change her appearance like a chameleon?
"Being there for my friends, being there for my family, meeting my amazing fiancé – all of these things made me a whole person, instead of the most important thing being my stage persona," confides Gaga in an interview with the BBC.
Head over heels
As detailed by the publication, there was a time when Gaga felt desperately at sea despite having an army of fans clamouring for her star power at concerts. "I'm alone [...] every night," she said in the 2017 documentary Five Foot Two. "I go from everyone touching me all day and talking at me all day to total silence."
But with her engagement to tech entrepreneur Michael Polansky, Gaga, 38, can put those days of overwhelming loneliness behind her.
"I think my biggest fear was doing this by myself – doing life on my own," muses the artist in the interview. "And I think that the greatest gift has been meeting my partner, Michael, and being in the mayhem with him."
The couple, who have been together since 2020, revealed their engagement at the Venice Film Festival last September, where Gaga debuted her million-dollar engagement ring – not that she needed pricey jewellery to be wooed with. Far dearer to Gaga is the ring she wears on her other hand, which features blades of grass set in resin.
"Michael actually proposed to be with these blades of grass," she says. "A long time ago, we were in the backyard, and he asked me, 'If I ever proposed to you, like, how do I do that?' "And I just said, 'Just get a blade of grass from the back yard and wrap it around my finger and that will make me so happy'."
With those very blades of grass now close to her heart – or rather, her hand – Gaga has taken things one step further in her Mayhem album by commemorating her and Polansky's love with the song Blade of Grass, which she calls a 'thank you' to her partner.
Meaning behind 'Mayhem'
After having devoted time to a film career (Joker: Folie à Deux) and experimenting with jazz covers (Harlequin), Mayhem, Gaga's latest album, marks her triumphant return to her roots: pop. Astute listeners will be able to make out echoes of Gaga's earliest hits, namely Bad Romance in her latest single Abracadabra. The rest of the album features tantalising callbacks to her previous songs Just Dance and Poker Face. However, Gaga's frustrations with the entertainment industry rise undeniably to the surface in the track Perfect Celebrity, which boasts the line, "I became a notorious being."
"That's probably the most angry song about fame I've ever written," confesses Gaga. "I'd created this public persona that I was truly becoming in every way – and holding the duality of that, knowing where I begin and Lady Gaga ends, was really a challenge. It kind of took me down."
At the end of the day, Gaga says she has learned that it is futile trying to keep her private and public persona separate. Like two sides of a coin, they are irrevocably linked. "I think what I actually realised is that it's healthier to not have a dividing line and to integrate those two things into one whole human being," she notes. "The healthiest thing for me was owning that I'm a female artist and that living an artistic life was my choice."
Mayhem is Gaga's way of reclaiming ownership of the sound that made her the world-famous artist she is today.
"When I was younger, people tried to take credit for my sound, or my image [but] all of my references, all of my imagination of what pop music could be, came from me," she reflects.
"So I really wanted to revisit my earlier inspirations and my career and own it as my invention, for once and for all."
In other words, with Mayhem, Gaga is pulling back the curtain and reminding the world it is her love of music that has driven her to where she is today.
"I am a lover of songwriting. I'm a lover of making music, of rehearsing, choreography, stage production, costumes, lighting, putting on a show," insists the musician. "That is what it means to be Lady Gaga. It's the artist behind it all."
Summarising her thoughts on what Mayhem means to her, Gaga's words are poignant. "I wanted Mayhem to have an ending. I wanted the chaos to stop. I stepped away from the icon. It ends with love."
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