Lady Gaga’s Grammy-nominated album “Mayhem” has been praised by critics as a return to form for the pop superstar. But according to Gaga, the album might not have been released if not for the critical response to her third studio album, “Artpop.”
In a recent cover story for Rolling Stone, Gaga said the criticism she received for “Artpop” — and her subsequent turn away from pop music on the albums “Cheek to Cheek” and “Joanne” — directly inspired “Mayhem.”
“‘Mayhem’ as a piece of music, I never would’ve made it without the 10 years of experience that I had,” Gaga told Rolling Stone. “What would ‘Mayhem’ sound like if I hadn’t become a jazz singer? What would it have sounded like if I hadn’t made ‘Artpop’?”
Reflecting on her experimental 2013 album, which has become a fan favorite since its release, Gaga described the critical backlash as “very impactful” on her career.
“Much more impactful than any other criticism for any artwork,” Gaga said. “That was the first time that I ever had major criticism about a piece of work that I’d made.”
Gaga called “Artpop” her “EDM opus,” and said the album’s confrontational tone stemmed from being treated as a “business” rather than an artist at the time.
“People don’t like it if I say, ‘I won’t dress the way you want me to dress. I won’t have the hair you want me to have, and I’m not going to make pop music the way that you want me to make it. Because you want everything to sound like ‘Bad Romance,’ and I’m never doing that again,’” she said.
Gaga also addressed what she described as the sexist undertones of the criticism she received. She pointed out that male artists are often celebrated as “radical thinkers discovering new territory” when they make changes to their music, while female artists are mocked.
“I was sort of heralded as, like, over,” she said.
After a decade of detours, including roles in “A Star Is Born,” “House of Gucci” and “Joker: Folie à Deux,” Gaga said she and her co-producers on “Mayhem,” Andrew Watt and her fiancé Michael Polansky, knew that returning to pop music meant confronting that chapter of her career.
“One of the things I’m most grateful for is gaining all my artistic faculties back to make this record,” she said. “I had to dig very, very deep, and I had to change a lot of my life and recenter around what I needed as a human being.”