Causing Mayhem
In late January of this year, billboards around America changed, almost simultaneously, to a countdown clock ticking down the day, hour, minute and seconds to a mysterious event.
Possible mayhem, perhaps? Maybe to apocalypse? As time ticked on by, the aesthetics of the countdown changed too. What was going on?
‘Omg! Mother is being so cryptic,’ wrote u/thewindthatmovesyou on a Reddit post of the reveal.
‘HEAL US MOTHER!’ another equally excited Monster added on the same site.
It didn’t take long for legions of fans to catch-on that the countdown was from the Mothership of Motherships herself. It was Lady Gaga’s doing.
Lady Gaga—Mother Monster—the Rah Rah Queen. The chart-topping singer, relentlessly robust songwriter, creative record producer, award-winning actress and successful businesswoman. Lady Gaga has reinvented herself as one of the most recognizable faces in the world and one of the greatest living musical legends.
The recipient of Academy Awards, nine Grammys, two Golden Globes, an MTV Movie Award, earned a Guinness World Record for the fastest selling single on iTunes (‘Bad Romance’), 13 MTV VMA’s and supports hundreds of charities as a philanthropist on the side.
She’s a fashion icon too. From her earlier days in sweaty nightclubs in downtown New York nightclubs, wearing skimpy brassiere and thong, to her very bizarre meat-dress at the 2010 MTV, to her Marie Antoinette-inspired look at the Brits that same year with an all-white ruffled ball gown and pompadour wig four times the size of her head, Lady Gaga is the Queen of stretching art her way and creating a type of brilliant mayhem.
Born in 1986 in the Upper West Side of Manhattan to a hard-working upper-middle class Italian family, Stefani Germanotta found music at an early age. Written by Stefani herself on her first self-named website, she explained the process she took to writing her first song. ‘My dad was listening to what I now know was Pink Floyd’s “Money”,’ she wrote, ‘and understanding only the sounds of the cash register in the intro, I [then] wrote a song called “Dollar Bills” on my Mickey Mouse staff paper.’
Her mum, Cynthia, enrolled her in piano lessons from the age of four, hoping that she would learn the stepping stones to becoming a ‘cultured young woman’. The young Gaga much preferred creating music by ear, however, and felt her natural talent for music hook onto her soul whenever she tickled at the ivories.
‘I don’t know exactly where my affinity for music comes from,’ Gaga told MTV News in 2017, ‘but it is the thing that comes easiest to me. When I was like three years old—I may have been even younger—my mom always tells this really embarrassing story of me propping myself up and playing the keys like this because I was too young and short to get all the way up there.’
By the time Stefani was 11 the young superstar was set to join the private performing arts conservatory, Julliard. Though a wonderful opportunity for her to study at the art school, Stefani quickly pivoted away to the Convent of the Sacred Heart instead, at the behest of her parents. Must be an Italian-Roman-Catholic thing.
Fun fact: Germanotta’s schoolmates included the likes of Paris and Nicky Hilton, reported by Ranker in 2021. The Hilton girls, admittedly, seemed to have far more impact on the young Gaga than the nuns ever would.
‘I am fascinated with the blonde woman as seductress,’ she told The Telegraph in 2010 on a press junket for the release of her then-freshly-released hit song ‘Bad Romance’. ‘There’s a way that these women position themselves in front of the cameras. There’s a real art to fame.’
According to multiple online sources, Gaga saw herself as a hugely passionate learner back then. She was focused, very dedicated, very studious. As Stefani worked harder and harder at school, on the side-line was her mum who got her in touch with her first (and only) vocal coach, Don Lawrence. Lawrence was also working at that time with another young star, Christina Agulera, and had truly impressive names on his weekly schedule. Names like Whitney Houston, Mick Jagger, Axl Rose, and Bono, to name a few.
As she floated into her teenage years, the torment and bullying began to start unfortunately. Her eccentricity at that age was fodder for a bit of ridicule from her classmates. That gave her some tough skin, thankfully, yet still hurt from time-to-time. ‘I used to do these really big Evita brows. I used to self-tan too.
People would say, “Why the f**k are you so orange, why do you do your hair that way, are you a d*ke? Why do you have to look like that for school?” I didn’t even want to go to school sometimes.’
At age 17, Stefani gained early acceptance into the Collaborative Arts Project 21, a music school at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and studied assiduously to improve her creative ability—writing essay after essay on religion, social issues and politics through art. In her early 20’s Germanotta formed the band, SGBand, and became a regular fixture in the New York clubbing scene.
‘I was onstage in a thong,’ she recalled in her 2017 doco-film, Five Foot Two, directed by Chris Moukarbel, ‘with a fringe hanging over my arse thinking that had covered it, lighting hairsprays on fire, go-go dancing to Black Sabbath, and singing songs about oral sex.’
Whilst studying at NYU, her classmates created a now-deleted Facebook page called ‘Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous’. The group had 12 members, all unnamed, and they all reportedly mocked Gaga for her ambitions and posted pictures of her in these nightclubs, like the infamous The Bitter End, mocking her ferociously. One can only assume the members of this group were her classmates. Little did they know back then that that very girl who they had mocked would go on to become one of the biggest stars the world had ever seen, truly becoming a part of pop culture.
Recently, she responded to some posts made on TikTok about the private Facebook group. ‘Some people I went to college with made this way back when,’ she wrote. ‘This is why you can’t give up when people doubt you or put you down—gotta keep going.’
Ultimately, she’s managed to draw strength from her dark teenage years. ‘Bullying really stays with you your whole life,’ she told Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. ‘And it really, really never goes away. And I know you’re using words like superstar. But I was never the winner. I was always the loser. And that still stays with me. And do I want to stick it to anybody? No. I just wanna make music.’
At the 2006 Songwriters Hall of Fame New Songwriters Showcase (in which the SGband had secured a place) talent-scout, Wendy Starland, spotted the bright-eyed Stefani and referred her to music producer, Rob Fusari.
Funnily enough, it was actually Rob who came up with the Lady Gaga moniker.
Inspired by Queen’s hit song, ‘Radio Ga Ga’—Freddie Mercury being one of Germanotta’s biggest idols—it was a perfect fit. The name thankfully stuck. In 2007 she had her first big break performing in a homemade bra at Lollapalooza, performing risque dance moves to heavy-metal instruments with friend and collaborator Lady Starlight. All a bit ga-ga, I must say.
In 2010 at the Garden Arena in Boston, Gaga gave a shout-out to Starlight mid-show. ‘For those of you who know who Lady Starlight is, that means you’re a super, super, super fan!’ The crowd roared and cheered in approval. ‘Tonight’s a very emotional night for me because she’s here watching the show and she’s stuck by me since the very, very beginning since I was playing in clubs and DJ’ing. She always believed in me. She said: “Gaga, you’re not just a singer, you’re a performance artist!”’
At the beginning, Gaga was signed and consequently dropped by two record labels by the end of 2007. In a last-ditch attempt at travelling anywhere in the music industry, she hitched a ride on the Sony/ATV bandwagon and wrote some hit songs for The Pussycat Dolls, Fergie and Britney Spears.
In 2008, Gaga, a determined, fresh songwriter, released her debut album, The Fame to rave reviews with several producers helping her find her own, unique voice. That album completely catapulted Gaga not just as a national name but an international icon.
In an interview with MTV, DJ Tommie Sunshine said that ‘there wouldn’t be a David Guetta Top 10 Hit…there wouldn’t be this Black Eyed Peas record…if it wasn’t for The Fame. The influence of that record is epic.’
The Fame consequently won several top awards in the industry, gained international acclaim, and was nominated for six Grammys, including Album of the Year in 2010.
Three years later, after touring and promoting The Fame, Gaga released another stellar chart-topper: the 2011 album, Born This Way. Alongside the album (which created global shockwaves and swathes of Little Monster fans) Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia, also started the Born This Way Foundation with the ‘goal of creating a kinder and braver world.’
In 2013, her critically acclaimed 2013 album, ARTPOP making Monsters scream in excitement. It won big gongs alright. Lady Gaga also dipped her toes into acting too, a goal she wanted to achieve from a young age when she performed as lead role in Guys & Dolls at high school.
In 2015, Gaga was cast as Elizabeth, a ghoulish vampire hotel owner on the fifth season of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Hotel for which she won the Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Drama.
‘I wanted to create something extremely meaningful by exploring the art of darkness,’ Gaga told Billboard in 2015. “The reason I love watching horror films, mysteries and documentaries about crime is that it somehow numbs me from the pain I experience in my own life.” She later joined Murphy again in 2016 in the American Horror Story: Roanoke where she played Scottish witch, Scathach.
As well as playing Scathach, Gaga was busy working behind the scenes on her next album, which was a far cry from her Monster Ball and Artpop brilliance.
Called Joanne—named after the singer-songwriters late aunt—the album was definitely a way for the artist to ‘draw a line’ through the audience’s ideas of her.
Shortly before the release of the album, she announced her Dive Bar Tour, a way in which to pay homage to ‘the raw Americana vibe’ where she visited several dive bars in the states. The album, Joanne, consequently earned a tonne of praise that garnered her with more awards under her belt.
But it was her portrayal as Ally in the fourth and most-recent rendition of A Star Is Born in 2018, directed by Bradley Cooper, that really got fans talking. Ally, introduced as a waitress and struggling with her dreams to become a professional singer, was Gaga as a hybrid talent. The song, ‘Shallows’, written by Gaga herself, still sends shivers down our spines whenever we hear it.
‘This is a conversation between a man and a woman, and he actually listens to her,’ Gaga said about the role. “And I think we live in a time when this is something that’s really important to women. Women want to be heard.” The role earned her Golden Globe nods for Best Actress and Best Original Song (‘Shallows’), three Grammy selections and a SAG Award nomination.
The next two big milestones for Gaga was the release of her 2020 album, Chromatica, alongside her portrayal of real-life convicted criminal and former socialite, Patrizia Reggiani, in the Ridley Scott-directed film, House of Gucci alongside the likes of Adam Driver, Jared Leto and Jeremy Irons.
‘I used all of these memories, all of these traumas, all of these moments in my life,’ Germanotta told BBC News in 2021. In doing so, to really dig deep into the character, she reached deep into the recesses of her soul and revealed breakdown after breakdown as a result of a sexual assault that left her pregnant when she was 19.
‘I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, “Take your clothes off.” I said no and I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn’t stop.’
When asked by the BBC correspondent, Lizo Mzimba how these experiences helped inform her character, she said: ‘The poison of experiencing a man’s world all the time as a woman being in the music industry, I would say. Feeling endlessly controlled by men as I continued my career and tried to find my own voice and be in my own empowerment—not power, but empowerment, as a woman.’
It was with that devotion to her character that Gaga successfully pulled Reggiani off, revelling in her brilliance.
With much anticipation from audiences worldwide, last year Joker: Folie à Deux hit cinemas to rapturous anticipation. Directed by Todd Phillips, Germanotta played Harley ‘Lee’ Quinzel, the mentally unstable henchwoman to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. In pre-production, Philip’s noted to press that he wanted his version of the infamous Harley Quinn to be very different to the version depicted in the DC comics. And he knew that Lady Gaga had the acting chops to go all the way with it. Phillip is quoted in saying that he wanted his version of Harley Quinn to be more manipulative, amoral and more grounded than other renditions of the character.
The world was utterly flabbergasted by the brilliance of the first Joker. Everybody was so excited for the second to hit cinemas. Alas, when it did hit, the musical style of it wasn’t particularly what people expected. Critics took the film and slammed it to the ground, having anticipated the same sort of story as the first film.
The genius of Joker: Folie à Deux is that it is campily self-indulgent, extremely meta, and does its own thing in a completely thought-out, artsy, and overwhelmingly-bleak way. The joke is on the fans who didn’t enjoy it, then, who allowed the film to fly completely over their heads.
In late January this year, Gaga made a comment to Elle magazine on the effect the film had on audiences. ‘People just sometimes don’t like some things,’ she said candidly. ‘It’s that simple. And I think to be an artist, you have to be willing for people to sometimes not like it. And you keep going even if something doesn’t connect in the way that you intended. ‘When that makes its way into your life, that can be hard to get control of. It’s part of the mayhem.’
Her performance in the film was fantastic allowing her to show off her acting abilities in tackling a difficult character.
So as the countdown ended on her latest project around America in January, fans’ speculations were confirmed by the announcement of the long-awaited followup to the star’s Billboard-topping LP, Chromatica. Her eighth studio album, Mayhem, is set to be released in full on the 7th of March. An official announcement trailer confirmed it. A flashing montage of red and white images on a black background—and the date too, also in red, 03.07.2025.
The teasing started back last year, when Gaga started dropping hints for a mysterious LG7 with the release of dark-gothic-pop anthem, ‘Disease’ which had her legion of fans (her Little Monsters) in a state of utter frenzy. Another single, ‘Die With A Smile’, alongside Bruno Mars, was released last August too, and features on Mayhem.
Inspired by a ‘deep introspection and personal challenges’, Mayhem is set to be Gaga harking back to her love for creating pop as art.
‘Every song I wrote emerged from surrendering to different dreams tied to my past,’ Gaga told Liam McEwan from Rolling Stone last year. ‘[It’s] almost like a recollection of all the bad decisions I’ve made throughout my life. There are moments where we sonically push the sound to extremes, and others where everything revolves around love. That, to me, represents true chaos. It’s sometimes difficult to see the light, but I think what makes inner chaos more challenging is when you occasionally catch a glimpse of the sun.’
