After keeping fans waiting for years and giving months of buildup before finally making an announcement, Lady Gaga has finally unveiled the title of her highly anticipated seventh studio album: Mayhem.
The project is the long-awaited followup to the superstar’s Billboard 200-topping LP Chromatica, which last saw Gaga embracing her pop star persona at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In the years since, she’s been focused on her Enigma and Jazz & Piano residencies in Las Vegas as well as her acting career, taking on roles in Ridley Scott’s 2021 film House of Gucci and Todd Phillips’ 2024 supervillain epic Joker: Folie à Deux.
In September last year, Gaga faked fans out by teasing Harlequin, which Little Monsters initially thought might be her seventh LP but turned out to be a companion album to Joker — or “LG 6.5,” as the 13-time Grammy winner herself nicknamed it. The jazzy, theatrical project featured both covers of standards and originals, and it reached No. 20 on the Billboard 200.
At long last, however, 2024 finally gave way to the LG7 era in the fall, when Gaga finally started doling out hints about the direction of her next project in various interviews. In October, fans finally got their first proper taste of Mayhem with the release of single “Disease,” a dark-pop dance anthem accompanied by a gothic music video.
Everything culminated at the beginning of 2025, however, with Gaga’s official album announcement on Jan. 27. And as its rollout has taken shape, Mayhem has already proven to be one of Gaga’s most exciting projects yet. From the release date to what’s on the album itself, keep reading to see everything Billboard knows about the LP below — and check back for updates as Mother Monster gives them out.
-
When It’s Coming
On the day Gaga officially unveiled the title of her seventh album through billboards in New York City — followed shortly thereafter by a formal announcement on Instagram — the superstar also confirmed its release date. And despite Gaga originally saying the project was coming in February, Little Monsters can now expect the project to arrive March 7, 2025.
-
How Many Tracks
In a release the day of the album announcement, Gaga confirmed how many songs will be featured on Mayhem: 14.
That includes the singles “Die With a Smile” — her hit Bruno Mars duet that spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 — and “Disease,” which arrived in October alongside an eerie music video. A third single is slated to arrive Feb. 2 during a mid-Grammys commercial break.
-
How It’ll Sound
Gaga first confirmed to Vogue in September that — despite her past forays into jazz and Americana — she plans on fully embracing an unadulterated pop sound on Mayhem. One of the tracks, for instance, is “intense and ominous — an old-school Gaga banger, unsettling but also buoyant,” writer Jonathan Van Meter described in the piece..
She further elaborated on the project’s sensibilities in a December interview with The Los Angeles Times, telling the publication, “It leaps around genre in a way that’s almost corrupt.” “The record is full of my love of music,” she added at the time. “So many different genres, so many different styles, so many different dreams.”
-
Fiancé Michael Polansky’s Influence
A key player in pushing Gaga to embrace the pop route was her fiancé, businessman Michael Polansky. “Michael is the person who told me to make a new pop record,” the A Star Is Born actress told Vogue in September. “He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music.’”
“Like anyone would do for the person they love, I encouraged her to lean in to the joy of it,” Polansky added to the publication at the time. “On the Chromatica Tour, I saw a fire in her; I wanted to help her keep that alive all the time and just start making music that made her happy.”
Polansky is also credited as a songwriter on “Disease.”
-
It’s Going to Be Emotional
Mayhem is guaranteed to be a cathartic experience, with Gaga telling Vogue, “There’s a lot of pain associated with this adventure.” When she was in the studio, however, she was “able to face my demons and what’s remarkable is… that’s the music. I’m able to hear it back.”
To The Los Angeles Times, Gaga elaborated that the songs on Mayhem are “recollection[s] of all these bad decisions that I made in my life.”
“And it ends with love,” she added at the time. “That’s the answer to all the chaos in my life is that I find peace with love.”
-
It’s Nothing Like ‘Chromatica’
While speaking to Rolling Stone in September, Gaga confirmed that Mayhem bears no resemblance to its older sister. “The pop album is nothing like Chromatica,” she said. “What I would say is, it’s all for me. It’s meant to be ingested as a time in my life. And I’m also really excited about this idea that I don’t have to adhere to an era if I don’t want to. I can have a few going at once.”
This story originally appeared on Billboard
