Lady Gaga has finally announced her new album. Mayhem, the 14-track album formerly alluded to as LG7, is due out March 7, via Interscope. A new song will debut on February 2, with a music video premiering during a commercial break at the 2025 Grammys.
Gaga says in a press release that the album “started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music my earliest fans loved,” likening the process to “reassembling a shattered mirror: Even if you can’t put the pieces back together perfectly, you can create something beautiful and whole in its own new way.” Lady Gaga executive produced the album alongside Michael Polansky and Andrew Watt, with individual producers including Watt, Cirkut, and Gesaffelstein.
Speculation about the Chromatica follow-up—she jokingly calls her 2024 record Harlequin LG6.5—ramped up last September, when Gaga revealed, during promotion for Joker: Folie à Deux, that the new album would be out in February 2025. (Close enough!) She followed the news with a song and video, “Disease,” and a series of teasers, including a Times Square billboard and a countdown clock on her website that ended today with the announcement. Her 2024 Bruno Mars collaboration, “Die With a Smile,” will also feature on the new album; that song and “Disease” bookend the otherwise unannounced tracklist.
Between then and now, she has also covered “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” performed at a Kamala Harris election rally, and lined up a headline slot at this year’s Coachella. Speaking about the new album to Vogue, she said, “There’s a lot of pain associated with this adventure, and when I start to explore that pain it can bring out another side to my artistry. When I’m here at this studio, I’m relaxed and I am able to face my demons and what’s remarkable is… that’s the music. I’m able to hear it back.”
Read “Joker: Folie à Deux Review: Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix Make a Bad Movie Sparkle” and Pitchfork’s Sunday review of Artpop.