Mother Monster is Mother-ing again.
Lady Gaga’s seventh solo studio album “Mayhem” — which was released to the delight of Little Monsters everywhere on Friday — returns the 38-year-old diva to the dance-in-the-dark moves of her early career.
Before she began crooning classics with Tony Bennett. Before we ever heard of “Joanne.” And before she went Hollywood with “A Star Is Born,” “House of Gucci” and, yikes, “Joker: Folie a Deux.”
And for those who have wanted the old Gaga back, it’s a nostalgia trip that completes the journey after the 2020’s pandemic-plagued “Chromatica.”
Gaga makes her old-school intentions clear from the jump.
“I could play the doctor, I could cure your disease,” she sings on the single “Disease” that opens the album.
If that sounds familiar, well it harks back to “I want your ugly, I want your disease” from her 2009 smash “Bad Romance” — on the short list of most iconic songs in her catalog.
“Bad Romance” was featured on “The Fame Monster” — the second of three albums where she could seemingly do no wrong, sandwiched between 2008’s “The Fame” and 2011’s “Born This Way.” And you can hear echoes of all three of those LPs on “Mayhem.”
“Perfect Celebrity” plays like a synth-rock update of “Paparazzi,” with Gaga musing on fame again 17 years later.
“LoveDrug,” with its trippy dreaminess, is styled just like “LoveGame” from “The Fame.”
“Zombieboy” — a euphoric party anthem about indulging in dance-floor debauchery that will have you feeling like a zombie the next day — is named after the late tattooed muse who appeared in her “Born This Way” video.
And “The Beast” tells us that Mother Monster is embracing her dark side again.
There is definitely a throwback gothic vibe to haunting tracks such as “Disease” and “Abracadabra.” The latter — a dizzying whirl of bewitching beats — even borrows from the 1981 Siouxsie and the Banshees song “Spellbound.”
Those tracks as well as “Garden of Eden” also have an industrial edge to them that is more dirty rock than the pretty pop of, say, Sabrina Carpenter.
Meanwhile, “Killa” lets Gaga’s inner freak out over an electro thump. The woman who once rocked a meat dress at the MTV Video Music Awards is still the Queen of Weird.
But it’s hard to beat the bangers of past, and there are some forgettable (for her) moments. Still, this is a welcome reminder of just how Gaga became Gaga.
