Last month, Lady Gaga dropped her music video for “Abracadabra”—the second lead single off her new album, Mayhem, out on Friday—in the middle of the Grammys. With its pulsating electronic beat and avant-garde fashions (that archival Olivier Theyskens!), the song had Little Monsters putting their paws up in awe. The consensus was instant and unanimous: Mother Monster, the risk-taking and darker-pop Gaga that we first fell in love with in the late 2000s, was officially back.

Of course, true fans know that Gaga never really went away—she only evolved. There was her country-western era, with 2016’s Joanne; the two jazz albums she made with the late Tony Bennett; her Hollywood-movie-star era, as she shot and promoted A Star Is Born and House of Gucci. Yet while her sixth studio album, 2020’s Chromatica, had eerie dance records to spare, Mayhem serves as a true return to form—delivering Gaga’s rawest and most experimental music to date.

It’s aptly named: Beholden to no single genre, the album ping-pongs between tracks like “Garden of Eden” and “Zombieboy,” two sexy pop bangers certain to be hits in all the gay clubs; “Perfect Celebrity,” an angrier and more cathartic track about the complexities of fame; “Disease,” her thumping lead single about grappling with inner demons; and tender love ballads like “Blade of Grass” and “Die With a Smile,” her record-breaking (and Grammy-winning) hit with Bruno Mars.

That eclectic mixture of moods was entirely intentional: With Mayhem, Gaga tells Vogue, she finally allowed herself to create a body of work without any limitations. “We are all asked to define who we are and explain ourselves. I’ve had a really hard time with that in my career,” she says. “I’ve found it really hard to answer those question. So, I allowed myself to be lots of contradictory things.”

Here, Gaga talks to Vogue about the album’s most challenging songs to write, using fashion for storytelling—and what you can expect from her upcoming Coachella headlining set. (“I’m going to give it everything I’ve got,” she teases.)

Vogue: The first thing that struck me about Mayhem was how wild it felt, in terms of its genre and sound. Why did that approach seem right?

Lady Gaga: I really wanted to have a very free experience. I didn’t want to box myself in. As boxed-in as I have felt by anyone being critical of my music over the years, I realized that I was my biggest critic—I was also boxing myself in. I wanted to do something that embraced my earliest memories with music and my signature approach to pop. I had been really afraid to do that for a long time. But once I allowed myself to work without the pressure, I started to endlessly create, and it poured out of me in a very natural way. It was almost like saying hi to an old friend—and it was total mayhem. Whether it was this genre or that genre, I took whatever came out, and made it all come together to be wholly me.

I also feel like the album has a very specific arc—where it starts is very different from where it ends. How did that story come together?

It came really naturally, because I allowed myself to have any emotion that was coming while I was writing. That was part of the mayhem. There’s records [on the album] where it’s about seduction, that voice in your head trying to make bad decisions. There’s moments where life is putting pressure on you, and you need to rise to the occasion. There’s moments about temptation and adrenaline; about anger and fame. Then there’s peak confidence, where I’m just feeling the best I could possibly feel at a party. Or when I’m missing somebody that’s no longer in my life, and I’m reflecting on ways that I wish life was different. But ultimately, I wanted the chaos and the mayhem to end. It’s interesting because [the album] starts to slow down with “Blade of Grass”—but that’s still a dark record. You still get this feeling that there’s something unresolved. But by the end, with “Die with a Smile,” I think I’ve truly found some peace. I liked there being an arc to the record that begins disorderly, with a night that you could not possibly tame, and by the ending there’s peace, bliss, and hope.

I loved the tension between a song like “Blade of Grass,” which is a little more tender, and a track like “Killah,” which is more about sex and lust. I guess you need both in life!

We’re all of it. Human beings are all of it. We are all asked to define who we are and explain ourselves. I’ve had a really hard time with that in my career. I’ve found it really hard to answer those questions, or maybe not wanting to answer those questions. So I allowed myself to be lots of contradictory things, and I think that’s real. “Blade of Grass,” in a way, has a lot of insecurity in it, and “Killah” has none. But I’m definitely the same person and I definitely have both of those feelings.

Talk to me about the production of the album. I recently watched your making-of video for “Disease” and was fascinated by how intricate the audio layering was. How was the studio process different for Mayhem compared to other albums you’ve made?

Every record I’ve ever made, I always have my fingerprints on everything. But I returned to a style of production on this album where it was a heavy mix of live instrumentation and programming—using a lot of the early influences of the music that I fell in love with. I was relentless in the studio, and I worked with some great collaborators. Cirkut is an incredible producer, Gesaffelstein is absolutely amazing, and Andrew [Watt] as well. I played piano and do synth work on it. Whatever we needed to happen at any given moment, we could make happen. We had so much gear and we just had a blast.

I wanted to ask about the track “Perfect Celebrity.” It’s not often we get a pop song that’s so self-aware and so meta. Why did you want to write a track about grappling with fame, and how has your relationship with fame changed over the years?

I was really nervous to put that song on the record. In a way, I was nervous to write it. It’s an angry song; I’m angry at myself. It felt like a song that had been inside of me for 15 years that I needed to get out. I’m still nervous for people to hear it. [My relationship with fame] has changed. When I was younger, I had this dream of being a star, building the stage shows of my dreams, and my music being heard everywhere. When I was younger, I was on a mission. Because my life changed so much when I was in my early 20s, it took some of the realness of life away from me, and that really changed my songwriting. Now, as I’ve gotten older, I value my artistry before fame. Having an amazing relationship now—closer friendships, more time with family, and a more grounded life—has helped my writing and helped me think about fame in a different way. But [“Perfect Celebrity”] still came out in the way that it did, and I didn’t want to change it too much. I felt myself judging myself while I was writing, but then I was like, nope—just be honest! Because I really wanted Mayhem to be honest in all of its craziness.

Songs like “Garden of Eden” and “The Beast”—these are songs that are undeniable dance hits. There’s been this conversation lately about “recession pop,”—the idea being that the best pop always comes out of the most challenging times. Was that something you thought of, bringing levity to your fans?

I never could have anticipated what has happened in the world, even since my last two records. There was a global pandemic during my last record [Chromatica], and now we’re here. I don’t think it was something that I planned. Everything changed for me after the Fame Monster era: After that happened, my mission as an artist changed, and it became more about making people happy, and less about my personal mission as an artist. My personal mission became making the public smile as much as possible. So when I was making Mayhem, I wanted it to be a good time, and not all about me. It’s inspired by so much of my life—my dreams and my approach to music—but it’s also about honoring how complex people are, and that we can be chaotic. Because the world is chaotic. It’s only natural that we sometimes feel out of control. So while I did not plan for this to be recession pop, it is a feeling of mine when I’m making music: I want to be there for people.

You’ve always used fashion in a really interesting way, as a form of storytelling. How do you think you’ll use it during the Mayhem era?

I’m embracing all of my gothic dreams, and trying to express all of those dark fantasies that I have—but in ways that are both dark, yet also carry the light with them, too. Theatricality and artistry is a huge part of what I love about fashion, so it definitely has a lot more to do with self-expression than anything else. I’ve been wearing a lot of young designers, like Ilona, and allowing myself to not get hung up on anything other than supporting the community.

Is there anything you can tell us about your headlining Coachella set, coming up in April?

I cannot say anything! But I am honored to play Coachella. I am so excited to have a couple of hours with you all, and I’m going to give it everything I’ve got. I will be bringing Mayhem to the desert! I want to give you all a dream. I can’t wait.

Lastly, what do you hope Little Monsters will take away from this album now that it is out?

I hope that you take away from this album that nobody can define you but you. No matter what anybody says to you in your life—what they think of you, how they criticize you or ask you to define yourself—you don’t have to. You can simply be who you are, and be proud of it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Tune into Spotify: Presents Lady Monster Press Conference on March 6th at 6 p.m. EST on Spotify’s official Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.