Every Song From Lady Gaga’s ‘Mayhem’ Album, Ranked

It’s clear that nearly 20 years after she reconfigured the modern understanding of pop stardom, Lady Gaga has virtually nothing left to prove. She’s a veritable hitmaker with six No. 1 hits on the Hot 100 and three times as many top 10’s; she’s raked in a whopping 14 Grammys and 24 more nominations; she’s become one of the most sought-after touring acts of this century; she’s even proven herself as an A-list movie star.

Yet on Mayhem, the pop icon’s much-anticipated seventh studio album (out today via Interscope Records), Gaga performs as though everything — her fame, her reputation, her very life — is at stake.

As a result, Mayhem plays from front to back as a bold, daring piece of pop anarchism from Mother Monster. She takes the sounds that have defined the majority of her career (dance-pop, stadium rock, EDM and even some funk), dismantles them to a molecular level and builds them back up into tantalizing new shapes. The LP swings wildly from industrial to techno to disco to soul and back again, all while affording Gaga an opportunity to share some of her most deep-cutting lyrics to date.

It’s not a coincidence that Mayhem harkens back to some of Gaga’s earliest works — as the singer told Billboard, part of the intention behind this record was to reconnect with her roots and find some of the joy that had gone missing along the way. “I do think that I felt a lot of pressure, over the years, to prove myself as a musician. And that sometimes stopped me from having fun,” she said. “So, I tried to have a lot of fun making this record.”

Below, Billboard takes an in-depth look at the creativity and chaos of Lady Gaga’s Mayhem, ranking each of the albums 14 new songs: