The public’s renewed love for all things Lady Gaga is a sign that we’re stronger than we think

Unemployment is rising, housing markets are collapsing, the price of eggs is somewhere around one million dollars per embryo and Lady Gaga has released an incredible new single after weeks on top of the world. If you’ve been clicking your heels three times, hoping to be transported to a happier period, it didn’t exactly work as planned. We’re smack dab in the middle of 2010 again.

But you don’t need me to tell you that. If you witnessed the collective cultural collapse that was the release of the video for Gaga’s latest song, “Abracadabra,” during an ad break in the middle of the Grammy Awards, you surely felt it too: the sweet, unmistakable sense of nostalgia. The single is the second taste from Gaga’s upcoming album “MAYHEM,” due out March 7, after the album’s lead, “Disease,” was released last October. “Abracadabra” is a sonic return to form for the pop star, a pivot to the heavy European dance basslines and phonetic chants of some of her most beloved hits like “Bad Romance” and “Judas,” this time with more polish. The sound instantly evokes a touch of wistfulness for the Obama era, when times were just as uncertain. Still, it was easier to block out bad news with radio-heavy car rides or by cranking up the iPod volume using its click wheel. Now, no matter how fast we run, the grim reaper’s scythe is still inches from our heels.

After “Abracadabra” was released, that sentimental yearning for the past was immediately echoed across both social media and proper reviews. For days, people have been joyfully calling Gaga’s triumphant return a “recession indicator,” one of the internet’s latest favorite phrases. By that reasoning, the quality of Gaga’s music and the economy are moving on opposite poles: When one goes down, the other must go up.

While “recession indicator” is simply a joke phrase, it got me wondering: Is Gaga an indication of the recession, or is the recession an indication that we need Gaga? Perhaps it’s when things are at their most politically and socially dire that the general public becomes less content with the swill they’re being fed, and looks for something with a bit more substance. There’s no denying Gaga has substance in droves, and “Abracadabra,” along with a handful of other meaningful Gaga moments from Grammys night, feels like precisely what the public needs right now. The music isn’t merely a distraction from the daily horrors; it’s Gaga’s way of confidently opposing the artless philistinism levied by the right wing’s frightening agenda. As she tweeted in 2009, just two months before “Bad Romance” was released: “They can’t scare me if I scare them first.”

Don’t get me wrong here, Lady Gaga has always made good music — even her weakest efforts are packed with gleaming bright spots. But her forays into different pop subgenres were often maligned or misunderstood following the tepid success of 2013’s (criminally underloved) “ARTPOP,” which flopped by early Gaga standards. That album’s abrasive EDM alienated Gaga from a good chunk of her mainstream audience. For years after, she had to fight to prove her worth to the demographics she lost with jazz albums, Oscar-nominated acting roles and a slew of showstopping performances at awards shows. Her last full-length record, 2020’s “Chromatica,” was similarly hailed as a return to form, though its sound was more closely aligned with the dancier cuts from her 2008 debut “The Fame” than the more memorably dark, notable work that followed. 

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The apex of this era in Gaga’s career came in the form of her 2011 magnum opus “Born This Way,” an album so packed with sledgehammering beats and raw, unapologetic metaphors that it was impossible not to sit up and take notice. The record tackled queer rights and trans visibility, immigration laws, constitutional injustices, the epidemic of bullying-related suicides, feminism and religion — all neatly tucked into one glossy, high-concept package. It was her defining artistic statement, a grand period at the end of her manifesto. 

It also fatigued the general public, and fast. Gaga was inescapable. You couldn’t turn on your television without seeing this woman pop up somewhere, sporting a black-and-white skunk wig, preaching her freak-forward gospel. By the time “ARTPOP” was released two years later, the burnout could be seen from a mile away. Audiences didn’t want to hear any sanctimonious songwriting from their pop star du jour. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell had been repealed! Gay marriage was on the horizon! Roe v. Wade had been a defining judicial decision for decades! There was no going back. Why keep on moralizing?

Unfortunately, the line between contentment and complacency is all too thin. While it would be obtuse to directly correlate the public turning against Gaga with the rise of American fascism, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the two have no relation at all. The world’s most famous pop star being an ardent, unapologetic defender of progressive values was a critical advantage for the future of American culture. But it was also a privilege that too many didn’t recognize until Gaga’s peak was already in the rearview. 

These days, political pop is largely frowned upon. Pop music is as sanitized as it has been since the turn of the millennium. Labels are hesitant to promote music with a more progressive cultural message, lest it affect their streams — or worse, incite the ire of the sitting president and his legions of internet-addicted cronies. Hell, Morgan Wallen became a crossover sensation with a number-one album after he was caught throwing around racial slurs. In some ways, it’s no wonder that artists are more inclined to be introspective right now, leaning into the personal to commodify pages from their diaries. Strictly self-observing lyricism is the perfect way to circumvent any blowback. Until Chappell Roan broke through last year, it was as if all of our musicians forgot that intimate lyrics don’t have to sacrifice a global viewpoint. 

But the confessional pop era has a clock on it too. In the midst of a second Trump administration and all of the terrors it has wrought in just a couple of weeks, audiences are desperate for relief. They want something abrasive, something strange. They want to be told that things will be alright, and if they won’t be alright, that we’ll make it through hell together.

Reminding people that she could be that shepherd seemed to be Gaga’s Grammy night mission statement. During the telecast, she sang “California Dreamin’” alongside her “Die with a Smile” duet partner Bruno Mars, as a tribute to Los Angeles in the midst of wildfire devastation. It was somber and moody, a throwback that reminded viewers that enjoying old-school songwriting and performance styles doesn’t necessarily mean your morals have to be antiquated, too. Shortly after, Gaga and Mars won the award for Best Pop Duo/Collaboration. When she approached the mic, Gaga spoke briefly about what an honor the award was for her, before prefacing her next statement by saying, “It is a privilege to be a songwriter, and a producer, and a musician.” A moment later, she spoke to the significance and power of that privilege, using the platform for a classically Gaga statement. “Trans people are not invisible,” she began. “Trans people deserve love, the queer community deserves to be lifted up. Music is love.”

The speech was met with cheers from the audience, with cameras capturing artists jumping to their feet to applaud. Charli XCX was seen mouthing a very bratty “f**k yeah” while nodding her head. It was one of the most explicit political statements of the night, coming just days after Trump signed a swath of anti-trans executive orders that limit the rights of trans people all over the country. It was a glimpse of Gaga from yesteryear, the one who took no prisoners and appeared at Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal rallies and called out President Obama’s lack of movement on gay rights in front of the White House while her own debut album was moving up the charts. “They say this country is free and they say that this country is equal,” Gaga said at that rally in 2009. “But it’s not equal if it’s sometimes.”

But it was “Abracadabra” that really made the whole night feel like a full-circle moment, years in the making. The song merges house, electronica and those Euro-rave basslines that became Gaga staples on “The Fame Monster” and “Born This Way,” the same ones that the public fell back in love with when “Bloody Mary,” a deep cut from the latter album, went viral two years back. The people have been hungry for this Gaga, the one whose music is tinged with an irresistible immediacy. “Save me from this empty fight in the game of life,” she pleas in the song’s exhilarating refrain. In the video, Gaga battles a latex-clad saboteur and is left to dance for her life to save herself from the entity ultimately in control of her fate. Not to be flippant, but that’s exactly what every day under Trump’s second term has felt like so far — minus the latex.

Perhaps the best part of all of this happening in one night, though, is that Gaga seems to have the constitution for it. It’s not just her vocals that are stronger and more precise, her ability to capture the listener and bring them into her art is just as acute. Her ability to battle through any lingering fear is infectious. “I wanted to explore the question, ‘What does it feel like to thrive and not just be surviving all the time?’” she told “Elle” in an interview after the video was released.

There’s no question that Gaga is thriving now. She’s far from the early days of her career, when many considered her defiance a gimmick, or refuted her as a flash in the pan. Her legacy is cemented. “Abracdabra” feels like a celebration, definitive proof that you can fight for good, go through hell and actually make it out on the other side stronger. “MAYHEM,” in her words, is all about putting broken pieces back together to create something beautiful in its own new way, something it seems we may have to do for ourselves in the weeks, months and years ahead. The world’s overwhelming joy that Gaga has pivoted back to her roots isn’t merely a recession indicator, it’s a sign that people are ready for a fight that, to some, didn’t always seem so necessary 15 years ago. If mayhem is what’s to come, Gaga’s aptly named album might just be the armor we need to make it through enemy fire unscathed.