I wasn’t excited about the GRAMMYs this year. They’ve been a documented mess for as long as I can remember, but something about Project 2025 threatening the future of free expression and the wildfires ravaging the largest bastion of liberal dissent didn’t have me in the mood to sigh at the poor choices the music machine would congratulate themselves on during the prelude to the post-apocalypse. It turns out that the GRAMMYs were actually good-ish this year. But rather than the GRAMMYs, it felt more like the People’s Choice Awards because 2025 was finally the year that the academy listened to the backlash and basically gave the people what they would have expected in any other awards show: the GRAMMYs. Beyoncé finally won Album of the Year for Cowboy Carter. She also won Best Country Album after being snubbed by the CMA Awards last year. Best New Artist went to the not-so-new Chappell Roan for her runaway success in 2024. Kendrick Lamar’s Drake diss-track “Not Like Us” won both Song and Record of the Year. This year, the academy also made amends with The Weeknd, who had withdrawn his music from future consideration after receiving zero nominations for his 2020 album After Hoursor its singles. The Weeknd performed two songs from his latest album, Hurry Up Tomorrow.
LIKE A POEM SAID BY A LADY IN RED…Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift surprisingly went home empty-handed at this year’s GRAMMYs Eilish’s critically acclaimed third album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT produced three major hits last year, and the twenty-three-year-old former GRAMMY winner performed “Birds of a Feather” for the award show. Historic four-time winner of the coveted Album of the Year, Swift was seen clapping for peers, but her album The Tortured Poets Department went uncelebrated, despite her unorthodox announcement of the album in her acceptance speech last year when she won Album of the Year for Midnights. The GRAMMYS have traditionally been only a celebration of music’s past, particularly the last year’s, but Swift transformed her GRAMMY platform to promote where her music was going. Not to be outdone with Swift’s theatrics, Lady Gaga bought commercial time during “Music’s Biggest Night” to air the third single from her recently named album Mayhem. “Abracadabra” is a continuation of the aesthetic Gaga gave us last October with her second single “Disease”; however, the latest single seems to be resonating with her fanbase even more than the second single. The music video illustrates the dark aesthetic of the album, drawing comparisons to Gaga’s Fame Monsterand Born This Wayeras.
DEATH OR LOVE TONIGHT. As we get closer to March 7th, when Lady Gaga is slated to unleash the full extent of Mayhem, we’re getting a clearer vision of reactionary art in the new Trump era. In her acceptance speech for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Die with a Smile” with Bruno Mars, Gaga stated: “Trans people deserve love. The queer community deserves to be lifted up”—a direct response to the barrage of attacks, particularly on the trans community, in the second Trump administration. Mayhem isn’t directly related to the dystopian future in store for us, but rather to the embracing of chaos as an art form. Gaga told Elle six days after the 2024 election results were revealed: “What’s bizarre is I did not write this album thinking that this would happen. I prayed it would not. But here we are.” With an increase in mayhem, the darker the vision of Gaga’s seventh album gets, making Gaga’s latest offering even more relevant. From the music video of “Abracadabra,” Gaga threatens the dark side of the feral energy Charli xcx gave us with BRAT last summer. The video contains an even more unhinged chant and Gaga’s primal scream not featured in the album version of the song. And with the return of Gaga’s early styles come the complaints of satanism from MAGA parents who conveniently forgot about their own teenage rebellion to the dark imagery of Mötley Crüe or Pantera. Speaking of the ‘80s, “Abracadabra” samples “Spellbound” from post-punk group Siouxsie and the Banshees, proving once again my argument from yesterday’s post that the New Wave keeps giving us new waves of the New Wave. Listeners also have noticed that “Abracadabra” sounds similar to Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.” This year is going to be turbulent—unprecedented, chaotic, scary. What we called normal may be completely turned upside down. Embracing Mayhem may be how we survive.
Read the lyrics on Genius.
Mixtapemotions 