Still waiting for a pop star to dare the Nintendo lawyers by titling a song “Alakazam”…
TA Inskeep: When we reviewed “Disease” last fall, I said in part that “[w]hat I want from Gaga is precisely a weirdo return to her The Fame Monster / Born This Way-era robotic pop.” When “Disease” became a commercial failure while the incredibly dull “Die with a Smile” conquered the world, I feared she’d continue the meh balladry. But lo and behold, the next salvo from Mayhem is just what I’d hoped. “Abracadabra” is musically aggressive dance-pop with housey pianos and a smart lower-key bridge before the choruses. Those choruses are reminiscent of the baby-talk gibberish of “Bad Romance” — intentionally, I suspect — which is a feature, not a bug. Gaga is going for it; I think she realizes that one of the things we need in this moment is gleefully weird art. (Have you seen the video?) I underrated “Disease” at the time. I won’t do that to “Abracadabra.”
[10]
Will Adams: A perfect storm of Gaga’s signatures: the echolalia nonsense of “Poker Face”; the electro vwrorps of Artpop; the maximalism of Born This Way, a play-to-the-cheap-seats sensibility. Magic, in a sense.
[7]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Nostalgia is a hellish affliction.
[4]
Hannah Jocelyn: “Abracadabra” aims for nostalgia but falls in the anxious interval. There’s a lot to like, but most of it (the acid bass, the house piano, the Siouxsie-lifted ambient guitars on the pre-chorus, the operatic outro) is buried. In fact, everything feels distant and buried — you can tell Andrew Watt worked on this because 1. the drums have no weight to them, and 2. he’s facilitating the artist doing the most basic form of what they do. Even the rising vocals of the post-chorus bring back summer camp memories of “we’re higher than a motherfucker” more than they do better music. I like my Gaga maximalist and weird, which is why Watt’s work on “Disease” worked for me even though the Little Monsters in my life were underwhelmed. They like “Abracadabra” more because of the sheer amount of lore in the lyrics and the chorus callback, but the song has to, erm, reach out and grab me before I go find out who the “lady in red” is. To me, referencing “Bad Romance” so many years later feels tacky and key-dangling in a way that more suits [celebrity I won’t name for fear of stans finding this] than someone like Gaga, who loves to reinvent herself. “Abracadabra” is still enjoyable, but I miss when Gaga said that nostalgia was for geeks.
[6]
Taylor Alatorre: For all its vocal wobbles and emergency alert textures, there’s a sturdy elegance to “Abracadabra,” enough to correct for Eminem’s manhandling of an already-limp Steve Miller staple. While staying grounded in the surface-level esoteric, which is still her sweet spot, Gaga takes care to treat the title as a meaningful incantation and not just a byword for hokey stage magic. More specifically, it’s a protective kind of utterance — the dance floor as a site of identity formation, an idealized safe space for negotiating between the two extremes of amor and morta, “death or love.” Recognizing that this may come off as hokey anyway, she slyly focuses the spotlight on the syllables themselves, reverse-engineering a sort of vocal splicing technique like she’s a slapstick performer falling up a flight of stairs. The best Lady Gaga singles are those that hover comfortably between the accessibly cool and the glamorously uncool, and “Abracadabra” is secure enough in its Gaga-ness to make a playground out of what otherwise might be a prison.
[8]
Claire Davidson: I can hear where “Abracadabra” has the potential to match Gaga’s canonical hits: the arch, near-operatic vocalizations that appear on the bridge, as well as the infusion of strings with the final chorus melody, come closest to capturing the melodrama for which she was clearly aiming, as illustrated by the life-or-death stakes of the dancefloor infatuation she narrates. Yet that Gothic grandeur is undercut by a scattershot mix of tones that are, by Gaga standards, pedestrian, from the stock house groove of the verses to the diluted swirls of guitar on the pre-chorus that seem borrowed from a lesser Chromatica cut. Even her vocal performance is confused, as she delivers the verses with a monotone too distant to be an intentional affective choice; that her words seem slightly sped-up in order to reach the chorus more efficiently only exacerbates this feeling of non-effort. There’s also the refrain that opens the song, as Gaga toys with the syllables of the word “abracadabra” in a campy vocal fry; while I would normally appreciate the nod to ballroom culture, her self-conscious exaggeration is a complete mismatch with the sincere theatricality of the rest of the track. Still, I’ve spent the past year being tortured by throwback and contemporary radio alike with songs prominently featuring the word “abracadabra,” and this is well ahead of the Steve Miller Band and Eminem’s interpretations of it—not a high bar, but it will at least relieve me of the fight-or-flight response I’ve developed to the word.
[6]
Aaron Bergstrom: Is “abracadabra” the single corniest word in regular use? It’s been around for almost two thousand years, it has thus far failed to cure malaria, and maybe it’s time to give it a break.
[6]
Mark Sinker: If “abracadabra!” is a genuine old-times Roman-era Gnostic spell, then the extra syllable my sister and I worked into it as inattentive children (“abrika-DABRIKA!”) was surely EVEN MORE magical, which is why so many exasperated adults corrected us. “Lady in Red” is murderous US ghost lore, and for kids that love to jump about there’s a “floor is lava” wizard-gesture in here also. Meanwhile, this is so Bowie-coded in toto; the seam Gaga works in this solid gibberish stomper (and everywhere else) is as inflexibly trad as Xmas panto (not-child/childmapping onto normie/monster mapping onto them/us). I way prefer her voice to his, though, even if she still eschews his major lesson: it’s time to move on. And more songs require openly hymning molluscs and the witchy art of remaining absolutely still, in times that are changing badly and wrongly. Ignore intrusive thoughts — be the necromancy you want to see in the world.
[8]
Harlan Talib Ockey: “Abracadabra” and Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu are twin pieces of art in my mind: they’re both stylishly gothic remakes of something I really enjoy, they both try to obliterate the fine line between death and eroticism, and I find them both to be modestly good.
[6]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Certainly never thought that I would be saying this, but thank god for Mastercard.
[8]
Katherine St. Asaph: I am slightly less enthused about Lady Gaga’s return to returning to pop now that I know it was brought to us by venture capital. (Note to stans: I am a fan of Lady Gaga. I am saying something unfair on purpose.) But only slightly, as any drop in enthusiasm on my part can only be slight when counterbalanced with this much personal musical fanservice: a dark-dance track that interpolates Siouxsie’s “Spellbound” (albeit in a nominal, “please don’t sue us over these 11 notes” kind of way) and references The Phantom of the Opera. (The bridge can segue directly into the title-track descant; try it yourself, just not during the video.) There are endless ways for Gaga aficionados to praise “Abracadabra.” You could say it spikes the mix of “Enigma,” already one of Chromatica‘s best, with SOPHIE strobes and acid squiggles. You could say it fixes the structural shonkiness of B-tier Born This Way single “Judas.” You could say it does ARTPOP without the defensive stance against attacks too outlandish for anyone else’s imagination. But you can’t say that “Abracadabra” somehow isn’t a variation on any other Gaga track — which themselves were often variations on dance-music past. Another issue: “Abracadabra” is an inherently unserious phrase. “The floor’s on fire” is a near-synonym of “the floor is lava,” a memetically unserious concept. While this unseriousness has merits (like getting to see my baby nephew vogue to this), it makes it even harder to connect to a song that already requires its listener to transmute abstractions like “save me from this empty fight” or “death or love tonight” into emotional resonance. I appreciate that Gaga has no interest in being relatable; she does not even try to make stuff like “morta o Gaga” meaningful outside her self-mythology, nor to accommodate any subtext besides her own lore. (For example: “Abracadabra” is a song about Gaga and her inner, specific-to-Gaga ballroom judge, even though it’s textually also a song about passion on the dancefloor with a chorus addressed to a woman.) I appreciate that Gaga appreciates frivolity but refuses to divulge how deep a level she appreciates it on (which is why early critics interpreted her deadpan but obvious jokes as pretentious). And I appreciate that she has no obligation to reveal whether Mayhem comes from the same place of urgent, authentic trauma as Born This Way and Chromatica — and that, human to human, no one should want it to. But all these things make “Abracadabra” opaque — which in turn makes it hard to tell how much Lady Gaga is phoning it in. Maybe what this needs is more personal musical fanservice, i.e., an opera bridge. Gaga’s voice, while virtuosic, is not virtuosic in that particular way, and so she half-asses and heavily processes a coda that should swell to the balconies. But who would cast the operatic spell? The most qualified pop star in 2025 is probably Ariana Grande, but like “Rain on Me,” “Abracadabra” is the second single off a return-to-bangers Gaga album; that’s no way to beat the retread allegations. No, everything in “Abracadabra” is a liturgical gesticulation toward the song’s true divine form: a remix with Sarah Brightman. If so, I will retire, as pop will have given me everything I want.
[8]
Alfred Soto: I want nothing from Gaga in 2025 than shrieking onomatopoetic nonsense over house piano licks, and bless her for the funding stream toward Siouxsie and the Banshees, but I hear the difference between excitement and being a camp counselor insisting on excitement.
[6]
Joshua Lu: There are elements of “Abracadabra” that are undeniably reminiscent of Lady Gaga’s heyday: the gothic tones, the relentless energy, that “rah rah bitch” of a chorus. Yet to break every element of the song down and assign it to a predecessor would be reductive, and would ignore the ways in which she’s enhanced her signature style. The intro is immediately disarming as her chants of the title and the arrhythmic beat grab you and shake you around, and the chorus being fully post-verbal is the furthest Gaga has pushed her nonsense hooks. These elements all build on one another, into a relentless cascade of sounds that manages to never feel overwrought. After more than a decade of faffing about with projects palatable to the GP, it’s exhilarating to watch Gaga achieve success by just doubling down on being Lady Fucking Gaga and releasing one of the biggest bangers of her discography.
[9]
Jackie Powell: It’s hard to know whether this was the plan all along. Was the intent of “Disease” just to tease the moodboard of Mayhem, rather than actually making the grand gesture that Lady Gaga often does with new album eras? Was Gaga waiting for the right time to drop a work that could have a large mainstream impact — a song that is jubilant, while also commanding attention? That’s what it sure looks like with the release of “Abracadabra,” which has served as a moment of respite and celebration after a difficult January in the United States. While there are many “Bad Romance” allusions in “Abracadabra” — the cacophony of made-up words in the hook, the dynamic, dramatic melody from verse to chorus, and the dance-focused, theatrical music video — it isn’t an exact copy. Gaga plays with her vocal in ways she couldn’t as a 23-year-old. She doesn’t just seize the drama with volume dynamics, but she plays with the placement of her voice and creates characters through the way in which she sings. She oscillates between brightening her vocal in the pre-chorus and darkening it in the verses. (Also, when before “Abracadabra” has Gaga used her head voice in a bridge?) And while “Disease” was about Gaga battling against her darkness, “Abracadabra” is more about Gaga’s inner critic, another dark character who is harsh and incredibly judgmental — but who also challenges her to be her best. Notably, the darker figures in both music videos are shown in places of power. In “Disease” the dark figure drove the car in the music video, while in “Abracadabra” the Lady in Red looks down from above at the Gaga in white. When the final note in “Abracadabra” plays and the Gaga in white looks up, the Lady in Red bows her head. It doesn’t symbolize conflict but a battle won.
[9]
Andrew Karpan: I wasn’t too sure whether “Disease” was really the classic-era throwback that we were being promised by stanz and critics alike, but the pure nonsense of “Abracadabra” has me sold. This is the good stuff, the stuff that asks questions like: what if we haven’t already heard every Pet Shop Boys record ever made? What if there was one more?
[7]
Alex Clifton: The past year has seen the return of Big Pop Music, and while I love Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, I’ve craved giant hooks and a beat that makes my head thrum. Gaga has returned when the world needed her the most, like she’s fulfilling a long-held prophecy. Listening to “Abracadabra” for the first time reminded me of when I first heard “Bad Romance” some 16(!) years ago: the feeling of “I didn’t know I was starving for this.” Hoping this bodes well for the rest of the year, because if the world’s heading down the shitter, it’ll be a little easier to bear with a cool soundtrack.
[8]
Isabel Cole: Competent enough, as it should be, given that it’s the kind of busy, melodramatic pop that was Gaga’s signature sound more than a decade ago; it’s astonishing how neatly this could time travel into her discography ca. 2011. No doubt that will please some little monsters, but the problem with making a name for yourself on your willingness to surprise is that your comfort zone is bound to sound more like a retreat than a revival. Listening to “Abracadabra” by chance immediately after Jade’s recent “IT girl,” two things struck me: first, how much “IT girl” owed both sonically and thematically to the space Gaga carved out at the start of her career; second, how little “Abracadabra” was making use of that space, all bosh and no bite.
[6]
Al Varela: The first song “Abracadabra” made me think of was Kyle Gordon’s parody of 2000s Europop, “Planet of the Bass,” and I mean that in the meanest way possible. It’s an obnoxious self-parody that checklists all the things that would be in a Lady Gaga song, but with none of the actual song, and instead the feeling that it’s imitating something better you could be listening to instead. I’m sure I’m supposed to believe that Gaga speak-singing “ah-bruhca-dahbruh ahbruh cadaaaaabruhh” and speaking nonsense in the chorus is “serving,” but it’s not done in a way that’s catchy or fun. The song is so overloaded with zippy synths and heavy bass that it cannot grab hold of any groove or hook that could make you dance along or feel like the baddest bitch in the club. Last time we covered Gaga I wondered whether she even enjoyed making pop music anymore. The question still stands. “Abracadabra” feels suffocating and hollow; just because it would have worked in 2011 doesn’t mean it is 2011.
[2]
Kat Stevens: 48 seconds in, I shout “BORINGGG,” pause the video, and take my headphones out to complain about the sudden drop in song quality to my partner. Thankfully I am persuaded to continue, as it turns out I really like around 80% of this song: the pranayama bhastrika intro (striking!), the punctuated chorus hook (catchy!), the Belgian hoover noises (they’re back!), the Midsommar-group-therapy choreography in the video (including random screaming!). But the wishy-washy verse can do one. Why include a bad bit of song when you are clearly capable of making the whole thing bang?
[8]
Ian Mathers: It’s not a…. great sign that I was enjoying this until she started actually singing, right? Somehow I want it to be either less or more camp. On the other hand, I have been a Gaga appreciator without actually liking many of the singles for years now (we’ll always have “Paparazzi”), so maybe it’s not for me. And it’s not like having some of the more memorable lines be kinda gibberish hurt “Espresso.”
[5]
Julian Axelrod: Already feels like a classic. So far it’s passed the Headphones Car Test, the Dancefloor Test, the Mastercard Commercial Test, the Walking to Work Test, the Stuck In My Head During Any Silent Moment Test, and the Saying Abracadabra Amaroonana Abracadabra Mortahoogaga to Your Friends Every 5 Minutes Test. I don’t remember a time before this song.
[9]
Nortey Dowuona: Cirkut and Watt happily restore the pop sheen that Lady Gaga made in 2008, out of nostalgia for 1986, in order for her to return to her most conventional, pop-accessible form. But here’s the thing: we did this five years ago. When are we going to recognize that even 2009 Lady Gaga is a nostalgia act? Nobody can ask her to work with Hannah Diamond instead? Or just cover this!
[7]
Jel Bugle: I’m always put off by songs that have “magic” as a theme. Fantastical stuff is fine, but the Vegas show stuff, I don’t like. So Lady Gaga is already at a disadvantage here! Establishment Gaga is what we have now. It’s inoffensive, and maybe Gaga was a bit more offensive before. Can you truly recapture former glories? Here, I don’t think so. The new Gaga can’t go back and do the old Gaga; the world has turned, the portal has closed.
[5]
Leah Isobel: Look, I’m human. If Gaga makes a whomping dance song centered on some nonsense syllables broken into stupid and counterintuitive patterns (“Ab-r’c-dabra-ab-r’c-daaaaa-braaaa” is primo Gaga sound soup), I will indeed groove. But on first listen, “Abracadabra” just felt disheartening. Two of her last three mainline albums were about how doing thisspecific goth-diva performance destroyed her life and her body, yet here she is again, The Rah Rah Bitch, ready to give the public precisely what we want from her. Yes, the song bops. But it bops in a way that is entirely familiar; what is the substantive difference between this and “Bad Romance,” or “Venus,” or “Government Hooker,” or “Dance in the Dark,” or “Swine”? What does this add to her art? Why does this exist now? The more pop I listen to, the more I wonder why we, as a culture, can never just let something go — why we always have to move backward into the past, recreate something that was once good until we finally grind every last bit of life out of its corpse. But I guess that’s just it: the past is a corpse, our lives are zombified. Culture is dead.
[6]
Melody Esme: As with so many things in the early 2010s–Roe v. Wade, Vine, general hope for the future–everyone was criminally ungrateful for Artpop, including myself. Perhaps we all deserve some blame for those Tony Bennett albums. But with everything from hyperpop to Billie Eilish to Brat popping up in the past decade-and-change, increasing the public’s stomach for pop indulgence both sweet and bitter, the world may finally be ready for a revival of Gaga’s most underrated era. And yet, my appreciation for the vibes and aesthetic haven’t translated to my loving “Abracadabra” as a song. I hear Artpop in it, while others have heard The Fame Monster, Born This Way, and Chromatica, and that’s the problem: everyone’s hearing something different, but no one’s hearing something new.
[6]