Lady Gaga Tells Us Everything You Want To Know About 'Abracadabra' After That Spectacular Grammys Reveal
Last week, as part of a spectacular cover with ELLE UK, Lady Gaga revealed everything about her life, love Michael Polansky and, crucially, her new album, Mayhem. Then, last night, during The Grammys, Gaga made the monsters go wild again, by debuting her next single Abracadabra, alongside an incredibly crafted video.
With the song making such a splash, Lotte Jeffs sat down with Lady Gaga to exclusively ask her everything about Abracadabra, from the inspirations, to the costumes and choreography behind the video.
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ELLE: Congratulations on the debut of your next single Abracadabra. Tell us everything about this song and its spectacular video!
GAGA: Well, the song is about facing the challenge of life and the challenge of the night and finding the magic in it all.
ELLE: What do you mean by 'challenge of the night'?
GAGA: When you have to face the world, the people around you, your life, your unique circumstances, your unique fabric in the world. And when you feel challenged with really showing everybody who you are.
ELLE: And who is the lady in red?
GAGA: The lady in red is all of you that puts you to the test. Your internal monologue. 'Can you do it? Can you do it? Will you do it? Are you good enough? Can you handle it?' In a lot of ways, the song is about dealing with that challenge to yourself and very often the world around us can reflect it back to us as well. I wanted to explore the question, 'What does it feel like to thrive and not just be surviving all the time?'
ELLE: At the end of the video, is she defeated? Are you victorious over all that inner doubt?
GAGA: To me, in this video, she initiates the challenge and this purer side of me that is peering up at all of the negative backtalk, all of the doubt, and facing all that side of me, she completely comes through. And she says, 'I'm up for the challenge.' And it's interesting because we had all these different ways that we thought about the video ending and ultimately I wanted this song to be about resilience in a way the song Disease was not. That track was about inner torture and being trapped.
And so with this song, I wanted to crack open what it means to persevere. And explore the metaphor of perseverance on the dance floor, because the dance floor is - for me, anyway - it has always been the place where I try to improve myself as a human being. How do I work harder? Have more passion? How do I give more of my authentic self? How do I earn my spot as a performer?
ELLE: We love the bit where the music cuts out and the dancers are almost attacking you with the same lyrics that you've been singing…
GAGA: The song has a spell in it. And I imagine that our negative backtalk or when people are hard on you in your life, the world is hard on you, that's almost like a spell. You can get seduced and you can start to believe it.
ELLE: So is she - are you - breaking the spell in the video?
GAGA: In the video I'm fighting against it with everything, I'm dancing against it, I'm singing against it. I'm serving against it.
Also, you know, this video is about community. We worked with about 50 dancers. That's the thing I love most about it. There’s this dance battle that's led by the light and the dark sides of me. I can't initiate or receive the challenge without my community and the community is so strong. And the process of learning the choreography, being with the dancers, working with Parris Goebel, was a beautiful experience. We were a family, trying to find something really honest together. It's wild to me watching the video now, this many weeks into the year because something that we made a good few months ago about resilience is coming out now, when we need it most.
ELLE: Tell us more about the genesis of this incredible choreography
GAGA: Parris and I worked really closely together, she's just a total genius. We did the video for Disease together and then we had a conversation about continuing this inner dialogue idea. It is part of Mayhem - these conflicting sides of ourselves that don't really make sense but are just continuing to have this argument.
How do we say that through the dance? We ultimately decided that the video should be Mayhem the character, the lady in red - it's her club, and it's her night and she's saying, 'Okay, everybody that's here with us, we've done this before. And, tonight, you only have two choices, you can either dance or it's over. And I'm out.' And we decided that we wanted the video to be about being up for that challenge. And so then Parris went to work for many weeks on all the different choreography. And we were constantly back and forth about it and then I went into the studio to learn it all. That was an amazing time. What I love is that the movement also expresses so much of what I'm trying to say and on a first listen of Abracadabra, you might go 'What is this about? It's fun to listen to, but what does it all mean?' And to me, when you see the video it should become clearer that it just means we have to keep going.
ELLE: We have to talk about the costumes!
GAGA: I worked with Peri Rosenzweig and Nick Royal - a wonderful duo - on all of my main costumes. And we worked with some amazing young designers, as well as fashion veterans on the design. I collaborated with Hunter Clem and Genesis Webb on the dancers. Looks were designed by Olivier Theyskens and Sam Lewis. Hats were designed by Stephen Jones and Maximilian Gedra. Shoes? Chrome Hearts. Jewelry by Dosisg6c. And the looks were made by Seth Pratt, Suman Gurung, Renee Masoomian, Iggy Soliven, Anastasia Vikhoreva, Galedi.
Something that was important to me was in a video of this size that we were also environmentally conscious to not overproduce and make too many new things.
So actually my main white cape in the video was upcycled using old wedding dresses. And we also used deadstock fabric for the dancer’s clothes. That's fabric that's been in warehouses for long periods of time. And we also use pieces from my archive; so old costumes are reinterpreted. There were a few new pieces. But we were trying to make something that was in the spirit of love the whole way through, something that was made with a really warm heart and community in mind.
ELLE: How do you feel about the finished video now?
GAGA: I always feel some sense of pride over my work, but I feel really fully aligned with everything that this video became.
ELLE: And what about the album - how are you feeling about Mayhem coming into the world?
GAGA: Firstly, it’s an absolute privilege and honor to be able to release music that so many people have been so excited to hear. I feel really honored to be a singer and a songwriter and a producer of music that will be, if you so choose, the soundtrack to a moment or a bit of time in your life.
The album was called Mayhem to memorialize a piece of me and a piece of life that is not always easy to accept.
It was hard at first to name the album Mayhem because I so much don't want that feeling to be real. I am also a hopeful person. I'm also somebody that is a dreamer, but what I think I ultimately arrived at is; it's all of the fractures of who we are and the fractures in the world and the mayhem of that brokenness that ultimately teaches us the power of joy, and dancing and crying and laughing and listening to music and holding your friends and your family and repeat! This album is fun and I enjoyed the contrast of a fun album that's also called Mayhem.
I think people need each other and my fans have always reminded me that we can have each other's backs. This album is really everything I had to give to them. And I hope that they know it's my privilege to make them music. And thank you so much for receiving, LG7. It's on its way. And it's the thing I have to offer the world right now.
ELLE: Can you share some of your musical inspirations for Mayhem?
GAGA: There was industrial inspiration with a lot of the sounds. There's a transitional moment on the album that's rooted in nineties music. A sort of electro grunge defiance. That era in music which was a response to the music that came before it. And then David Bowie theatrical rock, Prince, Radiohead. I was inspired by so much music that has grown roots in my veins.
I actually listen to a lot of instrumental music when I'm not working because it’s extremely relaxing. It clears my head and it gives me a different palette to get myself ready for what I want to say. Sometimes when I make albums, I can get really into a style of music and listen to everything in that style. And other times it's much more about this kind of blender of all of my influences, all these references. The album, also, from a production standpoint, from a musical standpoint, a sonic standpoint is also very in line with this idea of Mayhem. Here are all these things that I know you won't believe make any sense together. And I know that it will be really hard to define but it all goes together because it's all me.
ELLE: How would you describe the process of creating this album? You spoke a lot about fun and joy. Did that come through in the making of it, as much as the finished product?
GAGA: It was beautiful. It was fun. It was serious. I get very serious when I work. Some of the songs are angry. There's moments of humor and confidence. It’s also about the mayhem for me of being a woman. I'm just feeling everything and going through it all. But the joy also resides in the very fact that I get to make music for a living. And then in the end, all of the things that I’ve been through and thinking 'I don't know how am I going to get this industrial sort of pseudo 2000s beat to go with this electro grunge sound, and how am I going to get this kind of Bowie funky record to mesh with this 80s synth pop….' I'm doing all this gymnastics. But the joy of it in the end is that I was able to make sense of it for me. I want people to have that feeling for themselves. They may not have that feeling for themselves with this record because it's not what they made. But I hope that they will see it as an expression of what's possible.
ELLE: Do you feel particularly vulnerable given how true to you this record is?
GAGA: I'm trying not to cry talking to you because whenever I talk about my music, I want to cry. I'm definitely an overly raw person. Music strikes for me a chord that is deep in my body. And I think for some people, my music might do that for them too. Music brings us alive in a new way.
My favorite thing about music is that a room can be feeling one way. And then you turn on a record and it's just like magic, the mood changes.
So yeah, I definitely think this album is very vulnerable. I'm not trying to play a character, the way that I did with Chromatica, with Joanne, with ARTPOP, there were all these characters. With Mayhem, they're all in there, but I'm the composer and it's for real.
Overall, I would say that I have a special relationship with every single song on the record. Each one has its place on the album. And it really is an arc of a story that starts with something very unsettling and it ends in the kind of hopefulness that I found with my partner during making it. And now I get to keep going in this mayhem with somebody else. We’re in it together.
ELLE: Finally, fans would love to know about live shows and what you might have in store for performances…
GAGA: I can't give it away yet because we're still working on stuff. But I'm so excited for Coachella. I just want people to smile and laugh and dance and have the most fun ever. I mean that. If you could take away anything from this interview today I would say in my life, in my family which includes my partner, Michael [Polansky, 41], our dogs, my friends, this is my priority and right next to all of those things is making people smile. I want everyone to smile through the mayhem.
Lady Gaga is the cover star of ELLE UK's March issue, available on newsstands on February 6.
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