‘Mayhem’ is Lady Gaga's triumphant return. From ‘The Fame’ to ‘Chromatica,’ the singer's music evolution in her own words.

Lady Gaga’s latest album, Mayhem, has fans and critics losing their minds — in a good way.

Some are calling it her best album in over a decade, others see it as a return to her roots. With its mix of pop beats and gothic synths, Mayhem is a culmination of every version of Gaga we’ve encountered over the years.

For an artist who has built her career on shape-shifting, this moment feels like a homecoming. But how did we get here? Across six studio albums and a reissue of her debut album, Gaga has explored everything from the pursuit of fame to self-acceptance, vulnerability and now full-fledged mayhem.

From her latest album debut to her first, here’s how she’s described each chapter of her discography in her own words.

Mayhem (2025): ‘Resilient through chaos’

Lady Gaga has said that her latest album is a reflection of the contradictions that have shaped her life and career.

“I was always kind of fascinated with some kind of inner torture since the beginning of my career,” she told Them. “I think I’ve always felt a little bit at war with myself. … With this album, I really wanted to put my priorities in the right place once and for all.

Writing the album was “almost like a recollection of all these bad decisions that I made in my life,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “It ends with love. That’s the answer to all the chaos in my life is that I find peace with love.”

Mayhem is also about finding stillness within chaos. “I wanted to traverse old ground while breaking new ground, which I think is hard to do,” she told Rolling Stone. “There are a few moments on the album where some people might say, ‘Oh, that reminds me of this,’ because I do have a style, but I made an effort musically to push myself to a new place.”

She continued: “Mayhem, to me, is ultimately about resilience and also chaos. We need to be resilient through chaos.”

Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Gaga said writing the songs in Mayhem was about stripping away the noise and staying true to herself.

“That is who Lady Gaga is to me. Maybe to someone else, it might be the Meat Dress or something that I did that they remember as me. But for me, I always want to be remembered for being a real artist and someone that cares so much.”

Chromatica (2020): ‘Sound is what healed me’

Gaga revisited her dance-pop roots with Chromatica, an album she described as a journey of healing through movement and sound.

That’s evident by the sine wave symbol displayed on Chromatica’s album cover, which she described to Apple Music in 2020 as the “mathematical symbol for sound, and it’s from what all sound is made from, and, for me, sound is what healed me in my life period. And it healed me again making this record, and that is really what Chromatica is all about.”

Love and bravery were also major themes. “It’s about healing, and it’s about bravery as well,” she said. “When we talk about love, I think it’s so important to include the fact that it requires a ton of bravery to love someone.”

Chromatica was also about confronting pain and finding solace in music. As Gaga revealed to CBS Sunday Morning, making the album helped her reclaim herself after struggling with fame.

“I don’t hate ‘Lady Gaga’ anymore,” she said. “I found a way to love myself again, even when I thought that was never gonna happen.”

Joanne (2016): ‘I was trying to make a home for myself’

Gaga made a sharp turn into stripped-down, country-inspired rock for Joanne. A tribute to her aunt Joanne, who died at age 19 due to complications from lupus, Gaga admitted that it took her further from herself than she expected.

“I was trying to make a home for myself during Joanne, and it was almost a completely new me,” she told Them. “I think that was a hard time for some of my fans, because it felt so different from the ‘me’ that they knew. But it felt so needed for me. It was like I just wanted to strip everything away.”

At the time, Gaga described Joanne as a way to reconnect with her roots.

“Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history … this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that — it’s looking in,” she told People in 2016. “Joanne is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.”

The men in her life also shaped the album, particularly her then fiancé, actor Taylor Kinney. Their five-year relationship ended in July 2016, months before Joanne’s release.

“When you listen to the album, it’s clear the influence that all the men in my life have made on this record,” she told People. “That’s at the center of it, as well: I always wanted to be a good girl. And Joanne was such a good girl.”

Artpop (2013): ‘It was ahead of its time.’

In a conversation with Apple Music, Gaga reflected on her complicated relationship with Artpop.

“Artpop was a very special album to me,” she said, adding that it “was more of a concept and a philosophy more than it was an aesthetic.” While Gaga admitted the album “was not easy listening,” she acknowledged that it was “very disruptive” to mainstream music and became an opportunity for her to say, “I’ll do what I want … and I’ll do it my way.”

Despite its mixed reception upon release, Artpop developed a cult following. In 2021, over 56,000 fans signed a Change.org petition urging Interscope Records to release Artpop: Act II, the long-rumored sequel she continues to tease.

Gaga responded to the petition on X, formerly Twitter, with a heartfelt message: “The petition to #buyARTPOPoniTunes for a volume II has inspired such a tremendous warmth in my heart. Making this album was like heart surgery, I was desperate, in pain, and poured my heart into electronic music that slammed harder than any drug I could find.”

She later added, “I fell apart after I released this album. Thank you for celebrating something that once felt like destruction. We always believed it was ahead of its time. Years later, turns out sometimes artists know. And so do little monsters. Paws up.”

The resurgence of love for the album in 2021 pushed it back onto the charts, fueled by the petition. When asked recently about the possibility of releasing Act II, Gaga responded cautiously.

“I’m not saying it’s a never,” she said, before clarifying that any release would need to be intentional. “I’m not going to take all my demos that I specifically left off the record and just chuck them on an album and put the number two on it.”

Born This Way (2011): ‘I want it to be an attack…’

As she told Rolling Stone, Born This Way was both a political statement and a pop record. “Born This Way was much more of an album about social justice,” she said, describing it as “something dark underneath the record; there’s an undercurrent of something uncomfortable that’s hard to deal with.”

“I want to write my ‘This-is-who-the-f***-I-am anthem,’ but I don’t want it to be hidden in poetic wizardry and metaphors,” she told Billboard in 2011. “I want it to be an attack, an assault on the issue.”

The album’s title track, “Born This Way,” became an unshakable LGBTQ anthem. Reflecting on its legacy more than a decade later, Gaga told the Associated Press last year that she feels both pride and frustration when performing it.

“Every time I play ‘Born This Way,’ it is a mixture of a lot of pride and also some sadness and anger,” she said. "We have grown as a society, but there’s so much work that we have to do, especially with trans rights.”

The Fame Monster (2009): ‘I’m a master in the art of fame.’

At the heart of The Fame Monster, a deluxe reissue of her debut album with eight added songs, was the reckoning with fame’s consequences. It also was the era that cemented her "Little Monsters" fan base and gave the world her now iconic “Rah rah rah rah rah” from the single “Bad Romance.”

“Each song became about a different monster that I’d encountered,” she told iHeartRadio at the time. “My fear of alcohol monster, my fear of love monster, my fear of sex monster. I really went in and tried to doctor them and fit them into this concept that became The Fame Monster.”

Gaga spoke about how she was self-aware about the mechanics of fame, calling it one of her best creations. As she told 60 Minutes in 2011: “One of my greatest artworks is the art of fame. I’m a master in the art of fame.”

She explained that maintaining control over her public image was a careful balance and one she hoped to personify in The Fame Monster.

“My philosophy is that if I am open with [fans] about everything and yet I art direct every moment of my life, I can maintain a certain privacy in a way,” she told the outlet. “I maintain a certain soulfulness that I have yet to give.”

The Fame (2008): ‘I’ve felt famous my whole life.’

Gaga’s debut album, which she recently described as “theatrical pop,” gave us No. 1 hits like “Just Dance” and “Poker Face.” At the time, she said the title wasn’t solely about manifesting fame for herself but about reexamining our idea of fame.

“I think there's different kinds of fame,” she told the Guardian. “I think there's 'fame', which is plastic and you can buy it on the street, and paparazzi and money and being rich, and then there's 'the fame,' which is when no one knows who you are but everybody wants to know who you are. That’s what this whole record is about. This record beckons for everybody on the planet to stop being either jealous or obsessive about what they don't have and start acting like they do.”

She continued, “I don't think I could ever be prepared for fame. I don't think that you can prepare for it or get used to it. I've felt famous my whole life, but this is a whole other level of famous.”