The song will appear on the musician’s upcoming studio album Mayhem, out March 7
Want to see a magic trick? Look to Lady Gaga. During a commercial break at the 2025 Grammy Awards, the musician transported viewers back to the Fame Monster era with the surprise premiere of her latest single “Abracadabra.”
At the start of the music video, a sinister Gaga dressed in red, spike-covered latex declares: “The category is dance or die.” Beneath her gaze, dozens of dancers break out into an intense mob of movement and madness. It’s apt given the title of her forthcoming studio album Mayhem, out March 7.
Shortly after the performance, an official announcement of the single arrived on Gaga’s social media accounts promising the release of the song and video within 15 minutes. The music video for “Abracadabra” played shortly after Gaga took the stage with Bruno Mars to perform a special tribute to Los Angeles. They performed the Mamas and the Papas‘ “California Dreamin’” sixty years after its release.
The early-career callback in the latest Mayhem single points to the return-to-form Gaga has promised to deliver on the upcoming record. “The album started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music my earliest fans loved,” she recently shared in a statement. She also described the creative process as “reassembling a shattered mirror: even if you can’t put the pieces back together perfectly, you can create something beautiful and whole in its own new way.”
Using the Grammy Awards as a launching pad for the new record, which follows the earlier singles “Disease” and “Die With a Smile,” serves as a prompt reminder of Gaga’s early run of Grammy wins. The Fame and The Fame Monster both earned Album of the Year nominations, and “Bad Romance” took home Best Female Pop Vocal Performance the year after “Poker Face” won Best Dance Recording.
“When I write and produce and sing songs, I am always drawing upon my knowledge of the history of music, and so many artists and producers that came before me,” Gaga told Vogue. “In that way, this album is a celebration of a lot of the music that made me who I am, because when I returned to a darker pop style of pop, all my early experiences with music came out.”
