Lady Gaga debuted a new song during Sunday night’s Grammys ceremony — not in an official performance slot, but during a commercial break, using the spot to officially premiere a new single, the fast-tempo dance track “Abracadabra,” from her upcoming album, “Mayhem.”
The mid-Grammys unveiling of the song and its music video had been previously teased — although the actual song title had not — at the same time Gaga revealed last week that the “Mayhem” album would be coming out March 7.
Although the video premiere was not officially part of the Grammys show, Gaga referenced its positioning on the telecast by introducing it with a verbal preface: “The category is… dance or die.”
The song did not appear immediately online following its broadcast premiere, but Gaga soon posted on her socials that both the track and the music video would be making it to the web in a matter of minutes, and “Abracadabra” indeed appeared on YouTube and other platforms after about 20 minutes..
There were at least a few Gaga superfans to whom the new song title did not come as a surprise — In the announcement video for ‘Mayhem,’ the word “Abracadabra” appeared in the background.
A press release described the video as portraying “a dance battle between the light and dark sides of Gaga.” Through most of the video, Gaga and her dancers are a frenetic vision in white, though the visual aesthetic — reflecting the lyrical mention of a “lady in red” — occasionally turns crimson, with the singer’s costuming looking thorny enough to draw blood.
The video was co-directed by Lady Gaga with Parris Goebel and Bethany Vargas, with Gaga and Goebel working together on the choreography for a team of 40 dancers. The creatives behind Hardstyle, Peri Rosenzweig and Nick Royal, did the styling and costuming, including what the official announcement described as “an upcycled white cape crafted from vintage wedding dresses.”
Her taking time during the commercials to debut a song did not mean that Gaga was forgoing a live performance during the prime-time telecast. Earlier in the show, she and her “Die With a Smile” duet partner Bruno Mars took to the stage at Crypto.com Arena to do a duo performance of “California Dreamin’,” the Mamas and the Papas oldie, to testify to the spirit of Los Angeles, in acknowledgment of early January’s tragic L.A. wildfires.
“Mayhem,” which was referenced as “LG7” before Gaga publicly gave it a title, is officially her seventh studio album. That number doesn’t count last year’s “Joker” spinoff record, a record of (mostly) jazz/standards covers called “Harlequin,” which the singer had referred to as album 6.5.
Gaga previously released two other singles from the forthcoming 14-track album — “Disease,” which came out in December, preceded by the Mars collaboration “Die With a Smile,” from last August.
In a press announcement last week, Gaga said, “The album started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music my earliest fans loved,” and she additionally noted that it represents her “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.”
Gaga has been quite active this past week. Prior to the Grammys, she appeared at FireAid, premiering another new song that she said was written especially to perform on the telecast and not from the forthcoming album.
