You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe.

Lady Gaga is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actress from New York.

She's one of the biggest artists in the world.

She's also won 14 Grammys, two Golden Globes, and an Oscar.

And in March 2025, she released her sixth album, Mayhem. For this episode, I talked to her about a

song from that album called Abrakadabra. She co-wrote it and co-produced it with Andrew Watt and

Circuit, and they recorded it in Rick Rubin's studio, Shangri-La.

That's also where we recorded the interview for this episode,

which happens to be the 300th episode of the podcast.

Here it is.

Abra-Kidabra, Abra, Abra-A-Rabra-A-U-Gaga. My name or love on night My name is Lady Gaga.

Before we get into the specifics of the song itself,

I was wondering if, as you were going into making this album,

if there were any big picture ideas that you were thinking about or aiming for?

Well, I will say that returning to my earlier sound, what I discovered kind of on the Lowery

Side when I was first making music, that was something that I was excited about.

What was behind that? What made you want to go back to your earlier days?

You know, I expressed the darkness I felt as a young person through music,

like my whole life, and it was scary. And I felt that around me for a really long time. So

my earliest records were kind of dark. And they embodied live instrumentation with electronic music.

But over time, I just artistically was going in lots of new musical directions exploring

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