Lady Gaga - Abracadabra

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 Rishikesh Hirway. 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, 2 Golden Globes, and an Oscar. And in March 2025, she released her sixth album. For this episode, I talked to her about a song from that album called Abracadas.

She co wrote it and co produced it with Andrew Watt and Circuit, and they recorded it in Rick Rubin's studio, Shangri Law. That's also where we recorded. 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 lower east 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 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 myself. And then you know, music became a business, which was not why I I did this.

So when I decided to make this album, I think I was just wanting to reclaim something that made me me. And my partner, Michael, was like, you know, you don't have to be afraid of your darkness anymore because you've really gotten a handle on it. Like it's okay to go back there. So it was important to me. How do I get myself back? How can I make all of these dreams, these like gothic. Fantasies that I have in music, how can I make them real? But that I don't have to wreck myself.

I think trusting myself that I could make a dark album and that I would be okay. was a big piece of it.

Let's go to the day that the song started. Do you remember how that day began? Me and Andrew Watt and Circuit, we were actually working on another song that didn't end up on the album. It was a like a mid-tempo thing. But then circuit was like, I've got something I've been working on. I wanted to play it for you. And I went. I was like, what is that? That is crazy. And we just stopped everything that we were doing.

Andrew was like, that could be a hard beat to write over because it's so busy. Yeah. And I was like, watch me, because that kind of electronic chaos. That kind of like razor sharp thing just speaks to my soul so deeply. How'd you articulate the feeling that you had when you first heard this? It's a feeling of your heart racing as fast as possible. Some adrenaline. It almost reminded me of

how I used to feel when I went out at night alone in my early twenties. I would just like have nothing to do but discover the night. Like what music was I gonna hear, what DJs we're gonna be playing, like what cool artists was I gonna run into. It was really nostalgic. but it was still really modern and I was also excited for the challenge because I could hear there was something special in what he had created, but that it also needed to become a fully formed song.

So I just started writing. We turned it on and I just got on the mic. Like freestyling. Oh yeah. A lot of my music, especially when we work to track, is freestyled and it happens pretty quickly. But it didn't have words yet. It was just kind of made up words. Uh d Yeah. And then me and Andrew went into this room. here and we started to work on a pre-chorus and you know we had to build the chord structure to come out of that beat because it's gotta like match circuits, atonal bass lines.

It has to grow out of that dissonance and that tension. Like what is gonna make it open? Because that beat in a way is kind of closed. Yeah. So what was gonna happen to open up the song? But we did it at the piano and with the guitar. it had this kind of gothic quality to it. What were the first words that you wrote? It was like a poem said by a lady in red. You hear the last few words of your life.

I remember thinking of like being at a party and somebody kind of lording over the party saying like I'm gonna decide how your evening goes. I'm gonna control the whole thing. I will be in charge of whether or not you fall in love or you get too messed up to even make at home. When you were thinking of that image.

Which side of that did you relate to more? Like was that person who's kind of lording over the party, is that a figure that you usually are at a party or are you usually the person on the other side being like, Okay, what's gonna happen? when we were writing it, I was imagining I w was at the party and I was being kind of beset upon by this figure. that was inclined to torture me into having the night of my life.

Is that an experience that you feel like you've had where you've been subject to someone else's setup? Yes, Lady Gaga setup. Huh. You know, for a long time keeping up with that side of myself. You know, like if you're never dropping your stage persona. Yeah. And we all have like a public facing persona that and if you just never drop it and if it has an edge to it. you know, too much of anything is bad. But then sometimes our dark side.

It like really challenges us and makes us great because we learn a lot. I actually think part of what mayhem is about is the duality of me being both of these people. It's interesting because you both referred to it as torture, but also the night of your life.

Yeah. Well, those are some of my issues for sure. But I think in the context of the world that you'd constructed for yourself, the the rigor that you'd made for yourself by inventing Lady Gaga and then having to live up to that, I could see how both of those things would apply. Well, you know... As someone that played.

classical piano since I was really little and I had a lot of really strict teachers and went to ballet and, you know, all my disciplines. I will say that like there is a kind of suffering in discipline when you're working really hard. And I think I just took that. to a really far degree in my work my whole life. And I became kind of someone that thrived on intensity. I think that this song is definitely grappling with intensity. It's a test.

but it's also kind of not up to you. I think that's a lot how I feel about being an artist. I don't really feel like I fully chose this. If I was a tree, it would be like someone just grabbed the trunk and just said, This is where you're gonna grow. Yeah. So the abracadabra piece, it's a spell that this lady in red is casting on

The listener on the nightclub and that pre-chorus, it's a ritual. It's like, I'm gonna read you this poem and we're gonna have a ceremony and we're gonna see how tough you are. So we had written a chord progression that we then gave to circuit to put into the track. To open up into a chorus. And I started just going

And I was saying abracadabra over and over again at first. But I was so excited about making up my own words that it could be anything because it was this spell. Like what would this spell even be? But I knew that death and love was something that I wanted. to be like at the helm of what this lady in red was saying to the room. And so I started thinking about Latin and Italian and what would be like the Gothic romance words, like mor in French is death. So

Then I was asking Paul, our engineer, to look up different words. And then he was like, Mortez, the god of death. We spent a couple days carving out every single word. But in order for me to really know that it was lyrically right, I wanted to hear it with all the harmonies. I couldn't hear it without it. Yeah. Cause the magic and the the glamour of the song is in how gaudy it is in the chorus. And I couldn't hear if it was the right words until It was fully opulent.

I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. Fifteen years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikeshi Herway. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career, and then for over a decade. completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists.

Including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vaccine. Fenn Lilly and the producer Phil Weinrobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the US starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing. Begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Simeen Nosrat, Jason Manzukis, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee,

John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all gonna be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, risikes.co, or just go to songexploder.com. net slash live. That's song exploder.net slash live. Thanks.

what was so deeply like inside of me when I was writing is some of New York. In New York, the spirit of ballroom culture is something that I have always admired and has been deeply meaningful to me my whole life as an artist. And the LGBTQ plus community and the way that I've been embraced as a human being and been accepted as a young person. I've like found my people.

And I think there is something about this spell that's also speaking to being a resilient person and being inspired by resilient people. And what it means to be tested constantly in your life and to say, I'm up for the challenge. I'm gonna do this. So when we eventually got to the verses it actually became very spiritual and it became about resilience. And then it was less about this being like completely grim, the story, and more of a dance. What were you imagining with those lyrics?

It's what do you have to do to keep going, to get to the next phase as you're headed toward all the good in your life? and the devil's on your back. Like don't turn around. And what about the way you delivered those lines? What were you thinking about for that? Vocally this song was it's an interesting performance. I actually think that the thing that I was channeling the most was A kind of metal gravitas, but in a pop way. So I was sort of trying to marry what I would imagine.

It would have sounded like if, you know, Iron Maiden was doing the song. Yeah, I can see that. Um they have like a a sense of authority. Right. Authority's the right word. And then we put that into circuits track and then he was building it even. We actually went through like three different versions of production and we ultimately ended in like a house style.

I remember being like emotional when we decided to do that. Because I was like, this is right. Because everything for me always went back to the dance floor. So it was completely full circle. And that lyric right after Hold Me in your heart. That's sort of like acknowledging that sometimes our demons can be our friends because we know them so well. Like I'm gonna be there for you when you go through I also wanted to ask you about um this sound.

It's sort of twists and morphs and in some ways it's almost more like sound design. Circuit made that. There's like an element that's descending and ascending at the same time. Yeah. Sounds like the club's gonna explode. We just were really open to trying different ways to making it feel chaotic. that played a huge role in everything that we did. There was always something distorting in some way or bending, building the tension that would release.

It just started to get crazier and crazier and by the bridge, when we got to the bridge, I became a completely different person. It wasn't like I was like, oh I think we should do opera here. Like I just started This ending is this huge crescendo. For all the stuff that was happening fast and intuitively, um, were there any parts of the song that felt like you really had to labor over it to get right? I would say the second verse. I changed that lyric after the song was mixed.

because it was don't waste time on a feeling, use your passion, it's your turn. And I like called everybody into the studio and I was like, we have to change this. This is wrong. Why was it wrong? Because It's your turn, I felt was signaling something that the song was kind of already saying. We knew we were up for the test. And you don't want a second verse that's like sort of revisiting the first verse and not going anywhere new. But no return. It was raising the stake.

You can't give up. And the song didn't have that in it yet. And what was also bugging me for a while was choose the road on the west side as the dust flies, watch it burn. because it was such a metal lyric. And I'm like, is this just wrong for what this song could be? Because there's so much about Abercadabra that is just not. What? anyone would think of as what would be on the radio or streaming. I mean it's like not easy listening. It's got all these niche references and it's so maximalist.

And wow. And so during the songwriting process, I'm battling a lot of judgment, inner judgment. I'm judging myself for what I've created. But that was what it was supposed to be. It has all of the pieces Something that it's quintessentially mean. The intervals of the melody, the made-up words, the fantastic idea mixed with these heavy dance beats. Rock instrumentation, like this blend of things is what Lady Gaga is to me.

It's almost like if you had one chance to architect a building to show who you are, but you were desperate for people to know. So you just like put gargoyles and columns and marble and grass and there's a lake and it's just because you're just trying to say I'm everything. I'm all these things. Yeah, so I was judging myself. And then I sort of accepted who I am through the process and became okay with it.

What I found that day was an understanding of a challenge that I had been a part of for so long that I been so afraid of acknowledging and knowing. And I finally like put a name to it all. to take ownership over something that used to run my life in a negative way. You know, it's like you create yourself. I made Lady Gaga, but then like people reflect back to you what they think. They have maybe a fantasy of you or dreams for you that are not yours. But I took back the dreams that were mine.

And what I realized is that the big Yeah. being myself as an artist.

And now here's Abracadabra by Lady Gaga in its entirety. Visit Songexploder.net to learn more, including some footnotes that go with this episode. You'll find links to buy or stream Abracadabra, and you can watch the music video. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscuit. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo.

Special thanks to Dylan Marin and all the folks at Shangri-La. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.m. And if you'd like to hear more from me about what I'm listening to and watching and you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on Substack or on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at Songexploder.net slash shirt.

I'm Rishikesh Hiraway. Thanks for listening.