Lady Gaga did something during the 2025 Grammys I thought YouTube had killed forever: She dropped her new song, “Abracadabra,” and its accompanying video with essentially no warning. Fans knew the pop icon was planning to tease “Abracadabra” during the broadcast, but these days that usually means 11 seconds of a verse (tops!) followed by a plea to pre-save the track. So to get not only the full song but the entire video was almost too much serotonin to bear. And it literally couldn’t have come soon enough.
You might have noticed things are looking grim these days. Fresh off a terrifying election cycle that feels like a fever dream (or the most craven Ryan Murphy series), America in 2025 is downright disorienting. Wildfires ravaged Los Angeles. Democracy is on the chopping block. Taylor Swift got booed at the Super Bowl in a way that seemed sinister, as if it was a warning about the dark, dystopian days to come. And yet, here’s Lady Gaga releasing a song anchored not by words, but noises and vibes. “Abracadabra,” she sings on the thunderous chorus, followed by her signature mumbles: “amor-ooh-na-na,” “morta-ooh-ga-ga,” “abra-ooh-na-na.”
“Abracadabra” feels like a return to form for Gaga, even if some say it’s a retread of previous iterations of her artistry. So what if it is? The song is her buzziest solo release in years, recently topping the Spotify Global 50 chart and debuting in the top 30 on Billboard’s Hot 100 (even without a full week of data tracking). The song hits. Hard. Of course it does: Gaga’s core songs have never been just dance-floor confections—even when they’re packaged that way.
Gaga recently told Elle magazine that “Abracadabra” is about “facing the challenge of life”: “...when you have to face the world, the people around you, your life, [and] your unique circumstances.”
This is evident in the lyrics, yes, but even more in what’s not as obvious: the 600-watt sledgehammer production, the frantic tempo, and, yes, the senseless chanting in the chorus. “Abracadabra” is powered by pure, animalistic adrenaline, the kind you’ll need to tackle the hardest days of your life. It’s maybe the most germane song Gaga could have released in a world that’s rapidly dissenting into madness, where so many of us feel like our very existence is being threatened.
Lady Gaga has a documented history of delivering near-perfect music as a salve for culture’s toughest times. “Just dance, gonna be okay,” the then-unknown star sang in 2008, which back then felt like both a hedonistic command and a soothing reassurance. Indeed, a lot of us were trying to dance our worries away and for good reason. We were knee-deep in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and were looking for temporary escape. Lots of other artists at the time also traded in pure pleasure-seeking. Kesha was “recession pop” royalty, specifically on tracks like “TikTok” and “We R Who We R,” where she boldly declared, “Tonight, we’re going hard” and “DJ, blow my speakers up.” By 2010, the apocalypse loomed as Usher ordered us to “dance like it’s the last night of our lives.” These songs were aggressive, urgent, and, in a way, matched the panicked energy Americans felt when they looked at gas prices.
But “Just Dance” hit differently. Gaga was imploring us to dance, yes, but with a necessary caveat: “[You’re] gonna be okay.” Where her counterparts used EDM to drown our fears in tequila and beat drops, Gaga addressed them softly, head-on, while also supplying refuge and ecstasy. The repeated mantra of “be okay” catapulted “Just Dance” to a more rarefied space, where partying wasn’t just about numbing ourselves but finding genuine reassurance and comfort too.
By 2009, Gaga’s songs became more impassioned. They had to. Gay rights were under attack in America, with marriage equality a more pressing topic than ever. In an October 2009 speech, Gaga—who’d amassed a seismic LGBTQ+ following—screamed “Are you listening?” to then president Barack Obama, an operatic plea for him to implement change. Then, one week later, she dropped “Bad Romance,” a booming, industrial techno-pop song with an equally-as-effective battle cry: “Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah.” Nonsense? Absolutely, but impactful nonetheless. Gaga’s fans, whom she dubbed Little Monsters, put their “paws” up and howled this gibberish at the moon, mirroring the intensity of her speech.
Dancing to “Bad Romance” as a gay man at this time—wailing every “rah-rah” and “ooh-la-la”—felt like a form of political protest. On its face, the song is about embracing a lover’s imperfections, but it took on a life of its own given the moment it arrived. (In 2011, gay marriage was finally legalized in New York, and by then Gaga had released another anthem for her Little Monsters to dance and cry to: “Born This Way.”)
She came through again nine years later at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic with “Rain on Me.” “I’d rather be dry, but at least I’m alive,” Gaga and Ariana Grande harmonized like dark angels over a sticky Eurodance beat. The first time I heard this chorus was on one of my dumb little pandemic walks in April 2020. A friend sent me a 15-second, potato-quality leak of the song, and even then I knew it was special. “Rain on Me,” along with Gaga’s 2020 album Chromatica, went on to become antidotes for pandemic anxiety. Who knew a year when clubs were closed was actually the best time to release dance music? Pent up in our quarantine pods, Chromatica transformed our kitchens into the parties we longed to be at. The album’s theme of “dancing through the pain” hit harder in a worldwide pandemic than it ever could have in “normal times”—whatever that means these days.
There’s no shortage of escapist dance music in 2025, especially from female artists. After what felt like an eternity of sour, downtempo bedroom pop, the charts are finally bright again. Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” recalls the cheeky, frothy bliss of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream era. Charli XCX’s Brat has made unvarnished 2000s-era party culture cool again. And Chappell Roan’s theatrical aesthetic and anthemic songs hat-tip early Gaga. Even still, nothing hits quite like a banger from Gaga herself.
“Okay, let me turn ‘Abracadabra’ back on full volume,” a friend told me in response to a worrisome CNN article about medical debt and credit scores. Could there be a more appropriate reaction to the Lady Gaga pop experience? You’re still raging, you’re still smiling, but you’re also dealing with your shit. Somewhere in the glossy, candy-coated rush of the music, there’s a subconscious message that you’ll survive, that you’ll be okay. You just have to dance.
Christopher Rosa is the senior editor for NBC Entertainment and a former Glamour editor. Follow him at @chris.rosa92.
.jpg)
