As audiences celebrate Lady Gaga’s musical resurgence, Christians should steer clear of its dark subject matter

One recent morning, scrolling through the a.m. newsfeed, I happened upon a headline on Lady Gaga as the double heading host and musical guest star on Saturday Night Live.

Figuring she’d probably be performing the latest hit single I’d been hearing about, Abracadabra, I searched up a video of the performance on YouTube, and was shocked by what I found. Dressed in red and like a literal devil’s handmaiden, Gaga fronted a group of dancers all in black, enclosed in a house-shaped form accompanied by lullaby music that burst into thumping bass. Morphing into different, carefully choreographed formations atop her dancers, Gaga commanded in her familiar throaty belt: 

Pay the toll to the angels drawing circles in the clouds

Keep your mind on the distance when the devil turns around

Hold me in your heart tonight in the magic of the dark moonlight

Save me from this empty fight in the game of life.

The resounding theme of the starlet’s single and the other songs of her current iteration seem centred around a preoccupation with death

The resounding theme of the starlet’s single and the other songs of her current iteration seem centred around a preoccupation with death. In this song alone, biblical themes, and not the encouraging ones, are everywhere; humans paying a debt to fallen angels, captivity to the devil, temptation not to guard our hearts against evil, sin, salvation, trances, foreign tongues, casting spells. The song is overwhelmingly catchy, but the chorus and the title itself, have fans emphatically repeating magic themed incantations, whether they know it or not.

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For her second musical performance, Killah, the tone changed to more of a post-punk, glam rock vibe with Gaga gyrating around in mishappen costume, one hand shaped like a gun with the other tightly gripping her mike. Within a few seconds, she’s identified herself as a “murderer in disguise” who loves the taste of blood.

The lyrics this time are sexual, angry and man-hating. Before we know it, the singer and her dancers have cast themsevles on their backs, legs writhing up through the air over yellow crime scene tape as she croons in a high-pitched, sing songy tone:

 I’m a killah, and boy you gonna die tonight

I’m a killah, killah, killah, killah.

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You may see this imagery as harmless, but I’ll remind you of Lady Gaga’s influence. Before her recent cinematic flop in the newest Joker movie/musical, only a handful of years ago, she won an Oscar for her song, Shallow in A Star is Born. Her recent single with Bruno Mars, Die With A Smile, has ranked high among chart topping singles in the last 30 weeks. Abracadabra, is currently peaking in the top three.

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For 17 years now, Gaga has consistently been a rewarded figure of our popular culture. Although recent headlines centre around her age, she’s a decade or more older than other familiar chart toppers. It’s her uncanny knack for personalizing popular music across an ever widening span of genres to the thrill of the masses, that keeps her relevant.

Lady Gaga is a visually captivating human karaoke machine, but the offerings on Mayhem her seventh studio album, make one wonder if she’s designated “demonic” as her genre de rigueur. The music video for the album’s first single, Disease, (you’d be hard pressed to find another mega-artist who’s released a track about sickness) takes from the cinematic theme of graphic horror thriller meets Edward Scissorhands.

Gaga plays both victimized S&M zombie corpse and the gruesome, menacing, black Lady Death pursuing her. The chorus, “I could play the doctor, I can cure your disease. If you were a sinner, I could make you believe…” should make us all shudder, the unbeliever at the disturbing imagery, and believers at the very real power of darkness that lies beneath.