As students begin to narrow their educational focus during high school, the prevalence of STEM-exclusive opportunities arises. For instance, the national Math Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta, had more than 2,200 chapters, circa 2015. Meanwhile, the English Honor Society has only about 1,250 chapters as of 2024 — demonstrating a disparity in funding and curated interest and insinuating English is a lower-valued subject.

Then, once high school students start applying to colleges, they also hunt for scholarships, where another disparity between STEM and non-STEM lies. About 17 percent of STEM-interested students receive scholarships, compared to 12.1 percent of non-STEM-interested students, according to a fact sheet published by Search Logistics. Additionally, more than 33 percent of private scholarships are awarded to students in STEM fields.

Due to the preference for STEM students, applicants who rely on scholarships to fund their college education are often encouraged to apply to these programs to increase their chances of receiving money. This pushes students away from non-STEM options based on the tangible financial benefits of STEM in college, regardless of their personal interests.

Even in college, STEM and non-STEM majors do not receive equal opportunities. For example, the event page on Handshake for Binghamton University’s recent Fall 2025 Job and Internship Fair stated, “All Binghamton University students in all majors and all class years are welcome and encouraged to attend.”

However, of the 122 organizations present, only one of them was largely related to the arts: Binghamton Sound, Staging and Lighting. Excluding governmental, law, education and business organizations, which I have put aside due to their mix of STEM and non-STEM attributes, 55.7 percent of organizations listed on the fair’s attending employers sheet sought Engineering, Sciences or Healthcare students.

After attending this event, I left feeling demoralized, believing that my majors had left me with no career path. As such, STEM-dominated career fairs like this unfairly obscure career opportunities for non-STEM students and promote the notion that only STEM fields will be lucrative upon graduation.

The Fleishman Career Center website also advertises that the top employers of their graduates are in the fields of technology, medicine, banking or other STEM fields. By highlighting the same types of companies that appeared at the career fair, University STEM programs garner higher enrollment due to the promise of securing these jobs after graduation.

Despite this type of promotion, STEM bachelor’s degree holders aged 25-29 averaged 3.2 percent unemployment, compared to 2.9 of all bachelor’s degree holders, according to 2018 report published by the National Center for Education Statistics. Moreover, when looking at employment rates of graduate occupations with a bachelor’s degree or higher, the non-STEM employment rate has increased by 2.1 percent. STEM has only increased by 0.3 percent between 2011 and 2019.

Considering this, the employment outcomes between the two are not substantial enough to warrant the rigorous push for students to pursue a STEM career path for fear of unemployment.

This cycle of promoting STEM students subsequently churns out STEM graduates that “dominate much of the policy discussion, [but] they have a small proportion of the jobs for college grads,” according to an article from the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.

Even so, STEM majors have been on the rise since 2011-12, with 287,415 students enrolled in STEM programs during that year and 437,834 students in 2020-21, according to the Digest of Education Statistics. This makes up about 16 and 21 percent of total students, respectively. Conversely, non-STEM majors have been decreasing since 2011-12, with 543,466 students enrolled and 482,970 students in 2020-21, or about 30 and 23 percent. Non-STEM majors included in this discussion span more fields than STEM, resulting in a larger percentage of total students.

Funding both influences and is influenced by these numbers. As it stands, the National Endowment for the Humanities appropriated $207 million in 2024, while the National Science Foundation appropriated $9.06 billion in 2024.

This tangibly enforces the unequal access and opportunities for interest discovery, community-based learning, scholarships and perceived employment opportunities.

Although the NEH covers only the humanities, not all non-STEM options, the discrepancy of billions of dollars between NEH’s approval and NSF’s approval in funds reflects and reinforces the education system’s preference for STEM. This tangibly enforces the unequal access and opportunities for discovery of interest, community-based learning, scholarships and perceived employment opportunities dissected above.

Furthermore, the current, incessant push for STEM throughout a student’s academic career diminishes their opportunity for discovering other passions, reinforces the perceived financial benefit of STEM majors and oversaturates the job market. To break the cycle of unequal opportunity and reduce the narrative of STEM’s superiority, funding, enrollment, scholarships and encouragement all must rise for non-STEM programs, allowing all students to flourish and feel confident in their futures.

Allison Bonaventura is a sophomore double-majoring in comparative literature and anthropology.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial. 

“The album is not for any pearl clutchers,” Carpenter claimed in an interview on CBS Mornings. “Man’s Best Friend” did spark significant controversy, particular surrounding the album cover, depicting Carpenter on her knees at the feet of a man, said to be pandering to the male gaze with a destructive and triggering effect on women. Others disagreed, asserting it would read satirically when the album came out, challenging the expectations of women’s sexuality as per her previous aesthetic in her sixth album “Short n’ Sweet.”

The album opens with its first single, “Manchild,” released on June 5, less than a year after the release of “Short n’ Sweet” and only four months after she released its deluxe edition. Down to the imagery of a bird riding a turtle, “Manchild” visually and lyrically portrays Carpenter’s hypocritical dynamic with men — she feels the need to jump between childish men despite calling them out for their ineptitudes in life and romance.

“Manchild,” like “Please Please Please” last year, spent a week at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It also charted number one in the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Both this song and the second single on the album feature extended fun dance breaks replicated online.

Released alongside the album’s release, Carpenter dropped that second single, “Tears,” with a music video starring American actor Colman Domingo in drag. The music video subverts expectations in multiple ways. First, the initial eerie landscape and 1950s-inspired horror cinematography quickly change to a fantastically sexy, disco-horror house, evoking imagery of the horror musical “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” Second, the title indicates a sad tone for the song, but, like the house she stumbles into, the song features some of her boldest lyrics yet — “I get wet at the thought of you” and “Tears run down my thighs.”

In response to critics of her daring lyrics, she said in the CBS Morning interview, “It’s like it’s almost too TMI. But I think about being at a concert with, you know, however many young women I see in the front row that are screaming at the top of their lungs with their best friends, and you can go like, ‘Oh, we can all sigh [in] relief like, ‘This is just fun.’ And that’s all it has to be.”

As for the rest of the album, the songs fit into a few distinct moods and genres.

First, the groovy and spicy songs — “When Did You Get Hot?” and “House Tour.” The two songs take opposite approaches to flirting with a man — the former using direct and sexual language and the latter using cheeky figurative language, which Carpenter assures is to be taken at face value — “And I promise none of this is a metaphor.”

Alongside “Tears,” these songs’ lyrics dance atop distinctive, funky beats. Despite the songs’ meanings, ironically, these are the only tracks on the album that are not labeled explicit.

Second, the songs somberly lamenting a faulty relationship she refuses to give up — “Sugar Talking,” “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night” and “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry.” These songs all take on a slower, more vulnerable mood.

“Sugar Talking” and “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night” reflect Carpenter’s attempts to carry on a relationship that does not serve either her or her partner. In “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry,” she confesses that her own mindset toward romance is partially to blame for her relationship failures.

Third, the cheerful songs disguising dissatisfaction in a relationship coming to an end — “My Man on Willpower,” “Never Getting Laid” and “Goodbye.” Returning to the use of hypocrisy in her songs, Carpenter employs witty and self-empowering catchphrases to disconnect herself from the pain of the final straw before the breakup. With their joyful tone, these songs adorn the album with the catchiest chorus melodies — “Goodbye” sounding reminiscent of ABBA’s classic hits.

Finally, the heartbroken songs concealed by coping lyrics — “Go Go Juice” and “Nobody’s Son.” Succeeding the flirting, lamenting and the break up, these songs similarly utilize a cheery tone to conceal the heartbreaking feeling of loneliness by “drinking to call” or “third wheeling.”

As a whole, these songs piece together a masterclass in subverting expectations, pushing the boundaries of feminine sexuality and satirical reflections on doomed relationships to romance. If you are one for cheeky lyrics and heartache, this album is worth a listen.

Rating: 4/5

Originally from California, 20-year-old Isella began releasing music in 2020, her style spanning alternative pop, indie, poetry and rock. She gained popularity online in 2023 by posting short-form videos of her breakout song “Hot Gum” — which currently has over 16 million streams on Spotify. The following year, Isella’s music extended well beyond her online fanbase when she opened for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour at Wembley Stadium in London in 2024. Only a month later, she released her EP, “I Can Be Your Mother,” and headlined a five-show tour through California.

A vital factor in the provocative and disconcerting psychological and emotional impact of Isella’s songwriting is her ingenious wordplay, which masterfully strips complex stories of the hypocrisies in the world into its most raw and brutal form. Exemplifying how she settles her songs amidst the discomfort of confrontation with reality, her song “All of Human Knowledge Made Us Dumb” explores individuals’ fleeting attention to real world connections after prolonged exposure to the vastness and ever-racing pace of technology.

Following her performance of this song in London, Isella told NME, “I’m walking around in a sea of phones while singing about technology.” After experiencing this hypocrisy live, she now leans into it further by curating a forced perspective for her viewers.

In recent shows, Isella has asked the crowd to hold up their phone flashlights while she walks through, making direct physical contact with audience members. Commenters, who only watched videos of this experience online, criticized the audience for experiencing their connection with her through their phone as she sang a warning against technology’s grasp on society. Others, however, noticed the intended irony she fostered to situate her viewers within the discomfort of their reality.

Underscoring her unsettling lyrics and messaging, Isella’s graphic aesthetic develops her themes behind her thought-provoking messaging. She played around with the visual of pregnancy for her 2024 EP, “I Can Be Your Mother,” depicting Isella with a baby bump on her back as though carrying the weight of a career. With the pregnancy on her back, the imagery feels inherently discomforting while calling out the burden of society’s demands of women that she addresses throughout the album.

To make these songs, Isella said she draws creative inspiration from poets like Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, ’90s alternative rock and her classical violin training. She described how she begins with poetry, later adding musical backing, or she starts with the production and adds phrases from past free writes to create the lyrics. Being a producer herself, her beats are forceful and diverse even within a single song.

In combination with the underlying beats, Isella incorporates piano, guitar and violin into her songs, using four separate instruments in her recent live shows — the latter of which sometimes functioning as a piercing siren between sections of a song.

In her live performances, Isella builds on the unsettling nature of her songs by adding heavy gasps, choking sounds and screams between lyrics. In the same vein, Isella’s quick-paced, frantic movements while performing live mirror the desperation in her lyrics. She traverses the entirety of the stage and climbs surrounding fixtures, striking dynamic imagery — even leaning over the barriers into the crowd and making contact with the faces of audience members. With the combination of these elements, Isella’s fervent stage presence befits her unnerving aesthetic and remains unmatched.

Touring since 2021, Isella started out performing in Australia, winning Musician of the Year at the 2022 Gold Coast Music Awards. In the following two years, Isella opened for Melanie Martinez, Tom Odell and Swift before starting her first world tour, You’ll Understand, Dick., in April 2025.

Isella is set to release her next EP, “I’m Camera,” on May 23. With Isella’s new EP coming soon and her popularity rising, her creative journey into the unsettling hypocrisy of the modern world is only just getting started.

These supplemental material items have the potential to evolve beyond just physicality and possess a connection to the intangible memories of experience. As a result, they can spark conversation and inspire experiences that will outlast the original memory owner. Through tying material items to experiences, their long-lasting influence defies impermanence, inspiring an ideology befitting of overcoming the indifferent nature of the human condition.

The human condition refers to the inherent limitations of humanity, such as the inevitability of endings. According to absurdist beliefs, this ending renders life and all endeavors meaningless. Rejecting the inevitability of their demise, humans, in conflict, search for life’s meaning and methods of fulfillment to stave off the disorientation of existing in a doomed state. To do so, individuals must recognize the ephemeral nature of life and use it as a motivator for acting on freedom to pursue desires. As mentioned, this pursuit is most commonly expressed through the acquisition of material objects or experiences, which both come with a unique set of desirable qualities. Whereas material objects exist concretely in time and space, allowing touch and perception by onlookers, experiences, alternatively, live and die with the owner’s time and are only kept ongoing by memory.

While material objects, when in good condition, prevail throughout time, the fleeting quality of experiences makes them more desirable to those grappling with their end. Seniors, reflecting on their lives, often regret not spending more time on experiences such as education, family activities, careers, mind development and travel, choosing later in life to ease the pain of regret by reengaging with lost opportunities. For these individuals, retrospective fulfillment does not stem from the number of items they own but from the engagement they have with a vast and diverse world.

Unfortunately, memory, like life, is finite and ever-diminishing. While nothing guarantees absolute memory retention, supplementing experiences with material items turns once fleeting moments and memories into long-lasting, tangible memories contained within these items.

Existing as photos, videos, memorabilia or souvenirs, these supplements transfigure an object into a vessel with sentimental value and the ability to evoke thoughts and feelings of a past event for a more complete remembrance.

With the presence of such an item within a person’s belongings, the material item acts as a catalyst for a chain reaction of interconnected experiences, beginning with conversations regarding the item and its deeper connection to a past time. As a result, the owner relives the memory through conversation while also inspiring the acquisition of a similar experience in the life of the listener.

Experiences supplemented by long-lasting tangible items strike the best balance of life fulfillment and defying impermanence. But it is not that simple. Due to the rampant consumption of this era, the desire to overconsume these supplements dilutes their capacity to fuel memory, leading consumers to rely on material items as a means of fulfillment.

A prime example exists in the tourist and concert attendee scene. Discussions of poor concert etiquette — the crowd records while quietly observing through their phone — and the deterioration of travel from sightseeing to photo opportunities exemplify the overconsumption of and an overreliance on material items and negatively characterize these behaviors. In these cases, consumerists rush to acquire material evidence of their experiences without paying mind to actually experiencing anything.

When life becomes more about taking the photo than living the experience, the material item becomes their primary source of fulfillment. Although in opposition to what is recommended above, for some, in the moment, or due to the current trend of publicization and commercialization of our lives on social media, this approach may feel successful in giving life meaning. These people may find meaning through the experience of taking the photo, monetizing their life or simply documenting their existence. Therefore, choosing either the acquisition of experiences or material items aims to immortalize a person.

Regardless of a person’s methods to immortalize themselves, we are still left with the question of how to defy impermanence. Is it leaving evidence of your physical existence in material items that will outlast you? Or, by inspiring actions in others, leaving your influence to prevail through time?

Instead, it is the rejection of the need to be immortalized. Through defying the desire for impermanence, a person’s limited lifespan no longer feels disorienting, but rather suggests things aren’t worthwhile because they last. As Albert Camus, a French author and absurdist, suggests the inevitability of an ending invites a person to explore the full extent of freedom through which they may create their own meanings.

Recently, the absurdist ideology trended on short-form social media with phrases along the lines of, “remembering I have free will.” This trend features a shift as someone reduced to normative conduct suddenly recognizes the vastness and diversity of their world, changing their behavior or activity to express their personal freedoms and desires.

This trend exemplifies a positive pursuit of meaning. From there, in everyday life, individuals must use the ephemeral nature of life as a motivator to fill life with desirable experiences, supplemented by tangible material items, which will outlast them and inspire others. By doing so, individuals boldly highlight their personal freedoms, life exploration and a rejection of discomfort in the human condition.

Allison Bonaventura is a freshman double-majoring in comparative literature and anthropology.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial. 

Artists like Lana Del Rey exemplify a branded aesthetic portraying an idealized lifestyle involving smoking and drug use. Due to her “sadcore” music style, her young, female audience finds her relatable. As these women are mostly high schoolers through young women in their mid-20s, they are still in a formative period of their lives, meaning they are especially susceptible to replicating Del Rey’s aesthetic in their lifestyles in an effort to be like their idol.

This means that other aspects of her image, including her clothing and hairstyles, femininity, sexuality and drug use, become an idealized aesthetic that feels “cool” to the young, female audience she captures. While celebrities cannot be held entirely responsible for the actions of their fanbase, their influence remains considerable to the point that simply holding something is a form of advertisement for that item.

In the visuals for her songs and albums, she smokes, including at some concerts in front of her live audiences. Similar to how artists will only wear or hold products of certain brands that sponsor them, by just holding and interacting with cigarettes, she advertises them, specifically, as a “cool girl” relatable product that will help them achieve the idealistic lifestyle portrayed in her music.

By not disclosing any warnings or negative consequences of smoking and drug use, artists with young, impressionable fans mislead their audience into associating drug use with a glamorized lifestyle. At the same time, with the normalization of drugs in culture, it can be hard to avoid interacting with media that glamorizes drugs.

Artists like Del Rey are not at fault for how drugs came to be so prevalent in mainstream culture, as drugs have been a focal point in the media for decades, but their contributions to that culture through their branding perpetuate the continuation and normalization of drug use in mainstream content and discourse.

Despite this, it is not always inherently problematic to reference or use drugs in music, such as when there is an obvious separation of reality between real life and a narrative an artist is portraying. This concept is most common in shows and movies that portray drug use, drinking, and smoking or vaping. Often, the movie does not suggest drug use but depicts a particular story that involves such concepts or lifestyles.

An artist who achieves something similar is Melanie Martinez, who tells the story of a created character called Cry Baby in an obviously fictional world. While her albums and worldbuilding draw from reality and her own life, the characters are clearly distinct from the fictional world they live in. As such, Martinez’s references to drugs and their presence in several music videos are not an explicit advertisement of her aesthetic but a supplement to the themes in the story she tells.

Alternatively, artists like Eminem, through the character Slim Shady, tell stories about drug use, even going so far as to reflect on the detriments it caused to his life. His song “Somebody Save Me” describes what his life may have looked like if he had not stopped using drugs, including how he would have missed integral moments in his daughter’s life. This reflective song, among others, provides a warning to his audience despite previously being a user himself.

The difference between these artists and Del Rey is that they utilize characters to discuss their opinions on drugs, whereas she claims not to be playing a character but just being herself. By choosing not to play a character and portraying herself authentically, Del Rey’s drug use in her brand is a public expression of her individual choices concerning her personal health.

Decisions about personal health are personal choices for all adults, including celebrities and artists like Del Rey, but due to her influence and platform, she ethically cannot promote and especially glamorize a dangerous lifestyle.

This dynamic creates a complicated situation in which artists must be somewhat accountable for the lifestyles they promote while simultaneously attempting to remain authentic. For Del Rey, as she does not explicitly promote an addictive lifestyle, her fanbase must, in part, be responsible for having good media literacy and understanding the nuance between safe use and addictive use.

While it can still be dangerous to some viewers to portray even recreational drug use in a glamorized lifestyle, celebrities and artists are not medical professionals and therefore cannot be considered reliable sources on drug education.

As such, consumers must observe the music industry and all other aspects of culture, with the ability to separate the idealistic lifestyles they see from celebrities from their individual reality. This means carefully interacting with the opinions of artists, celebrities and public figures.

It is unlikely that drug references in branding and songwriting will ever disappear from music, but holding artists and labels accountable for how drug references are made will begin to safeguard young audiences from dangerous behaviors.

A common argument suggests that poverty befalls marginalized races because of their values, but according to Alford Young Jr.’s study of low-income African American men, an ideal job “ranged from specific skilled, blue-collar work opportunities to emphases on job characteristics and qualities such as autonomy, freedom, and the capacity to engage creativity.” In addition to these noble values, Philippe Bourgois’ study of the sale of crack in Spanish Harlem shows the legitimacy of alternative value systems, where impoverished populations desire the dignity and upward movement of the American dream, often becoming aggressive private entrepreneurs to make it out of confined roles fast.

It is clear poverty in marginalized races cannot be a result of fundamentally wrong or nonwhite values — instead, a person’s “frame” and “repertoire” begin to explain the differences in their means to achieve upward mobility.

These terms are defined in “Reconsidering Culture and Poverty” — a frame is described as the premise that different individuals perceive the same event differently based on prior experiences and a repertoire is a list of strategies and actions in a person’s mind making them unlikely to engage with an action that is not in their list. Even while holding the same values, individuals must possess different frames and have access to different repertoires based on their environment and cultural upbringing.

Frame and repertoire are thus imbued with intersectional, intergenerational and cyclical barriers. Namely, access to economic, social and cultural capital offers a cyclical barrier to upward mobility for marginalized and economically disadvantaged individuals. Starting centrally in the cycle, educational opportunities differ socioeconomically — middle- and upper-class children inherit advantages from their parents who pass on behaviors and knowledge favorable to education systems and by extension, labor markets, compared to poor and working-class parents. Similarly, teachers tend to hold Black students to lower behavior standards and move to recommend more severe punishment as compared to white students.

As a result, lower-income students of color generally receive less educational opportunities and external motivations for actions like attending highly ranked universities. By missing these opportunities, they lose the social capital, the ability to network, job opportunities and the cultural capital of graduating from a prestigious college. Further, when seeking economic mobility, people may utilize their cultural capital — skills, education, network or charisma — as an advantage to gain other forms of capital. Without these, lower-income marginalized groups may struggle to reenter society in a different state from their parents before them, with only the skills their parents had to pass on to their children.

By losing these forms of capital, upward mobility becomes near impossible. Pierre Bourdieu expresses this cycle in his theory of social reproduction,  suggesting that “the social structures and hierarchies that exist within a society are perpetuated over time through the actions of individuals and institutions, resulting in the reproduction of class, race, and gender inequalities,” and offering us an intersectional view of culture.

Culture is a construct formed socially, politically, economically, institutionally and at the individual level. At each step, a person acquires their frame and repertoire as mentioned above, but, in the cases of lower-income marginalized communities, this often leads to a struggle between upward mobility and constructions on what is inherent to their race and class, resulting in self-destruction and stagnation.

James Baldwin wrote, “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” He was referring to several phenomena. One is the short-term cost of quality products versus the long-term cost of cheap products — such as $100 boots, which last for a decade, and $20 boots, which last for a year. The cheap boots will eventually cost double the expensive pair in the same decade upon repurchase. Culturally, this phenomenon is cemented in the rise of consumerist marketing that motivates buyers to want to fit in, pushing low-income individuals to participate in conspicuous consumption and the idea that affording the trendy item is expensive, but having it hides the class disparity.

Feeling trapped by these systems, low-income marginalized communities may blame the whiteness of the job market, turning to alternative methods of upward mobility. Whiteness here refers to the social construction of ideologies that result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color. Returning to Bourgois’ look into Spanish Harlem, there is a refusal to accept low-wage, entry-level jobs to avoid being exploited by the “White Man” by playing into society’s racist role-playing and affirming notions of culture. While these individuals feel dignified in their autonomy by working for themselves in the illicit economy of crack-selling, falling into this market essentially negates any potential to enter white-collar jobs, increase their capital and class as well as lower the status of “whiteness” of those positions to nonnormative work.

Falling into these behaviors is self-destructive, but based on the culture, frame and repertoire they forcibly learn, lower-income POC may be set up to fail. Should a person somehow defy the cycle, societal reinforcements — such as self-sabotage within one’s community — will continuously attempt to knock them back down. The crabs in the bucket theory describes how individuals may attempt to prevent others from gaining favorable positions despite the result bearing no effect on the attempted preventer. When culture is isolated as a rigid phenomenon, many in marginalized communities may aim to diminish the upward mobility of their group for fear of losing the niche culture found at the intersection between low-income and marginalized races.

These communities uphold their niche culture with dignity, so erasing it would not only diminish the culture’s merit over past generations but would also continue the history of stripping culture from minorities in favor of normative and white-dominated values. Therefore, this fear of losing culture to the rich white man is real and justly resisted, but that resistance to assimilation comes at the cost of poverty and remaining marginalized — this conjunction between culture and identity cannot be abandoned by intersectional thinking.

At the core, marginalized communities cannot be asked to lose their culture to climb the ladder. Instead, we must acknowledge that, at a fundamental level, the concepts of social, economic and cultural capital, often racist, elitist and classist, need correcting. From there, and with the prevention of the cyclical lack of opportunities and institutionalized barriers, low-income POC can retain the dignity found in their cultural values and experience comfortable living and social networks.

Allison Bonaventura is a freshman double-majoring in comparative literature and anthropology.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.

“MAYHEM” opens with the first single, “Disease,” released in October 2024. Gaga chose “Disease” as the opener because the energy of the song felt like a “dive into an ice-cold pool” of the chaos portrayed in the rest of the album. Her intentions proved successful as the strong sound and dark lyrics brought the song to the top 10 in the UK and the top 30 in the United States and Canada. The music video accompanying the song showcased an intense atmosphere and a variety of characters all played by Gaga, reflecting the different aspects of her chaos that she wanted to explore in “MAYHEM.”

The second song, “Abracadabra,” was released just one month before the album during a commercial break for the Super Bowl LIX, skyrocketing to top five in the UK and top 20 in the United States, Australia and Canada and going viral across short-form media like TikTok. Many attempted to recreate the distinct and visually impressive choreography featured in the music video and praised Gaga for including dancing for seated dancers and cane users. Alongside the choreography, the use of experimental fashion and a limited color palette created a dancing sea of colors.

Between the two music videos, Gaga’s bold, creative visual image shines through, this time in a darker, witchy and somewhat frantic aesthetic.

Many of the songs on “MAYHEM” fit into the general characteristics of alternative, disco and love song genres, including “Garden Of Eden,” “Killah (feat. Gesaffelstein),” “Vanish Into You,” “Zombieboy,” “LoveDrug” and “Don’t Call Tonight.” Each song comes with a unique take on love, often referencing coming alive, rebirth and or the undead. These songs, along with “Abracadabra” and “Disease,” would fit into a funky party playlist because of their interesting, multi-layered beats and catchy repetitive lyrical phrasing.

Additionally, many of these songs use a juxtaposition of a more staccato sound in their verse and the end of the chorus while using a more smooth legato sound for the majority of the chorus. By changing up the balance between these types of sounds, it further differs the tracks from each other.

“Perfect Celebrity” fits into the energetic alternative style of the other songs, but it centers around the dynamic between a celebrity and the public. It exercises Gaga’s frustration with the industry and being in the public eye while also raising concern about the motivations behind her work.

The second half of “Mayhem” features a genre shift, with songs like “How Bad Do U Want Me” coming across like a mixture of Taylor Swift’s love song lyrics and repetitive syllable phrasing and Gaga’s distinct funky beat. “Shadow Of A Man” sounds similar to the other tracks but harkens back to Michael Jackson’s production and high-energy instrumentals. “The Beast” focuses on the vocals with a slower, more subtle beat, feeling more stripped down to its bones than the rest of the album.

Finally, the last two songs are ballads, the first being “Blade of Grass,” an emotional, slower song with a familiar melody. The song keeps with the darker romantic tone of the album, inspired by her relationship with her fiance, Michael Polansky. The song sticks out from the others due to its pacing and tempo on the piano. Despite that, the heavy emotion matches with the unwieldy chaos featured in the majority of “MAYHEM.”

“Die With a Smile” is the final song on the album and a collaboration with Bruno Mars. Released in August 2024, this song was not originally intended to be included on “MAYHEM.” As a result, it falls into a completely different aesthetic and genre — the only theme it shares with the rest of “MAYHEM” is love. The song was a huge success, becoming Gaga’s sixth No. 1 hit and winning the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 67th Grammy Awards. This was Gaga’s 14th Grammy win in her nearly two-decade-long career.

Overall, Lady Gaga’s “MAYHEM” offers her listeners a modern, whimsical twist to her old music, and these songs fit perfectly into a funky party playlist.

Rating: 3/5

However, publicity does not exist in a vacuum. While it is undeniably true that celebrity voices reach more ears, inherently forcing idealized standards on celebrities curates a flawed cyclical system of celebrity behavior and public scrutiny. The hypocritical and over-scrutinized critique of celebrities forces a tradeoff between authenticity and publicity. This tradeoff provides a celebrity with no correct answer — either they must preserve their image by putting forward ideas that will keep them relevant and will not disrupt positive press, or they may remain true to themselves and risk receiving negative press and less publicity. Then, the cycle begins again at the mercy of the media and its consumers.

Knowing a celebrity will continuously meet backlash regardless of choosing the former option, it seems morally essential that a celebrity must then choose to distance themselves from fame to maintain their agency. Simultaneously, the pursuit of relevance becomes vanity when behaving for fame equates to pushing beliefs that no longer represent oneself as a person. However, existing in fame and the desire to stay within it should not be critiqued by the masses, as celebrities should be allowed to want to keep their job.

Celebrities exist as an idealized version of everyday people and therefore must meet a higher standard of transparency, moral obligation and political engagement. According to a piece published by Cambridge University Press, because celebrities are seen as influential to all, especially the younger, impressionable generations, they end up serving as role models and exemplars of ethical, political and aesthetic norms and behaviors. As such, their stances are more scrutinized and highly weighed than an average person’s, placing them in a pedagogical role in a childlike society.

There are various ways celebrities may grapple with and sustain such fame. To avoid the backlash and to ensure they stay relevant, a celebrity may reduce themself to “the person everyone wanted me to be,” as Taylor Swift said in her “Miss Americana” documentary. Equipped with publicists using expensive strategies to keep themselves in the limelight and preserve their image, celebrities become an ever-adapting and always inadequate byproduct of society. This claustrophobic circumstance comes with immense societal anxiety and an unhealthy desire for perfection. While this approach to relevancy increases a celebrity’s shelf life, it demonstrates little to no autonomy — a slippery slope in which a celebrity departs farther and farther from the person they truly are.

Another approach suggests that a celebrity will remain relevant given their talents, even if their relationship with influencing the youth is somewhat decreased. S. Mark Young, one of the authors of “The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America,” states, “Meryl Streep doesn’t need to be out there promoting anything because she’s Meryl Streep and she has achieved her greatness because of her talent.” In this circumstance, the celebrity maintains a connection to entertainment, but they can exist without the added obligation to engage in or publicize their political and social beliefs — a seemingly ideal situation.

This freedom better allows celebrities to have their opinions as a typical person does. But, as media outlets go to further depths to uncover every detail of celebrities’ lives, this ideal becomes just that — a fiction that will never come to pass so long as media outlets continue to intrude on the personal lives of celebrities.

Other celebrities may choose to be transparent, using their platform to advocate for their beliefs. Recently, at the 2025 Grammys, Chappell Roan and Doechii used their acceptance speeches to acknowledge unlivable wages for developing artists and the underrepresentation of Black women in hip-hop, respectively. Additionally, during her rise to fame, Roan repeatedly placed her mental health first when dealing with paparazzi and performances. All of these actions came with significant press coverage and commentary, both in praise and condemnation. For these artists, for now, social commentary has led to additional dialogue surrounding their perceived bravery, which is not always the case.

Because of this phenomenon, society will often force celebrities to choose between the press and fighting for what they believe in. By choosing to allow their relevance to take a back seat to engage with their beliefs, a celebrity demonstrates a strong power of selflessness and integrity. These people may shrink back from celebrity status because, morally, they need to put their efforts into something more productive. While it is unfortunate that a celebrity must choose between the two, the act of choosing the morally superior and authentic path makes them the epitome of a good influence on the masses — an influence that will, disappointingly, not be covered by the press.

Sophia Bush, a “Time’s Up” proponent, Alicia Keys, co-founder of the nonprofit “Keep a Child Alive” and celebrities in general “who are doing the great things don’t get a whole lot of press.” Media outlets have continuously demonstrated their general disinterest in the productive actions of celebrities in material and large-scale social progress. As a result, the public goes unknowing, and celebrities find themselves with unending consequences for holding both authenticity and publicized fame.

Ultimately, a celebrity often wants to remain a celebrity, and their efforts to do so cannot be undermined, even if they are not entirely authentic. Jean-Paul Sartre used a waiter to demonstrate the formation of public identity. A waiter in a café “plays” at being a waiter, adopting the attitude and gestures that are expected of him by the customers, and “the public ‘demands’ certain behaviors from the waiter, limiting him to the sole function of being a waiter and defining the characteristics of how he should behave.” Considering this, a celebrity who desires to remain one should accommodate to some degree what is expected of their role of being famous, which in some cases may bend their authenticity.

As a society, we must remember that being a celebrity is a job, and any working person should be allowed to want to keep their position and excel. With that, there is no “perfect way” to act as a celebrity and intense public scrutiny must stop when it neglects to consider a celebrity’s intentions and personal necessities.

Allison Bonaventura is a freshman double-majoring in comparative literature and anthropology.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.