Perfect Celebrity

"Perfect Celebrity" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Lady Gaga, released as the fourth track from her studio album Mayhem (2025). An electropop and trip hop song which has been stylistically compared to songs by Nine Inch Nails, the song was produced by Gaga, Cirkut, and Andrew Watt, and was composed by the latter two alongside Gesaffelstein. "Perfect Celebrity" was first previewed on February 24, 2025, and was released on the album on March 7. The track received generally positive reviews from music critics, who praised its sound and deemed it as a standout on the album despite its "tired" subject matter.
Lady Gaga began writing the studio album Mayhem after her fiancé Michael Polansky convinced her to make a new pop album. Gaga noted that the song was inspired by the band The Cure and their song "Never Enough", and that she felt like the song "had been inside of me for 15 years". After having finished the song, she had briefly considered turning the entirety of Mayhem into a grunge album, before being persuaded against the idea by Polansky. The song was originally announced as the fourth track of the album on February 18, 2025. It was subsequently previewed on February 24, 2025, during an interview for InStyle.
"Perfect Celebrity" is an electropop, trip hop, and arena rock song, described as being "electro-grunge" by Stephen Daw of Billboard and "alt-goth" by Robert Moran of The Sydney Morning Herald. Instrumentally, the song consists of heavy synthesizers, keyboards, and an "onslaught of lashing guitars". Multiple critics have stylistically compared the song to those by Nine Inch Nails, while Alim Kheraj of Dazed additionally compared the song to those by Van Halen and Ed Potton of The Times likened Gaga's vocal performance to that of Madonna. Gaga described "Perfect Celebrity" as being "probably the most angry song" on the album.
Lyrically, the song focuses on Gaga's relationship with fame, with Richard Burn of Rolling Stone UK writing that it "speaks of a star that has felt a lot of torture and pressure because of said stardom". Gaga additionally stated that the song touched on the duality between the personal and public sides of a celebrity. Dylan Kickham of Nylon observed many references to other songs by Gaga in the lyrics of "Perfect Celebrity", including nods to the Chromatica song "Plastic Doll" and the unreleased song "Princess Die". Steven Horowitz of Variety also noted similarities between the lyrics of "Perfect Celebrity" and "Paparazzi", while CJ Thorpe-Tracey of The Quietus instead commented how Gaga had already "mined the topic [of fame] to death" on Born This Way.
"Perfect Celebrity" received generally positive reviews from music critics. Both Daw and Chris Hedden of Screen Rant declared it as the best song on Mayhem in their rankings of the album's tracks, with the former citing its rock sound and concluding that "there really isn't much to hate on this glorious song". Mary Siroky of Consequence similarly considered it a standout on the album, while Marcus Wratten of PinkNews called the song the "nucleus" of Mayhem, praising its lyrical vividness. Stephen Ackroyd of Dork praised the song for embodying "the kind of wry pop satire only Gaga can pull off", while Joey Nolfi of Entertainment Weekly lauded the song as a "defiant middle finger to those who still think, after two decades, that they can put [Gaga] in a box". However, Alexa Camp of Slant criticized the song for "lack[ing] invention", despite praising its catchiness. Lindsay Zoladz of The New York Times similarly lauded the song as a "sonic highlight" of Mayhem, yet called its subject matter "tired".
On March 11, 2025, Gaga performed an acoustic version of "Perfect Celebrity" live on The Howard Stern Show.
Credits are adapted from Apple Music.