The word Abracadabra, now used by magicians to dazzle children and drunk wedding guests, began its life as something rather more serious. Its origins - Hebrew or Aramaic, depending on who you ask - translate roughly to "I create what I speak," which is an admirably bold claim for a word that has since been largely reduced to a puff of smoke and a rabbit in a hat.
The first recorded use of Abracadabra appears in the Liber Medicinalis, a Roman medical text from the second century, in which the physician Serenus Sammonicus suggested malaria sufferers wore the word inscribed in the shape of a triangle on an amulet. How this was supposed to cure them remains something of a mystery, though given the state of Roman medicine, it was at least no worse than the alternative.
In 2025, Abracadabra found a new life as the title of a Lady Gaga song - one that, despite borrowing the name of an ancient healing spell, is more concerned with existential struggles than eliminating mosquito-borne diseases.
"Abracadabra" appears as the second song on
Mayhem, Gaga's seventh album, and was released as its third single following "
Die With A Smile," and "
Disease," two titles that sound alarmingly like rejected names for songs about malaria.
"Abracadabra,"
Gaga explained to Elle, is about "facing the challenge of life and the challenge of the night and finding the magic in it all."
The song introduces the figure of "the lady in red," a spectral presence that, in folklore, is usually a tragic figure: doomed, vengeful, or overly attached to the idea of dramatic entrances. In Gaga's hands, however, she becomes something else: an internal voice, an adversary, a mirror reflecting one's self-doubt.
"The lady in red is all of you that puts you to the test. Your internal monologue. 'Can you do it? Can you do it? Will you do it? Are you good enough? Can you handle it?,' said Gaga to Elle. "In a lot of ways, the song is about dealing with that challenge to yourself and very often the world around us can reflect it back to us as well. I wanted to explore the question, 'What does it feel like to thrive and not just be surviving all the time?'"
Phantom of the dance floor, come to me
Sing for me a sinful melody
With "Abracadabra,", Gaga wanted to explore the metaphor of perseverance on the dance floor. "The dance floor is – for me, anyway – it has always been the place where I try to improve myself as a human being," she explained. "How do I work harder? Have more passion? How do I give more of my authentic self? How do I earn my spot as a performer?"
Of course, this being Lady Gaga, the song arrives with a suitably dramatic music video that she directed with Parris Goebel and Bethany Vargas. The aesthetic is red, black, and white and features a dance battle between two sides of Gaga, with 40 dancers channeling the energy of her Born This Way era. "The category is: dance or die," she proclaims at the start of the video, which is quite the ultimatum, though one suspects the dancers were already aware of the stakes.
Lady Gaga wrote the song with its producers, Cirkut and Andrew Watt. The same three also wrote "Disease."
Musically, "Abracadabra" nods to the past by sampling Siouxsie and the Banshees' 1981 song "
Spellbound." The band members - Siouxsie Sioux, John McGeoch, Steven Severin, and Budgie - are all credited.
Gaga premiered the song in classic pop-star fashion, first teasing a snippet outside her hotel in Paris after performing at the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, then unveiling it in full during a commercial break at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, where she had just won Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for "Die With A Smile."
The baby boomers among you will recognize this isn't the first song to bear the title Abracadabra. The Steve Miller Band's
1982 hit of the same name took a far more straightforward approach, focusing on romantic attraction rather than existential struggle. Where Miller's "Abracadabra" was about a woman so bewitching that he felt "wrapped up in a kind of magic," Gaga's version is about summoning the courage to persevere in life's great performance. And if that isn't the most Lady Gaga thing imaginable, we don't know what is.
Gaga
performed "Abracadabra" on the March 8, 2025 episode of
Saturday Night Live. It was her fifth musical guest appearance on the musical sketch show and her first since 2016.
"Abracadabra" won for Best Direction and Best Art Direction at the 2025 Video Music Awards, where Lady Gaga also received Artist Of The Year. At the ceremony, a performance of the song from her Mayhem Ball tour show at Madison Square Garden was shown.
