Someone Had to Take the Throne

Lady Gaga stopped wanting to be Lady Gaga. That’s not a criticism—A Star Is Born showed she was capable of something quieter and more honest, and she took that path. But it left a vacancy: the specific frequency of loud, theatrical, unashamed pop maximalism that Gaga had occupied since "Just Dance." Not everyone can operate there. It takes a particular kind of commitment to spectacle that most people find unsustainable over time.

Ava Max showed up in late 2018 with "Sweet But Psycho" and announced, without quite saying so, that she was interested in the vacancy. The song is built like a pop trap: a hook that lodges in the brain stem and refuses to leave, lyrics that function as warning and seduction simultaneously, a vocal riding the production rather than being buried by it. It hit number one in Germany, which matters because the German chart at that point was deeply dominated by local rap—the kind of placement that says something is doing something right beyond pure algorithmic luck.

She’d already done "Into Your Arms" with Witt Lowry and "Not Your Barbie Girl," which positioned her clearly: here is someone interested in pop as a space for genuine attitude rather than pure aesthetic. The Gaga comparison is probably too easy, but it’s also not wrong. The theatrical instinct, the high-concept imagery, the sense that every single is a statement of intent rather than just content. Whether she has what it takes to sustain that over a decade—the relentlessness it requires, the willingness to keep escalating—was impossible to know then and still isn’t entirely clear. What I can say is that "Sweet But Psycho" is an absolute earworm, and in late 2018 that felt like enough.