Lady GaGa

Lady Gaga: Chromatica review – Gaga rediscovers the riot on her most personal album

A criticism often levelled at Lady Gaga is that the fantastical imagery she constructs around her albums eclipses the music itself. But it’s a sliding scale – and one that certainly mattered less when she was knocking out undeniable dance-pop party starters like Poker Face and Just Dance, or cementing her status as pop’s freaky outlier on the twisted Bad Romance.

That she appeared in alien-like form in that song’s video made perfect sense: here was a chameleonic pop superstar in the vein of Bowie, Prince and Madonna opening a portal to an escapist dimension. Later, it made sense that she would lean into the imagery of hair metal on 2011’s gloriously OTT, Springsteen-referencing Born This Way. Yet on 2013’s bloated Artpop –

billed as an exploration of the “reverse Warholian” phenomenon in pop culture, whatever that may be, and featuring at least one performance in which she employed a “vomit artist” to puke green paint on her chest – the aesthetic felt more like desperate distraction tactics.

Seemingly bruised by that album’s relative commercial failure (2.5m global sales compared with debut album The Fame’s 15m), she disowned dance-pop altogether on 2016’s Joanne. Ludicrous lobster hats and sinewy meat dresses were swapped for pink stetsons and denim cut-offs, while early producer RedOne’s churning synthpop was replaced by Mark Ronson’s rustic warmth.

Collaborators included Florence Welch, Josh Homme and Father John Misty, while the album’s stripped-back sound pushed the rockist assumption that quieter somehow equals more authentic. Its middling success was quickly superseded by the Oscar-winning, chart-topping movie A Star Is Born, in which Gaga’s character Ally was locked in a plastic pop v heartfelt rock authenticity war.

But, as ever, it’s all about packaging, and Joanne was as much of a pose as Artpop. In many ways, the ballad-free, dancefloor-primed Chromatica represents not only Gaga’s most personal record, but her most straightforward.

Obviously there’s a conceptual framework – that title, despite sounding like a Mac software update, actually represents a planet anchored by equality and inhabited by “kindness punks” – but it feels much lighter than before. As Gaga said in a recent interview with Zane Lowe, she prioritised “simple messaging”, a phrase that would have been reverse-Warholed up its own backside a few years ago

Fun and dumb lead single Stupid Love aside, the majority of Chromatica’s 13 short and to the point songs (ignoring three orchestral interludes that feel beamed in from another album) dig into the person behind the facade. On dark centrepiece 911, she details her reliance on antipsychotic medication (“Keep my dolls inside diamond boxes /

Save ’em ’til I know I’m gon’ drop this”) over a chugging swirl of industrial synths, while opener Alice dismisses Gaga’s damaging obsession with perfection over a sugary house confection. Babylon, meanwhile, buoyed by classic house piano and a soul-stirring choir, pulls off the very Gaga trick of conflating the big and the small, touching on the Bible, ancient mythology and, as she’s done ever since the start, the complexities of fame.

The healing power of dance, cruelly frustrated by the current lockdown situation, rushes through the album like cheap poppers, with the 90s house pop of the Ariana Grande duet Rain on Me acknowledging trauma before dragging it on to a sticky provincial nightclub floor. The ludicrous Elton John collaboration Sine From Above – which, with its panpipe-inflected beat and unstoppable euphoric rush, would win Eurovision on any given year – digs deeper into this simple idea that music can soothe even the most damaged soul.

That song ends with an unexpected shift into cranium-rattling drum’n’bass, a fleeting taste of experimentation that feels oddly missing elsewhere. While some of Gaga’s best work was made quickly, often on the road in tour buses, the songs on Chromatica were passed around from producer to producer apparently to free up the process.

(Strangely, this is the first album not to feature Gaga as a listed producer, with the credits naming everyone from BloodPop to EDM producer Axwell to noise merchant Skrillex, while maximalist alt-pop producer Sophie – who confirmed her involvement back in 2018 – is noticeably absent.)

At times, as on the generic Eurodance double-whammy of Free Woman and Fun Tonight, it means the songs feel overworked: sometimes their often short running times deny them space to breathe (the claustrophobic Plastic Doll). Sour Candy, a collaboration with K-pop girl band Blackpink, falls disappointingly flat: aiming for the sweaty throb of deep house, it ends up sounding like a dashed off, cheaply produced interlude.

Gaga is on much safer ground gliding around the joyous French house swirl of Replay, which has a startling lyric about burying trauma in graves and scratching at the dirt of her psyche. It’s another example of how, after years of using her music to try to heal other people – be it her gay fanbase on Born This Way, or her family on Joanne, an album named after her dead aunt – Chromatica finally turns that gaze inwards without ending the party. Unsurprisingly Gaga’s truest self was always going to be as loud as possible.

We first saw a glimpse of Chromatica – the fictional planet Lady Gaga has created with her sixth album of the same name – in the music video for lead single ‘Stupid Love’. The video opens with text that explains that while the world “rots in conflict”, many tribes are fighting for dominance, including “the Kindness punks”, a tribe Gaga leads, who fight for peace. Gaga and her gang – a group dancers clad in hot-pink Mad Max costumes – break up fights between with other factions of warriors in an extra-terrestrial desert, eventually restoring order.

Chromatica, she’s since explained, can be thought of both as an inclusive place where all sounds and colours mix. But it’s also an inclusive frame of mind, she told Zane Lowe in a recent interview: “I don’t know that I’ve ever made an album that wasn’t on Chromatica in some type of way, meaning like my frame of mind is always a part of my music, and this is just my way of kind of expressing, even in a both literal and abstract way.”

It’s high concept – albeit a slightly confusing one – but what else would we expect from Lady Gaga? This is the artist who’s consistently reinvented herself over the course of the past decade. Take a genre 180 and drop an album of jazz standards (2014’s ‘Cheek to Cheek’ with Tony Bennett) or country tunes (2016’s ‘Joanne’)? Sure! Become an Oscar-nominated actress in a smash-hit remake of A Star Is Born? Why not!

Lady Gaga – ‘Chromatica’ review: pure pop celebration from an icon in a world of her own

For ‘Chromatica’, though, Gaga has returned to the effervescent dance-pop she first broke the charts with back in 2009 (who could forget her world-changing debut single ‘Just Dance’?). As she explained in an Apple Music interview: “I’m making a dance record again, and this dancefloor it’s mine and I earned it, and all that stuff that I went through… I don’t have to feel pain about it anymore. It can just be a part of me and I can keep going.” Writing the album helped Gaga heal her personal pain – and this perseverance permeates ‘Chromatica’.

Take smash hit Ariana Grande collaboration ‘Rain on Me’, which may just be Gaga’s best song since 2011’s ‘Born This Way’. Over euphoric synth-pop instrumentals and strutting disco beats, Gaga purrs “I’d rather be dry, but at least I’m alive” in a fist-pumping moment of pure jubilation. There can be 100 songs you’ve written, and 99 don’t leave an impact, but all it takes is one as good as ‘Rain On Me’ to remain a pop icon.

House-tinted thumper ‘Enigma’ is a celebration of lust (“We could be lovers, even just tonight”), while electro-pop lead single ‘Stupid Love’ is concerned with the joy of being head-over-heels in love (“You’re the one that I’ve been waiting for / Gotta quit this cryin’”). That isn’t to say that there aren’t heavier moments – the Daft Punk-inspired ‘911’, which is about antipsychotic medication, sees Gaga admit

“My biggest enemy is me / pop a 911″ via robotic vocals. But each song is wrapped up in healing and kindness, accompanied by empowering lyrics and triumphant melodies. The shimmering ‘Free Woman’ sees Gaga victoriously move forward after being sexually assaulted by a music producer, preaching: “

The album is best listened to in full, with the cinematic orchestral passages linking the songs together and acting as a respite between each of the break-neck pop bangers. Occasionally it threatens to become a cliché – ‘Fun Tonight’ threatens to turn into Jess Glynne-radio fodder and inoffensive penultimate tune ‘1000 Doves’ fails to live up to the ecstasy of its predecessors. But for the most part ‘Chromatica’ is pure joy.

There are unexpected moments, though – particularly Gaga’s collaboration with Elton John. The two have been pals for over a decade – she’s even godmother two Elton John’s two sons – and previously teamed up for dramatic, piano-led awards ceremony performances and the soft-rock Gnomeo & Juliet soundtrack song ‘Hello Hello’. Given their past works, would it have been save to assume the two artists would work on a ballad together?

Absolutely not: ‘Sine From Above’ is basically what a heady night out at Glastonbury’s Shangri La with Elton and Gagz would sound like. With PC Music-tinted vocals and wild club production that fuses drum-and-bass and Eurodisco with ear-worm hooks, it’s brilliantly bizarre.

If collaborating with Elton John was her way of embracing the pop music’s past, Gaga also looks to the present and future, teaming up with K-pop group BLACKPINK on ‘Sour Candy – a ‘90s house smasher filled with slithering vocals (which flit between English and Korean) and a throbbing bassline.

On ‘Chromatica’ Gaga has fully embraced creating a pure pop album. The record is littered with catchy choruses and glossy production – but it goes deeper than that. ‘Chromatica’ is “about healing and it’s about bravery”, she explained before the album came out, adding: “sound is what healed me in my life period, and it healed me again making this record”. You can certainly hear that. From the exhilarating melodies to the positive, hope-filled lyrics, ‘Chromatica’ is a celebration – and a well-deserved one at that

Lady Gaga Explains Meaning Of ‘Chromatica’ Album Title

Led by single ‘Stupid Love,’ the project serves as her sixth studio album and the solo follow-up to 2016’s ‘Joanne.’ It also follows the ‘A Star Is Born’ movie soundtrack, which spawned chart-topper ‘Shallow.’

With all the excitement surrounding the LP, attention is turning to the meaning of its title.

Now, Gaga is opening up about its rooting.“The symbol for Chromatica has a sine wave in it, which is the mathematical symbol for sound, and it’s from what all sound is made from, and, for me, sound is what healed me in my life period, and it healed me again making this record, and that is really what Chromatica is all about. It’s about healing and it’s about bravery as well and it’s really like, when we talk about love I think it’s so important to include the fact that it requires a ton of bravery to love someone.

“BloodPop® [who executive produced Chromatica with Lady Gaga] brought it up, and we talked about how Chromatica was essentially on its own when you first look at it, it seems to be about colors and all the different colors and also music is made of a chromatic scale, you know?

So it’s all the colors, all the sounds, you know, so we, we’re talking about inclusivity and life and also a lot of what we see around us and what we’re experiencing is math, which is very much like music and and sound is math as well. So we talked about that, and then I sort of went back and I said, “

OK, well, yeah, it’s inclusivity but it’s really a way of thinking,” you know, it’s not just, “Oh, Chromatica, we’re being inclusive with all the colors, all the people,” and when I say, “All the colors, all the people,” I mean way more than we could possibly fathom.

I think that we’re actually operating on a completely rudimentary level where we square things off into very simplified colors when actually we’re all extremely different in a vast variety of ways that stem from both, like, genetics as well as epigenetics, like, we’re all completely different and I thought OK, well maybe,

Chromatica is a frame of mind. And that is my frame of mind, and I don’t know that I’ve ever made an album that wasn’t on Chromatica in some type of way, meaning like my frame of mind is always a part of my music, and this is just my way of kind of expressing,

even in a both literal and abstract way, that, like, making music and putting it out into the world is my perspective on life, and it’s also my gift to the world in the best way that I can, and I think that everyone on any given day is doing the absolute best that they can do, and this is my perspective, and here it is, and it’s always been my perspective, but now I know that it was my perspective.

……………………………………………..

FUN TONIGHT

Feelin’ something that I can’t explain (Oh)
Think it’s a wound I still entertain (Oh)
I’d do anything to numb the flame (Oh)
I guess I’m just on fire these days (Oh)
I can’t see straight, I can’t see me
There’s too much hurt caught in between
Wish I could be what I know I am
This moment’s hijacked my plansI’m feelin’ the way that I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ with you (Ooh, ooh)
I stare at the girl in the mirror, she talks to me too
Yeah, I can see it in your face
You don’t think I’ve pulled my weight
Maybe it’s time for us to say goodbye ’cause
I’m feelin’ the way that I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ with you
I’m not havin’ fun tonightYou love the paparazzi, love the fame
Even though you know it causes me pain
I feel like I’m in a prison hell
Stick my hands through the steel bars and yellWhat happens now? I’m not okay
And if I scream, you walk away
When I’m sad, you just wanna play
I’ve had enough, why do I stay?I’m feelin’ the way that I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ with you (Ooh, ooh)
I stare at the girl in the mirror, she talks to me too
Yeah, I can see it in your face
You don’t think I’ve pulled my weight
Maybe it’s time for us to say goodbye ’cause
I’m feelin’ the way that I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ with you
I’m not havin’ fun tonight

BABYLON

We only have the weekend
You can serve it to me, ancient-city style
We can party like it’s B.C.
With a pretty sixteenth-century smil
It’s the thing that you bring
That you bring, that you bring
Him, you and me
That’s gossip

Strut it out, walk a mile
Serve it, ancient-city style
Talk it out, babble on
Battle for your life, Babylon
That’s gossip, what you on?
Money don’t talk, rip that song
Gossip, babble on
Battle for your life, Babylon

[Post-Chorus]
Ba-Ba-Babylon
Gossip, gossip
Ba-Ba-Babylon (Battle for your life)
Gossip, gossip
Ba-Ba-Babylon
Gossip, gossip
Ba-Ba-Babylon

Bodies moving like a sculpture (Ooh)
On the top of Tower of Babel tonight
We are climbing up to Heaven (Heaven)
Speak in languages in a BloodPop® moonlight

It’s the thing that you bring
That you bring, that you bring
Him, you, and me
That’s gossip (That’s gossip)

[Post-Chorus]
Ba-Ba-Babylon
Gossip, gossip
Ba-Ba-Babylon (Battle for your life)
Gossip, gossip
Ba-Ba-Babylon
Gossip, gossip
Ba-Ba-Babylon
Battle for your life, Babylon

Strut it out, walk a mile
Serve it, ancient-city style
Talk it out, babble on
Battle for your life, Babylon
That’s gossip, what you on?
Money don‘t talk, rip that song
Gossip, babble on
Battle for your life, Babylon