It’s pretty hard to find someone that doesn’t know who Lady Gaga is. She’s created some of the most popular songs in the past decade; including “Poker Face”, “Just Dance”, “Bad Romance”, “Telephone”, “Alejandro”, "Paparazzi", "Born This Way", and more. Her fashion sense, especially early on, drew the mainstream's attention just as much as her music did. She started to become an actress, landing roles in American Horror Story and A Star is Born. She’s also been an advocate and a part of the LGBTQIA+ and mental health communities since she became popular. She’s reached a status that few artists attain, icon.
It’s hard to overstate the impact and success that Gaga has had this past decade. She’s one of the only current artists that can sell out baseball stadiums by herself. She became the first woman to win a Grammy, an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe all in one year! And that was last year! Most people consider her peak to be the early 2010s, when she had the vast majority of her hits, but she’s still accomplishing new feats outside of her “peak”.
Even though she was best known for defining electro pop in the early 2010s, it’s been awhile since she actually released an electro pop album. She released an album in 2014 with Tony Bennett where they did jazz covers. Her 2016 album, Joanne, was a soft and country inspired pop album. Even the biggest single from that album, “Million Reasons”, was a guitar lead ballad. Her inclusion on the A Star Is Born soundtrack in 2018 also wasn’t electro pop. That soundtrack was more bluesy in order to go along with the movie, and the chart topping single “Shallow” is evident of that. After 7 years of non-electro pop from Gaga, many fans wondered if she would ever return to that sound. That leads us to Chromatica.
The first single, “Stupid Love”, immediately showed that Gaga was going back to what made her popular in the first place. The chopped up vocals during the chorus, as well as the driving beat and synths that end up all over this project are evident going back to her roots with mainly positive reactions. The next single, “Rain on Me” featuring Ariana Grande, was finally able to bring Gaga her chart topping song for this album. Many of the musical elements that were on “Stupid Love” are also here, except this song takes on an almost house-like groove. After these two singles, her album was shaping up to be a fan favorite, and it looks like it is.
Chromatica has garnered more acclaim by both fans and critics than any other Lady Gaga album has. The album has the highest Metacritic scores for both critic and fan ratings out of her entire career. It has immediately sold more physical copies than any other album this year. It’s clear that fans and critics alike were loving this album.
Even though it’s stated above multiple times, it’s worth repeating that the electro-pop and house beats are what drives this album. It’s 43 minutes worth of party music that’s ready for whenever nightclubs open back up. It’s not like her previous couple albums where the best experience is to chill and listen to it while sitting down, this one demands that the best experience is dancing around with your friends. Many of the songs have a similar beat and groove with predictable grooves and drops, but it’s not about that. It’s about the feeling.
The album being a nonstop dance party both is going to make people love it and will limit it at the same time. If you make the lyrics super dense and poetic, they won’t resonate with the crowd that you want it to. But if you make the lyrics simple and easy to understand, it limits the ability for the album to be incredible. You would be able to understand most of the lyrics on first listen, there’s nothing to really take time and ponder over.
It’s the same thing for the production and album as a whole too. If you want a nonstop dance party, you can’t have any slower songs and the album is most likely going to sound very similar. While many fans and critics will love the cohesiveness and theme of the project, others will look at it and say it all sounds like one long song. It’s just something the artist has to look at when they’re making the album.
Personally, I lie in the middle of these two viewpoints. There are quite a few songs on here that are some great electro-pop that I can put on and just get into the groove of the song, but I’m not sure how the album is going to age as a whole. Even though the album sounds similar throughout, it’s broken up into three sections with each starting off with an overture. The first third of Chromatica starts the album out on a high.
Both of the singles mentioned above are in this section. “Alice” is the first full song, and pulls the listener into this world that the album is based around. The gigantic, pulsating beat that pulls the song along gives the listener a taste of what the album is going to be like. Even though the connection between Alice and Wonderland is a bit corny and expected, the groove of the song is just too great to not love the song. “Free Woman” is Gaga’s female empowerment anthem where she talks about being sexually assaulted by a music producer. It contains more house grooves than the previous tracks, as well as some well placed robotic effects on her vocals during the pre-chorus. “Fun Tonight” shows Gaga at her best vocally on this album, especially when she belts out the chorus before the drop happens. Also having a muted drop after the first chorus and only allowing the full production to happen the second time's a nice little touch by the producers.
Even though the album does go a bit downhill after the first third, there are still some highlights in the rest of the album. “911” includes a very house inspired beat where Gaga has some robotic vocals on her voice. This is one of the deeper songs on the album as well, with Gaga talking about taking an antipsychotic drug to make herself feel normal. “Sour Candy” with Blackpink provides another subtle change of pace with an extra house inspired song, especially with Blackpink putting in some Korean words as well.
Even though I just praised Blackpink’s feature, I don’t think the rest of the features on here are needed. Elton John especially felt out of place. I’m sure it was a special moment for her to have Elton John on her album, but his voice felt out of place on the high budget, electronic beat. While Ariana’s voice is amazing and one of the best in the world, I’m sure Gaga could’ve just made a second verse of this song and it still would’ve been just a smash. Although they’ve both said it was an authentic collaboration and they even did fake weather reports to promote the song, it didn’t feel like a feature was necessary.
Overall, I think Gaga succeeds in what she was aiming for with Chromatica. She’s reinvigorated her dance-pop roots and reclaimed her status as electro-pop icon. Even with the less than ideal circumstances to release the project, it’s still doing really well. She had mentioned about having some surprise performances leading up to the album that I’m sure would’ve made this album even bigger, mainly at Coachella which was then cancelled due to COVID. Instead of the album getting heavy play in the packed nightclubs that it was made for, it’s now going to be an escape for all the people that want to dance alone in their rooms. And for an album to be able to work in each of these circumstances successfully, that’s more than most music in this genre can say.
Comments