After years of angling toward the “singer-songwriter” persona with Joanne and the A Star Is Born Soundtrack, one is reminded that despite Lady Gaga’s clout and record-breaking sales worldwide, she has, ultimately, only ever released two records with major dance-pop hits. Namely 2008’s The Fame (reissued with additional tracks on 2009’s The Fame Monster) and 2011’s Born This Way. It was the first album that maintained the most overt tinge of Europop flavor, particularly on the Aqua-esque, “Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)”–capped off by a decidedly guidette-inspired video set against the backdrop of the chintzy “Guido’s Meat Market”(Gaga did, after all, mark an early acting career achievement with a cameo on an episode of The Sopranos). Her most major hits, “Poker Face” and “Paparazzi” were soon further overshadowed by the additional singles on The Fame Monster, “Bad Romance,” “Telephone” and “Alejandro”–all of which also possessed a more European-inspired electro feel than most American listeners of Top 40 radio were accustomed to.
As Stefani G(ermanotta) continued to bring back visual sumptuousness to music videos (soon after followed by fellow Lower East Side troll Lana Del Rey starting in 2011), she seemed to lose sight of the original sound that made her an initial maestra of hitmaking, as evidenced by 2013’s Artpop, featuring the uncomfortable duet, “Do What U Want,” with R. Kelly that forever besmirched her credibility as a “bona fide” feminist. With the caveat that the record was intended to deliberately display a “lack of maturity and responsibility,” Lady G was perhaps shrewd in securing herself a get out of jail free card for any diminished sales or lesser “applause” for the work, which seemed, once more, to overly pander to the white woman’s interpretation of the gay male sensibility. Over the “gap years” between Born This Way and this return to form on Chromatica, there were the largely forgettable Cheek to Cheek (consisting solely of duets with Tony Bennett, whom new Gaga bestie, Ariana Grande, also has a deep admiration for) and Joanne albums in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Then, A Star Is Born in 2018.
Chromatica would almost be a total triumph from the perspective of Gaga getting back to an electronic sound that better suits her were it not for the fact that Dua Lipa only just recently covered the whole melding of past disco and 80s sounds into the “future sound” that appears on Future Nostalgia. Chromatica, one supposes, builds on that by taking it to a more unapologetically “homo” level. After all, it is the United States of Chromatica Twitter account (fan-run, of course), that expresses, “Heterosexuality is legal on Chromatica, but not ideal.”
That much is clear from the dramatic instrumental intro, “Chromatica I” (which sounds like it could serve as part of the score for a fantasy adventure movie), that then leads into “Alice.” And when we’re talking Alice, we of course mean Lewis Carroll’s titular character that launched a thousand psychedelic homages in the decades since the original work, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was released in 1865. Centering on one of the central motifs of the book (and animated movie), Gaga explores the mind-body conundrum of one constantly affecting the other yet never necessarily being in sync. Accordingly, she sings, “Where’s my body?/I’m stuck in my mind.” This not only applies to one’s mental health issues but also the entirely separate ones that arise from living in a century where the divide in the information-action ratio grows increasingly disparate. Marshall McLuhan, too, explored the notion, in the early 90s, commenting of technology’s ever-increasing speed of evolution (therefore easier access to information), “What may emerge as the most important insight of the twenty-first century is that man was not designed to live at the speed of light. Without the countervailing balance of natural and physical laws, the new related media will make man implode upon himself. As he sits in the informational control room, whether at home or at work, receiving data at enormous speeds–imagistic, sound, or tactile–from all areas of the world, the results could be dangerously inflating and schizophrenic. His body will remain in one place but his mind will float out into the electronic void, being everywhere at once in the data bank.”
The coronavirus has seemed only to bifurcatingly highlight this point by forcing the world to slow down yet also allowing them more time to sit in front of their screens and absorb an alarming amount of (mis)information. Alice is the emblem of the conduit we all serve as for information, bombarded with the cracked out, unprocessable figures and apparitions of Wonderland (a synecdoche for the internet, if you will). The song also pays respect to Gaga’s musical past with the recitation of “Oh ma-ma-ma, oh ma-ma-ma,” conjuring the remembrance of the intro to “Bad Romance.”
Also suitable as an allegory for depression, lyrics like, “I’m in the hole, I’m falling down, down/So down, down” are contrasted against the hope that even though “my name isn’t Alice, but I’ll keep looking, I’ll keep looking for Wonderland.” Wonderland, in this regard, being a representation of peace and happiness (which, for some people, is, in fact, the internet). This note of optimism transitions into what can best be referred to as the “Born This Way” (therefore Madonna’s “Express Yourself”) redux called “Stupid Love”–the first single that launched the entire concept and aesthetic behind Chromatica. In the video, Gaga portrays a “futuristic” (but again, no futuristic look is complete without surgical masks) warrior leader adhering to her declaration, “I live on Chromatica, that is where I live. I went into my frame. I found Earth, I deleted it. Earth is canceled. I live on Chromatica.”
Incidentally, Chromatica doesn’t seem all that distanced from Earth’s same problems, as detailed by the video’s introduction: “The world rots in conflict. Many tribes battle for dominance. While the Spiritual ones pray and sleep for peace, the Kindness punks fight for Chromatica.” A place where, as Lady Gaga herself has tweeted (with just a twinge of sardonicness, one hopes), “time and distance do not exist” and “no one thing is greater than another.” Alas, on the Chromatica album, some songs are most definitely better than others and, despite its anthemic infection within the gay community, “Rain On Me” is not actually one of the stronger examples on the album (nor does it speak very well of the “empowerment” message that Robert Rodriguez directed the video).
More appropriate to the point of female empowerment is “Free Woman,” a song that touches on Gaga overcoming the sexual assault she endured early on in her career from a music producer that long made her doubt her worth. Thus, “Free Woman” is all about re-staking her claim on the dance floor she earned a right to be on as she sings, “This is my dance floor/I fought for.” That fight continues on “Fun Tonight,” which is, in actuality, about not having much fun at all despite being set to a super danceable backbeat as Gaga explains, “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.” In many ways a conversation with herself, Gaga tries to find a happy medium between her multiple distorted identities as she remarks, “I stare at the girl in the mirror, she talks to me too.” In Chromatica, schizophrenia is still a strong possibility.
The next brief instrumental (laden with violins) interlude, “Chromatica II,” leads into the mental health banger, “911.” Produced by BloodPop® and Madeon, the robot vibe is complemented by Gaga’s own non-human sounding vocals to perfectly juxtapose the irony of Valley of the Dolls-inspired lyrics like, “Keep my dolls inside diamond boxes/Save ’em ’til I know I’m gon’ drop this front I’ve built around my oasis/Paradise is in my hands.” The chorus itself, “My biggest enemy is me ever since day one/Pop a 911, then pop another one,” is a reference to an antipsychotic medication called olanzapine that Gaga was prescribed after being admitted to the hospital during a dissociative episode.
A song about one doll segues into another called “Plastic Doll,” in keeping with the spirit of Gaga’s simultaneous need and lack of desire to separate her mind from her body as a result of intense media scrutinization. Rendering herself as the ideal pop star Barbie doll, she invites, “Open me up and cut me loose/I come with a purse and new shoes/Am I your type? Am I your type?/I’ve lived in a pink box so long/I am top shelf, they built me strong.” And yet, not strong enough to be unaffected by the inherent deprivation of human rights that go hand in hand with being in the public eye. As such, Gaga also sings about being treated like “Malibu Gaga” (something Kim Petras wouldn’t mind based on her most recent single), demanding, “Don’t play with me/It just hurts me/I’m bouncin’ off the walls/No, no, no, I’m not your plastic doll.”
The feeling of being treated as such can taste like “Sour Candy,” if you will. This, too, is the third song on the record to offer a collab, this time featuring BLACKPINK, a South Korean quartet best known in America for “Kill This Love.” Here, they contribute a “cute but psycho” softness to Gaga’s robo-tones. Embracing herself for all the “sourness” that might come with her flaws, she urges, “I might be messed up/But I know what’s up/You want a real taste/At least I’m not a fake/Come, come, unwrap me.”
The Gordian knot of a noose tied around Gaga’s neck is further explored on “Enigma” (oui, also the name of her Vegas residency), another track that touches on a pop star’s (particularly her) ability to be anything to anyone, and, often, everything to everyone. Offering an amorphous, androgynous approach to her union with one or more “entities,” she shrugs, “We could be lovers, even just tonight/We could be anything you want/We could be jokers, brought to the daylight/We could break all of our stigma/I’ll, I’ll be your enigma.” For an enigma can never really be defined, making them definable only from a subjective standpoint. Which makes it rather convenient for Gaga to never adhere to being any one way.
As the album begins to enter its third act, “Replay” serves as another means to iterate the dual personality Gaga has: the softer “Stefani” side and the more “monstrous” Gaga, always seeking attention (as an Aries perpetually does). Tortured by her inner monster and memories of things past that “it” might have done, she chants, “I don’t know what to do, you don’t know what to say/The scars on my mind are on replay, r-replay/The monster inside you is torturing me.” Treating her alter ego like something of a Lazarus demon to be constantly raised from the dead every time she thinks she might have buried it, she assesses, “Every single day, yeah, I dig a grave/Then I sit inside it, wondering if I’ll behave/It’s a game I play, and I hate to say/You’re the worst thing and the best thing that’s happened to me.” Indeed, without her “fame monster,” she wouldn’t be “beautiful, dirty, rich.”
“Chromatica III” is a quivering twenty-eight second bridge that takes us to “Sine From Above,” on which Elton John does his best to evoke Rufus Wainwright energy as he joins forces with Lady G to pay homage to their one true god: music. The Ibiza-tinctured track’s title even stems from a more technical approach to that reverence, as Lady Gaga explained, “S-I-N-E, because it’s a sound wave. That sound, sine, from above is what healed me to be able to dance my way out of this album. That was later in the recording process that I actually was like, ‘And now let me pay tribute to the very thing that has revived me, and that is music.’” It all smacks of that line from Russell (Billy Crudup) in Almost Famous when he tells William (Patrick Fugit) simply, “I dig music.”
The seamless transition into “1000 Doves” (a title that immediately makes one think of Prince) is a call to arms for all the broken-winged birds, so to speak, of this world. And if that sounds cheesy, Lady Gaga don’t give a fuck, earnestly offering, “When your tears are falling, I’ll catch them as they fall/I need you to listen to me, please don’t leave me/I’m not perfect yet, but I’ll keep trying.”
The grand finale is made all the more grand with a weighty title like “Babylon.” And with it comes the additionally weighty responsibility of being prepared to be accused of ripping off Madonna yet again. This time, instead of “Express Yourself,” it’s patently “Vogue” (incidentally, one of her unwittingly appropriately lyrics is “rip that song”)–even if the only additional music credits are given to Ozio’s “Los” and New Order’s “Confusion” (because, you know, Babylon/language confusion). To boot, the song bears a similar depiction as “Vogue” of what it really means to “serve” (a.k.a. “pose”) as Gaga commands, “Strut it out, walk a mile/Serve it, ancient-city style” (the New York of the 80s when vogueing “ballrooms” first arose feeling like an ancient city itself in the current climate).
Among the reasons for closing with a song like “Babylon” is the significance the legend of the Tower of Babel holds. At one point, all of humanity was able to understand one another until God was like, “Na, let’s fuck this shit up and ‘confound their language.'” In many ways, Gaga dreams of an alternate universe like Chromatica in which we all understand one another again. Unfortunately, this record isn’t going to appeal to all walks of life in order to make that dream come true. In this sense, Dua Lipa might have better distilled the sound at hand to a more comprehensive audience.
