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But the song, Gaga’s first collaboration with famed producer Max Martin, also came off too much like an attempt to reintroduce old-school Gaga. “Stupid Love” succeeded as a lead single in setting up the tone and world of Chromatica. The album could use more of Gaga’s originality, but it’s a testament to the unique lane she carved for herself that it feels like such a big event to have her back. With Chromatica, it’s as if the new Gaga took the lessons and confidence from building her own world in A Star Is Born, and her Enigma Vegas residency, and is ready to be unapologetically Gaga again, filtering her early electropop through ’90s house. The song’s shamelessly sing-along choruses were a return to form, and the video - featuring Gaga dancing amid a postapocalyptic Mad Max desert backdrop - provided an otherworldly context for her sounds. “Stupid Love,” the first single and video of the Chromatica era, released last month, announced the return of big pop concept queen Gaga. It’s been four years since Joanne, and what feels like an eternity since 2013’s Artpop. Then came A Star Is Born, which revitalized Gaga’s stardom she made room for the retro rock earnestness of Joanne, but was able to bring back the pop audience along with her.
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Joanne was a kind of ’60s and ’70s rock record supposedly saying: “This is me.” But it was somewhat disappointing that concept queen Gaga couldn’t figure out a more original way to perform the personal turn that pop music had taken. Gaga got off the top 40 hamster wheel with the Tony Bennett duets project Cheek to Cheek, and with 2016’s Joanne, she attempted to do a stripped-down personal record with a Gaga twist. She almost had to start de-escalating her stardom. Rather than crafting a slow build, Gaga broke out by being too much - the gender rumors, the meat dress, the multilayered videos. After all, even Madonna and Beyoncé worked up to their big message eras. But that’s a hard lane to inhabit for a long time. Gaga churned out some of the best top 40 aughts bops, like “ Paparazzi” and “ Bad Romance.” A pop auteur, she ‘s been a creator of lush visuals and a songwriter with a (sometimes clichéd) message - about fame, and queerness, and being yourself.Īnd it worked for a long time, from the Fame era, to the elongated Fame Monster moment, through the Born This Way period. She’s always been, in drag parlance, something of a concept queen.
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Throughout Chromatica, Gaga tells us she is a free woman, not your plastic doll she’ll be your enigma she’s like sour candy. The sentiment sums up Gaga’s career so far: an unending quest for pop fantasy as she rifles through poses and personas. “My name isn’t Alice,” Lady Gaga sings, with glam-theatrical fervor, in the opening track of her new album, Chromatica.
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