Lady Gaga is the longing of another world. The revered icon of the pop has tried to make this work — the establishment of a fandom, influence their companions, collecting compliments — from the first contact over a decade ago, but she does not fit in our kingdom. It’s time for Gaga to go exploring.
On the 29th of May, Gaga posted Chromaticathat is their sixth studio album and their first in four years. A severe departure from 2016 folksy Joannethe dance album offers a collection of upbeat electro beats as their lyrics deal with themes of identity, mental health, medicine, and fame. It has a big “crying in the club” of energy. Chromatica it is not only a musical offering, however, it is also a place.
The day that launched the first single “Stupid Love” and his Zenon-meet-Mad Max music video, lady Gaga twitter, “the Earth is cancelled”. She would go on to continually refer to Chromatica as a utopia pop planet, and even sketched out a manifesto in a special playlist for Spotify. “Love is an element in Chromatica — as earth, wind, fire, and water. It is a natural force, and it is the only way I can organize this superorganism . . . It’s the only way I can do the simple things, and why it should not be simple?” Gaga said. “Nothing is bigger than the other. The goodness of the rules of all things. It simply is, and it’s mine. You can have too well.”
The time is worth noting. Gaga had planned to release the album on 10 April, but with the coronavirus starting to spread within the united States, she decided to delay the date. “It just doesn’t feel good to me to the release of this album with everything that is happening during this global pandemic,” she wrote at the time on Instagram. As the pandemic continued, however, Gaga finally decided to release the album ahead of the summer. “The journey continues,” she wrote in her revised release date announcement.
By the time the album was released, in fact, the coronavirus had claimed more than 100,000 lives in the united Statesin The New York Times described as “an incalculable loss.” The protests have sparked across the nation in response to the police brutality and the meaningless of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The president has declared war with Twitter, the issuance of an executive order limit the legal protection of social media platforms. It is difficult to know if this is the worst or the best time for an album of this type: the dance music is not going to save the nation, goodness, sometimes doesn’t seem to exist in abundance, and Chromatica is not an actual geographical place where they can take residence. But we can’t knock Gaga for trying.
Try, it certainly does. In spite of personal and collective despair, Gaga offers furious earworms as “Alice,” free firecrackers as a “Free Woman”, and truly unexpected, so weird-it-works songs such as “Sine From Above”, with Elton John. If the world is falling apart, Gaga will come out voguing.
Ahead, POPSUGAR editors to write about their favorite songs Chromatica.
