palma 7,559 Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 2 hours ago, ShayCristoforo said: Calling Babylon a Madge rip off just confirmed everything. I saw this article earlier. I'm guessing it's a pressed Madonna fan, especially since they say "Madge". Pay them no mind. I love how people call Babylon a Vogue rip-off. Apparently when you use some disco piano and deliver in a talking style you're totally ripping off Vogue since Madonna invented the genre and also totally created Vogueing. It had nothing to do with the underground drag community AT ALL Vogue is one of my fave songs ever but Babylon, while thematically somewhat similar doesn't make me think of Vogue immediately. Being compared to Vogue is a compliment for miss Babylon, however I will not stand for calling her a rip off, LG clearly didn't talk about this when she said rip that song on the track Is there some reason my LG7 isn't here? Has she died or something? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
GC1234 620 Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 Disheartens me to see the negative reviews not attempting to decode the lyrics and understand the meaning behind them! I’m thankful most of them don’t count towards Metacritic, but still makes me worried if further reviews will reflect the same ignorant attitudes. On the plus side, nothing will take away the magic that Chromatica is. During such a difficult time, I think it’s been a bright shining light for so many of us here Get that fire exit door, I’m off... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
KORG 4,756 Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 6 minutes ago, palma said: I love how people call Babylon a Vogue rip-off. Apparently when you use some disco piano and deliver in a talking style you're totally ripping off Vogue since Madonna invented the genre and also totally created Vogueing. It had nothing to do with the underground drag community AT ALL Vogue is one of my fave songs ever but Babylon, while thematically somewhat similar doesn't make me think of Vogue immediately. Being compared to Vogue is a compliment for miss Babylon, however I will not stand for calling her a rip off, LG clearly didn't talk about this when she said rip that song on the track Also failing to notice that it's an obvious mish mash of Fashion and Fame Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anveeroy 57,925 Posted May 29, 2020 Author Share Posted May 29, 2020 Lady Gaga returns with triumphant, electro-pop bangers, but 'Chromatica' fails to maintain its high notes https://www.insider.com/chromatica-lady-gaga-review-tracklist-breakdown-2020-5 Stream Kylie-Janet Discographies! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anveeroy 57,925 Posted May 29, 2020 Author Share Posted May 29, 2020 Esquire: Lady Gaga Offers a Welcome Trip to a Freaky Alternate Dimension on Chromatica At this particular moment in history, the only thing that feels less consequential than a pop record is writing about a pop record. But Lady Gaga—an artist who has always seen herself as a savior, who appointed herself her fans’ mother before her first album was even out of singles—offers us a trip to an alternate dimension in Chromatica. Gaga has always offered something more than entertainment, something more than escape. She’s been selling sanctuary from the very beginning, and I’ve never been more ready to buy it. The sixth Gaga album, and her first pure pop-dance project since 2013’s ARTPOP, Chromatica has arrived into a world that’s on fire. And that would have been true even if it hadn’t actually dropped at midnight eastern on May 29, even if listening to it hadn’t entailed turning off the live news reports from Minneapolis. It begins with a string overture right out of a highbrow horror movie, because Gaga has never been afraid to hit it right on the nose. And then for about 42 minutes, Gaga throws everything she’s got at you, in a disorienting, poppers-scented disco blast, and leaves you completely energized. It simply feels cruel not to be able to work it out on a crowded dance floor to every single one of these songs right now. It’s a return to form, filled with Easter Eggs that will have the Little Monsters Rosetta Stoning the **** out of it for years to come. The rest of us will just hear things we recognize: many more references to the fame, to paparazzi, to monsters. She still does the thing she’s been doing since Pa-Pa-Pa-“Poker Face” where she stutters the first syllable of a key word; here we get ra-replays, pa-plastic dolls, and a trip to Ba-Ba-Babylon. She still mostly pronounces the world “love” exactly like Little Edie in Grey Gardens. But on Chromatica, more than ever, she’s pitched a record to the back room of the gay club. It sounds like a 5 a.m. late ‘90s Susan Morabito crescendo, a stronger, more direct form of allyship than the lyrics of “Born This Way” could ever hope to be. I’m 5 percent gayer after the first full listen, 20 percent after the second, and the curve shows no sign of flattening. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. The guest stars don’t bring much to the table. Ariana Grande has no real reason to be on “Rain On Me”—a song that, I must be honest, took a few listens to really dig itself into my brain—other than to set stan Twitter on fire. BLACKPINK doesn’t elevate “Sour Candy,” a track that borrows the same house sample Katy Perry used on “Swish Swish” and fails to take it anywhere. Elton John is the exception, making a full steak dinner of his parts in “Sine From Above,” a song that makes you want a Rocketman sequel today. As with any great pop record, Chromatica gives me a new favorite song with every listen, but right now, my key track is album closer “Babylon.” I have no idea what it’s about. I don’t know what “serving it ancient city style” entails. I don’t know what “walk a mile,” “that’s gossip,” and “battle for your life” are doing in the same song, much less the same pre-chorus. I just know it feels terribly urgent and totally ridiculous at the same time, and if that’s not Gaga in a nutshell, I don’t know what is. This content is imported from Spotify. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. “This is my dancefloor I fought for,” Gaga tells us on “Free Woman.” It’s a perfect, clean statement of purpose on a meticulous dance album, and then twenty seconds later, in the same song, she asks you to “kiss me too hardly.” And there is the essential Gaga Paradox: she is, as she has always been, a self-serious goofball, a fastidious mess. Never change, Stefani. From the very start, Lady Gaga has conducted herself like an artist who steadfastly believes that pop music can save the world. I waver in my belief on that topic, particularly now. But we agree that it can offer escape, and for the foreseeable future, you’re going to need it. With Chromatica in May 2020, the artist has met her moment. It would do you good to join her. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a32710478/lady-gaga-chromatica-review-lyrics-meaning-explained/ Stream Kylie-Janet Discographies! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anveeroy 57,925 Posted May 29, 2020 Author Share Posted May 29, 2020 Gaytimes: A track-by-track review of Lady Gaga’s incredible new album Chromatica Lady Gaga is back with another incredible dance record. After a jazz album, the country-inspired Joanne, and the rock-leaning A Star Is Born soundtrack, Gaga decided to (finally) give the gays everything they ever wanted with a return to floor-filling pop anthems on her sixth studio album Chromatica. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely. With influences from 90s house to Eurodance and disco, the album is a non-stop party from start to end, and also manages to be her most personal body of work yet, tackling topics including mental health and the pitfalls of fame through its lyrics. It might not be her most groundbreaking work, but it’s a solid and consistent addition to her discography that merges the best of Born This Way and ARTPOP. Gaga wanted to make the world dance, and we believe she’s succeeded. See our track-by-track review of Chromatica (excluding the interludes) below. Alice Now this is how you open an album. We don’t think we’ve ever heard Gaga’s voice sound this good before. Is it too soon to say this is in her top five songs of all time? Well, we’re going to say it anyway. Almost every Gaga album has a standout track that sadly never gets the single treatment – like The Fame Monster’s Dance In The Dark and Born This Way’s Scheiße – and we feel like Alice may meet that same fate. But fans will give it a legacy of its own, and we expect to hear it at every Gaga concert for the rest of time. Stupid Love A disco-inspired track that saw the icon return to her dance-pop roots, fans ate Stupid Love up when it was released earlier this year. We still love it, and it was an obvious choice for lead single as it has a lot of mainstream appeal, but the rest of the album has so many highlights – many of which exude more of that quirky Gaga creativity we adore – that it’s no longer top of our playlists. Rain On Me Pure, unadulterated, campy joy. Big pop collaborations like this can often be a let down, especially given the high expectations, but Rain On Me lived up to the hype and then some. With a music video that’s equally as glorious, it’ll no doubt go down as one of the best singles of her career – and will have a lasting legacy as a queer anthem in the clubs. Free Woman Given the dark nature of the song’s inspiration (Gaga said in an interview with Zane Lowe that the song was inspired by her refusal to see herself as a victim after a music producer sexual assaulted her), this is one of the brightest songs on the album, and we can already picture the masses of drag queens around the world who’ll be lip syncing and death dropping to it with joy. Fun Tonight Many fans assumed Fun Tonight is about her ex Christian Carino, but the song is incredibly introspective. “You love the paparazzi, love the fame, even though you know it causes me pain,” she sings on the second verse, both referencing her debut album and also the struggles she’s faced from being in the public eye. Ultimately, the song is about not having fun when everyone thinks you should be, and it’s pretty heartbreaking. 911 First of all, can we talk about that transition from the Chromatica II interlude into 911? It’s transcendental. An album highlight for sure. Another slightly darker track, 911 is a stomping bop about self-doubt and an antipsychotic that Gaga has been taking to help “control things that my brain does”. If you look beyond the vocoder, some of the album’s best lyrics can be found here. This one’s a grower. Plastic Doll This next track is early Gaga meets Katy Perry, and we’re living for it. It could easily be an unreleased demo from 2010 – which in Gaga’s case is a good thing, as her demos (like Nothing On But The Radio and No Way) are legendary among pop fans. “I’ve got blonde hair and cherry lips, I’m state of art, I’m micro-chipped,” are lyrics that could come straight from The Fame Monster era. Sour Candy While collaborations with Elton and Ariana make total sense, we were a bit surprised (pleasantly, though) when we found out Gaga had a song with BLACKPINK. They’re K-pop superstars (and arguably the biggest girl group in the world right now) with a signature sound that’s quite different from Gaga’s, so it could easily have gone wrong, but what transpired is a club-ready deep house banger that will have you longing for the dancefloor at your local queer venue. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s a lot of fun. Our only complaint is that it’s far too short. Enigma Among an album full of surprisingly personal moments, Enigma is a by-the-books dance-pop song about a relationship, as Gaga proposes, “We could be lovers, even just tonight, we could be anything you want.” It’s not a standout, but the drums add flair and her vocal delivery is top-notch. This could quite comfortably have slotted into Born This Way’s tracklist. Replay This song is out for a good time, and it’s a full-on dance experience from start to finish – we’re getting Basement Jaxx meets Sophie Ellis-Bextor vibes, and yes, that’s incredibly high praise. Again, Gaga merges dark lyrics with infectiously danceable beats, while her vocal delivery is erratic in a similar manner to Joanne’s best track John Wayne. Like the title suggests, we’ll be playing this one to death – it’s a standout for sure. Sine From Above If you told us this was a Eurovision-winning song and not a track on Lady Gaga’s latest album, we’d probably believe you, as it’s got all the camp, epic build-ups and soaring choruses the popular song competition is known for. The song also subverts any expectations of her long-overdue collaboration with Elton John – which most assumed would be a piano ballad – by putting him on an electronic dance banger about the healing power of music. In its final 20 seconds, after a brief moment of calm, the song descends into an outrageous drum & bass segment, a moment that would sound out of place even on the noisy, experimental (and sorely underrated) ARTPOP. 1000 Doves This is the closest we get to a ballad on Chromatica, as Gaga delivers a beautiful and tender plea for help – “I need you to listen to me, please believe me, I’m completely lonely, please don’t judge me” – although it soon transforms into a dance-heavy banger on the chorus with one of Gaga’s signature stuttering hooks. The bridge is a vocal highlight. Babylon This is camp, queer Gaga at her best, as she commands the listener to “strut it out, walk a mile” and “serve it, ancient-city style” over 90s house beats. It does have some sonic similarities to Madonna’s Vogue, although with the theme of gossiping and lyrics like “rip that song” we almost wouldn’t be surprised if this is a tongue-in-cheek intention after the Born This Way/Express Yourself saga. A solid album closer that’s destined to be a future tour interlude (and Gaga fans know that’s never a bad thing with those visuals). Lady Gaga’s new album Chromatica is out now. https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/culture/136296/a-track-by-track-review-of-lady-gagas-incredible-new-album-chromatica/ Stream Kylie-Janet Discographies! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doot 2 Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 4 hours ago, ConnorFilm said: I love Gaga a lot but even I wouldn’t ****ing take the time to run a “Today In History” site. YIKES. Why'd you come for @Twitter like that? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anveeroy 57,925 Posted May 29, 2020 Author Share Posted May 29, 2020 The Ringer: The Tame Monster: Lady Gaga’s ‘Chromatica’ Is the Pop Album for the Lost Summer of 2020 Spoiler The savvy Lady Gaga fan in 2020, when confronted with a new song called “Fun Tonight,” knows enough to flinch. Because it is a latter-day Lady Gaga song; because it is 2020. “I’m not having fun tonight,” goes the chorus to “Fun Tonight.” Right. Thought so. The vibe is downbeat electro-pop. (If you’re still obsessed with Ally, her A Star Is Born character—and why wouldn’t you be—it’s caught halfway between the bubbly frivolity of “Why Did You Do That?” and the stern grandeur of “Shallow.”) The lyrics range from “Wish I could be what I know I am” to “I feel like I’m in a prison hell.” The song’s intended target, according to savvy Lady Gaga gossip hounds, is her ex-fiancé Christian Carino. (She is now reportedly dating a New York Times editor’s ex-boyfriend.) “You love the paparazzi, love the fame / Even though you know it causes me pain,” Gaga laments, evoking past glories, now drained of their glory, or at least their frivolity. Even her idea of a prison hell has changed dramatically since she recruited Beyoncé for the “Telephone” video. Gaga launches the chorus of “Fun Tonight” with a lovely, anguished falsetto swoop, the words borderline nonsensical—“I’m feelin’ the way that I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ with you”—the anguish nonetheless palpable. The end result is neither the best nor the saddest song on Gaga’s sixth album, Chromatica, out Friday. The best song—and “Shallow” excepted, her best and hopefully biggest pop hit in nearly a decade—actually is the saddest. But dip anywhere into this record, even the fussy orchestral interludes somehow, and the bawling-on-the-dance-floor pathos will bowl you over the same way it bowled her over. In touting Gaga’s glorious return to full-blown dance pop after the meta rockist provocations of 2018’s A Star Is Born and the minivan-ad turbo-Americana of 2016’s actually quite beguiling Joanne, the Chromatica rollout had a soothingly chaotic throwback quality to it. The goofy tweets. The wanton messiness. (The leak-plagued emergence of bombastic lead single “Stupid Love” was a saga unto itself.) The gaudy Grimes-before-Grimes sci-fi flamboyance of the early visuals, like the cutscenes in a Japanese RPG whose battle system you could never hope to understand. The COVID-borne release delay (which also nixed a planned Coachella sneak attack) was a disquieting new wrinkle, certainly, but it felt great, in a nostalgic future-shock sorta way, to be once again bewildered. With reliably brash production from BloodPop, Burns, Skrillex, and other proud maximalists, the resulting record, which spreads 16 tracks across a relatively restrained 43 minutes, has a surface outrageousness you’ll certainly recognize, but a relatable bone-deep melancholy too. Unlike, say, Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia—a superior pop album but a far more discordant self-quarantine listen, given its raw yearning for communal dance-party release—Chromatica is the perfect summer album for the Lost Summer of 2020. “I’m completely lonely / Please don’t judge me,” she entreats us amid the trance-adjacent freedom-via-isolation jam “1000 Doves”; her idea of typical pop-star self-empowerment this time out is bellowing, “I’m still something if I don’t got a man / I’m a free woman,” on “Free Woman.” It’s unsettling that she even felt it necessary to point that out. The flamboyance and the desolation—“Even when you feel 6 feet under, you can still fire on all cylinders,” Gaga told Zane Lowe in February, describing her studio mind-set as “I’m miserable, I’m sad, I’m depressed”—are productively at odds from the start. “I’m tired of screaming at the top of my lungs,” she announces on “Alice,” her voice ever-so-slightly robotic, the uptempo house chug evoking a Wonderland with little wonder in it. At times this restraint, this hint of steely resignation undercuts the wackiness, which is a shame: The blaring neo-disco of “Replay” could serve to be, let’s say, 50 percent wilder, and the understated “Sour Candy,” costarring the disruptive K-pop girl group Blackpink, could be, let’s say, 200 percent more disruptive. But when she gets the uppers vs. downers balance just right, look out. The one-two punch of “911” (her monotone extra robotic, her mentality extra self-defeating) and “Plastic Doll” (her falsetto swoops extra anguished) is especially bruising. The self-medicating lyrics to “911” range from “Turnin’ up emotional faders / Keep repeating self-hating phrases” to “Wish I laughed and kept the good friendships”; the hushed bridge to “Plastic Doll” begins with her chanting, “Tell me, who dressed you? / Where’d you get that hat? / Why is she cryin’? / What’s the price tag?” There is a hint here—more than a hint, really—of the dehumanization that pop stardom demands, the disastrous private life that a boldface-celebrity lifestyle inevitably leaves in its wake. She sounds more sympathetic on this topic than Drake does, anyway. But “Rain on Me,” a triumphant pop-star summit with Ariana Grande, is the peak that expertly doubles as a valley: “It’s coming down on me / Water like misery,” Gaga wails, before the monster hook kicks in. It’s anthemic but frightfully vulnerable, an instant pool-party classic with the troubled soul of a drained pool. It’s her best pop song since, what? “The Edge of Glory”? The hug she and Grande share at the end of the video is awkward in an awfully endearing way. Your first hug with someone you’re not currently living with, however many months from now that transpires, will look a lot like it. Very little of this has that Gaga-specific WTF quality you’re likely craving: It’s the difference between chain-smoking and fashioning all your cigarettes into a pair of rad sunglasses. But “Sine From Above,” a late-album collaboration with Sir Elton John, gets closest to liftoff, emotional and otherwise. The theme is musical inspiration as the balm for personal devastation: “Then the signal split in two / The sound created stars like me and you,” the two divas sing to each other, consolingly. “Before there was love, there was silence.” It’s egotistical in an awfully unguarded way. But the most jarring and empowering and weirdly thrilling moment in the song belongs to John alone: He thunders, “When I was young / I felt immortal!” with more ferocious catharsis than you’ll find in all of Rocketman. It would simply sound ridiculous if you didn’t totally believe him. “Sine From Above” wraps up with an abrupt, colossal breakbeat, and the disorientation is pleasurable indeed. There are lightning flashes of the classic, heedless, fearless Lady Gaga throughout Chromatica, and all the more thrilling for how brief they are, and all the sadder for their brevity. https://www.theringer.com/music/2020/5/29/21275085/lady-gaga-chromatica-review Stream Kylie-Janet Discographies! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anveeroy 57,925 Posted May 29, 2020 Author Share Posted May 29, 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES: Here’s the Lady. Where’s the Gaga? On “Chromatica,” Lady Gaga strives to bring introspection to the dance-pop that made her a star. But hallmarks like her audaciousness and sense of adventure are in shorter supply. Spoiler CARYN GANZ Lady Gaga isn’t built to go halfway. She plays sweeping statements as virtuosically as her grand piano, and shameless statements as shamelessly as her keytar. This passion has brought her one of the most fervent fandoms in pop. It’s also set up tensions between Lady Gaga the performer and Stefani Germanotta the person, which Gaga has said grew to the point that they emotionally and physically sickened her over the last decade. Her sixth album, “Chromatica,” she told Zane Lowe, is an attempt to reclaim a sound she loved from her past while retaining the humanity that was stripped from her as she was objectified and jettisoned to the realm of the hyperfamous. “Chromatica” is the promised “return to form,” Gaga’s first dance-pop LP in seven years after an album of duets with Tony Bennett in 2014, the stripped-down authenticity play “Joanne” in 2016 and her detour into the world of “A Star Is Born” in 2018. It has some sparkling vocal moments. It reminds us how easily Lady Gaga, 34, can coax the world onto the dance floor. But it feels overwhelmingly safe — a low bar to clear when you’ve released two of the greatest pop albums of the century (“The Fame Monster” and “Born This Way”) and one of the most audacious, enjoyable hot messes ever (“ARTPOP”). We were promised jetpacks; we got parachutes. Lady Gaga herself seems torn over whether over-the-topness is still part of the Lady Gaga proposition. The artwork and graphics associated with “Chromatica” depict her as an alien-esque Stefani Scissorhands, and the excess and boldness hark back to “Born This Way.” But on that album, the music and the images united under an umbrella of fearless ambition. “ARTPOP” was similarly daring. The songs on “Chromatica,” however, rarely brush up against that kind of uninhibited gutsiness. WESLEY MORRIS I’ll say that the old excess is missed. I don’t know what about Gaga is “cool” to like. “Teeth” and “A-Yo” are near the top of this guy’s list. “ARTPOP” is a weird album that knows it’s weird and yet manages to exceed its self-consciousness. It sounds fantastic and it hangs together as a project — even some of the bloat works. But you feel like whatever she wanted to be on that album, she was — Bowie, Madonna, David Byrne, Grace Jones. Back then (seven years ago!) she was still a master satirist of celebrity and hot with all kinds of humor. She made Lady Gaga this mutant persona of fame — utterly synthesized, yet somehow a true original anyway. Almost, ever since, the priestess of comic social indictment has wanted to explore her humanity. The persona’s mostly gone. And now she’s reckoning with “realness” and her personality. Musically, that transition doesn’t excite me as much. But the woman’s too smart not to settle into herself. At the moment, though, I prefer the Gaga to the Lady. And maybe she does too. The last song on the album is “Babylon.” In the first 35 seconds, she applies about four different vocal approaches and one terrific key change. The rest of the song clocks in at a deceptively thick 2:41 and is like if the B-52’s and Grace Jones turned “Vogue” into “Like a Prayer.” It’s all catchy non sequiturs (“that’s gossip”) and, once the gospel choir arrives, it’s camp (“that’s gooooss-ip”). I hate “returns to form,” especially when the artist doing the returning picks the wrong form. But this is “return to form” as cliffhanger. Is she going to stay returned? JON PARELES Too often, a “return to form” is a self-defeating strategy. Maybe radio stations like it, but it’s hampered by self-consciousness and second-guessing, by a sense of calculation, by the fact that it’s not the product of the nutty, unjaded impulses of the original. And like any sequel, it has to compete with the all-out love that the fans bring to older songs, which are now burnished by familiarity and accumulated memories. Bringing back the four-on-the-floor thump of Gaga’s old dance-pop is a job for professionals, and “Chromatica” has certainly lined them up; why have one producer when you can have up to a dozen? But bringing back the wild, nothing-to-lose flair that made Gaga more than an interchangeable dance-pop belter is a job for an artist. On the albums between “ARTPOP” and “Chromatica,” Lady Gaga dropped her force field of over-the-top invincibility, and she certainly made doe-eyed vulnerability endearing in “A Star Is Born” and in songs like “Million Reasons.” The lyrics on “Chromatica” often proclaim some need or insecurity, but then go on to armor-plate them with BloodPop’s E.D.M. beats. It’s as if Gaga has exchanged the bravado she picked up from Madonna — and ran with — for something closer to Robyn’s dance-crying. Yet to me, it tends to sound like a plan rather than an irresistible impulse. She’s not the only one heading back to the dance floor this year; Dua Lipa made the same move. But for Lipa it’s a lark; for Gaga it means lifting up a heavy mantle. LINDSAY ZOLADZ Several listens in, I still have a lot of questions about “Chromatica,” but I know this much is true: This would not be Jackson Maine’s favorite Lady Gaga album. (I like to believe it’s “ARTPOP.” He was full of surprises.) So much of this album’s aesthetic feels like a deliberate pushback against the last half-decade of Gaga’s run, though it can be easy to forget that stretch saw some career highs: Her triumphant Super Bowl halftime performance, a winning turn in “A Star Is Born,” and a deserved best original song Oscar for the new karaoke standard “Shallow.” Not that you would know that from the downcast vibe of a lot of these tracks! A lot of listeners were probably expecting this record to deliver them from their quarantine woes, but the exuberant lead single “Stupid Love” turned out to be something of a red herring. I was immediately struck by how melancholy many of these songs are, despite their hopped-up tempos. Sad bangers abound. The first proper lyric on this record, from the pulsating “Alice,” is “Could you pull me out of this alive?”; “911,” Gaga told Lowe, is about popping antipsychotic medication. Perhaps you expect your spirit to be resurrected by a song called “Fun Tonight,” until you get to the chorus: “I’m not having fun tonight.” Well then. Another lyric from that song stands out to me: “You love the paparazzi, you love the fame/Even though you know it causes me pain.” Perhaps more than any other Gaga record, “Chromatica” feels self-referential, gesturing back to the early look and sound of Gaga’s career. Songs like “911” and (a personal favorite) “Plastic Doll” made me wonder, with a shudder of mortality, whether late-aughts nostalgia is already a thing. Still, “Plastic Doll” is compelling because although it’s got that “Fame Monster” gleam on the surface, its lyrics shatter that image into sharp pieces. “I’m bouncing off the walls,” she sings, to a listener that could either be a demanding lover or an overzealous fan, “I’m not your plastic doll.” GANZ “Chromatica” as a song concept, at least, is a series of orchestral interludes meant to communicate weighty emotional shifts. They divide the album into thirds, and I think all of us are most interested in the middle section, where Gaga plainly excavates her pain. The most adventurous yet least successful section is the last, led by “Sine From Above,” a shapeless E.D.M. disaster featuring Elton John that’s credited to 13 writers and six producers. Gaga and John share some DNA — it’s in the piano power ballads that have distinguished her past albums (“Speechless,” “Yoü and I,” “Gypsy”), and it emerges in their magnificent awards show performances together. Putting John to such ill use here only underscores how in searching for depth, Gaga has actually flattened many of her appealing dimensions on “Chromatica.” A few things I do like, a lot? Gaga’s decision to speak-sing more, in her captivating lower register. The glittery hopefulness of “Alice.” The winking monotony of “911.” The super-light “Swish Swish”/“Truffle Butter” beat of “Sour Candy.” The willingness to gesture to “Vogue” on “Babylon” after getting dinged for nodding to “Express Yourself” on “Born This Way.” And “Enigma,” arguably the album’s best track, which saunters onto the dance floor, wags its finger, and slickly references all of the album’s themes and aesthetics in a tight three minutes. MORRIS Gang, I’m going to toss out two albums that came to mind listening to this one: Madonna’s “American Life” and Katy Perry’s “Witness.” Both are expensive-sounding attempts at statement pop (about the world, about the self) that are also hollow because they neither reveal much that’s artistically compelling nor make much of a statement. Isn’t “Chromatica” another of this sort of album, a compass pointing in too many directions? Jon, you’re right about the Dua Lipa album, too. Lightness is the enormous source of its bliss. Lady Gaga has shattered too much cultural glass to go barefoot like that. (And Lindsay, speaking of Perry, this question about what “Chromatica” is: a state of high emotional vividness perhaps; or maybe a fancy way of saying “Prism.”) I agree, though, that the strongest writing, production and singing are in the middle. “Plastic Doll,” “Enigma” and “Replay” have the wit and introspection that you want from an artist you know can deliver. It’s also the section of the album where she sounds connected to the anger, pain and defeat she’s singing about. These are strong songs that also sound new for her. PARELES I’m with you, Wesley. I think of that middle stretch of the album as the sci-fi section: She’s singing about herself as an interface with technology — “Is it all just virtual?” she wonders in “Enigma” — and the music takes her up on it, with all the vocal effects and harmony swoops in “911” and the way “Plastic Doll” plays hide-and-seek with the 4/4 thump, letting the machines chatter among themselves when it drops out. And “Replay,” despite its title, doesn’t go for easy nostalgia; it’s about scars and psychological torture, and even with its pumping club beat — and the trademark Gaga stutter in the chorus on “r-replay” — she’s surrounded by voices that sound like a self-doubting choir of the damned. At least for a few tracks, Gaga and her producers don’t seem so worried about fitting some format. ZOLADZ I too hear in these lyrics some ambivalence about whether or not outrageous artifice is Gaga’s comfort zone anymore — the sounds and visuals present themselves as wacky and future-minded, but emotionally she still has one cowboy boot in the “Joanne” era. There are some sonic elements I really like, particularly in the album’s cyborgy electro-pop second section, but overall I found myself wishing she’d gone with some collaborators even farther left-of-center (Sophie was rumored to be involved in some of the early stages) or just gotten Max Martin to co-write half the album, as he did the transcendent “Stupid Love.” One of my favorite Gagas is drag-pandering Gaga. Which is to say I enjoy the ridiculous “Babylon,” and it’s probably the “Chromatica” track that makes me most sad about how long it might be until big, splashy pop concerts are a thing again. Oh, to party like it’s B.C. (or even, like, December 2019 A.D.). MORRIS I feel bad for this record. Ordinarily, it would be the soundtrack of Pride month. Now feels like the wrong time for it. Emerging from this increasingly ugly moment and having Gaga’s colors on the other side would be a treat. ZOLADZ One final thought: Gaga always wants to be seen as a good old-fashioned album artist. Friday morning she tweeted a very earnest plea to listen to the album in order, “from beginning to end.” (Somewhere in the beyond, Jackson Maine grunted in assent.) And, Caryn, while I agree that her first two albums are as close to unskippable as pop records get, I think this emphasis on The Album sometimes sets her up for harsher criticism than she deserves. “ARTPOP” and “Joanne” are both spotty for sure, but they also have some excellent songs that complicate the critical narratives about them (that they were a disaster and a staid disappointment). And because “Chromatica” is also a mixed bag, I worry that it will share their fate in the shorthand of the collective imagination. But at the end of the day, while a few of these songs make me yearn for the Ally material from “A Star Is Born,” there are a few stand-alone tracks (“Enigma,” “Alice,” “Plastic Doll”) that I can imagine putting on repeat during this cruel summer. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/arts/music/lady-gaga-chromatica.html Stream Kylie-Janet Discographies! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gumzy3000 7,019 Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 7 minutes ago, Aarghya said: THE NEW YORK TIMES: Here’s the Lady. Where’s the Gaga? On “Chromatica,” Lady Gaga strives to bring introspection to the dance-pop that made her a star. But hallmarks like her audaciousness and sense of adventure are in shorter supply. Reveal hidden contents CARYN GANZ Lady Gaga isn’t built to go halfway. She plays sweeping statements as virtuosically as her grand piano, and shameless statements as shamelessly as her keytar. This passion has brought her one of the most fervent fandoms in pop. It’s also set up tensions between Lady Gaga the performer and Stefani Germanotta the person, which Gaga has said grew to the point that they emotionally and physically sickened her over the last decade. Her sixth album, “Chromatica,” she told Zane Lowe, is an attempt to reclaim a sound she loved from her past while retaining the humanity that was stripped from her as she was objectified and jettisoned to the realm of the hyperfamous. “Chromatica” is the promised “return to form,” Gaga’s first dance-pop LP in seven years after an album of duets with Tony Bennett in 2014, the stripped-down authenticity play “Joanne” in 2016 and her detour into the world of “A Star Is Born” in 2018. It has some sparkling vocal moments. It reminds us how easily Lady Gaga, 34, can coax the world onto the dance floor. But it feels overwhelmingly safe — a low bar to clear when you’ve released two of the greatest pop albums of the century (“The Fame Monster” and “Born This Way”) and one of the most audacious, enjoyable hot messes ever (“ARTPOP”). We were promised jetpacks; we got parachutes. Lady Gaga herself seems torn over whether over-the-topness is still part of the Lady Gaga proposition. The artwork and graphics associated with “Chromatica” depict her as an alien-esque Stefani Scissorhands, and the excess and boldness hark back to “Born This Way.” But on that album, the music and the images united under an umbrella of fearless ambition. “ARTPOP” was similarly daring. The songs on “Chromatica,” however, rarely brush up against that kind of uninhibited gutsiness. WESLEY MORRIS I’ll say that the old excess is missed. I don’t know what about Gaga is “cool” to like. “Teeth” and “A-Yo” are near the top of this guy’s list. “ARTPOP” is a weird album that knows it’s weird and yet manages to exceed its self-consciousness. It sounds fantastic and it hangs together as a project — even some of the bloat works. But you feel like whatever she wanted to be on that album, she was — Bowie, Madonna, David Byrne, Grace Jones. Back then (seven years ago!) she was still a master satirist of celebrity and hot with all kinds of humor. She made Lady Gaga this mutant persona of fame — utterly synthesized, yet somehow a true original anyway. Almost, ever since, the priestess of comic social indictment has wanted to explore her humanity. The persona’s mostly gone. And now she’s reckoning with “realness” and her personality. Musically, that transition doesn’t excite me as much. But the woman’s too smart not to settle into herself. At the moment, though, I prefer the Gaga to the Lady. And maybe she does too. The last song on the album is “Babylon.” In the first 35 seconds, she applies about four different vocal approaches and one terrific key change. The rest of the song clocks in at a deceptively thick 2:41 and is like if the B-52’s and Grace Jones turned “Vogue” into “Like a Prayer.” It’s all catchy non sequiturs (“that’s gossip”) and, once the gospel choir arrives, it’s camp (“that’s gooooss-ip”). I hate “returns to form,” especially when the artist doing the returning picks the wrong form. But this is “return to form” as cliffhanger. Is she going to stay returned? JON PARELES Too often, a “return to form” is a self-defeating strategy. Maybe radio stations like it, but it’s hampered by self-consciousness and second-guessing, by a sense of calculation, by the fact that it’s not the product of the nutty, unjaded impulses of the original. And like any sequel, it has to compete with the all-out love that the fans bring to older songs, which are now burnished by familiarity and accumulated memories. Bringing back the four-on-the-floor thump of Gaga’s old dance-pop is a job for professionals, and “Chromatica” has certainly lined them up; why have one producer when you can have up to a dozen? But bringing back the wild, nothing-to-lose flair that made Gaga more than an interchangeable dance-pop belter is a job for an artist. On the albums between “ARTPOP” and “Chromatica,” Lady Gaga dropped her force field of over-the-top invincibility, and she certainly made doe-eyed vulnerability endearing in “A Star Is Born” and in songs like “Million Reasons.” The lyrics on “Chromatica” often proclaim some need or insecurity, but then go on to armor-plate them with BloodPop’s E.D.M. beats. It’s as if Gaga has exchanged the bravado she picked up from Madonna — and ran with — for something closer to Robyn’s dance-crying. Yet to me, it tends to sound like a plan rather than an irresistible impulse. She’s not the only one heading back to the dance floor this year; Dua Lipa made the same move. But for Lipa it’s a lark; for Gaga it means lifting up a heavy mantle. LINDSAY ZOLADZ Several listens in, I still have a lot of questions about “Chromatica,” but I know this much is true: This would not be Jackson Maine’s favorite Lady Gaga album. (I like to believe it’s “ARTPOP.” He was full of surprises.) So much of this album’s aesthetic feels like a deliberate pushback against the last half-decade of Gaga’s run, though it can be easy to forget that stretch saw some career highs: Her triumphant Super Bowl halftime performance, a winning turn in “A Star Is Born,” and a deserved best original song Oscar for the new karaoke standard “Shallow.” Not that you would know that from the downcast vibe of a lot of these tracks! A lot of listeners were probably expecting this record to deliver them from their quarantine woes, but the exuberant lead single “Stupid Love” turned out to be something of a red herring. I was immediately struck by how melancholy many of these songs are, despite their hopped-up tempos. Sad bangers abound. The first proper lyric on this record, from the pulsating “Alice,” is “Could you pull me out of this alive?”; “911,” Gaga told Lowe, is about popping antipsychotic medication. Perhaps you expect your spirit to be resurrected by a song called “Fun Tonight,” until you get to the chorus: “I’m not having fun tonight.” Well then. Another lyric from that song stands out to me: “You love the paparazzi, you love the fame/Even though you know it causes me pain.” Perhaps more than any other Gaga record, “Chromatica” feels self-referential, gesturing back to the early look and sound of Gaga’s career. Songs like “911” and (a personal favorite) “Plastic Doll” made me wonder, with a shudder of mortality, whether late-aughts nostalgia is already a thing. Still, “Plastic Doll” is compelling because although it’s got that “Fame Monster” gleam on the surface, its lyrics shatter that image into sharp pieces. “I’m bouncing off the walls,” she sings, to a listener that could either be a demanding lover or an overzealous fan, “I’m not your plastic doll.” GANZ “Chromatica” as a song concept, at least, is a series of orchestral interludes meant to communicate weighty emotional shifts. They divide the album into thirds, and I think all of us are most interested in the middle section, where Gaga plainly excavates her pain. The most adventurous yet least successful section is the last, led by “Sine From Above,” a shapeless E.D.M. disaster featuring Elton John that’s credited to 13 writers and six producers. Gaga and John share some DNA — it’s in the piano power ballads that have distinguished her past albums (“Speechless,” “Yoü and I,” “Gypsy”), and it emerges in their magnificent awards show performances together. Putting John to such ill use here only underscores how in searching for depth, Gaga has actually flattened many of her appealing dimensions on “Chromatica.” A few things I do like, a lot? Gaga’s decision to speak-sing more, in her captivating lower register. The glittery hopefulness of “Alice.” The winking monotony of “911.” The super-light “Swish Swish”/“Truffle Butter” beat of “Sour Candy.” The willingness to gesture to “Vogue” on “Babylon” after getting dinged for nodding to “Express Yourself” on “Born This Way.” And “Enigma,” arguably the album’s best track, which saunters onto the dance floor, wags its finger, and slickly references all of the album’s themes and aesthetics in a tight three minutes. MORRIS Gang, I’m going to toss out two albums that came to mind listening to this one: Madonna’s “American Life” and Katy Perry’s “Witness.” Both are expensive-sounding attempts at statement pop (about the world, about the self) that are also hollow because they neither reveal much that’s artistically compelling nor make much of a statement. Isn’t “Chromatica” another of this sort of album, a compass pointing in too many directions? Jon, you’re right about the Dua Lipa album, too. Lightness is the enormous source of its bliss. Lady Gaga has shattered too much cultural glass to go barefoot like that. (And Lindsay, speaking of Perry, this question about what “Chromatica” is: a state of high emotional vividness perhaps; or maybe a fancy way of saying “Prism.”) I agree, though, that the strongest writing, production and singing are in the middle. “Plastic Doll,” “Enigma” and “Replay” have the wit and introspection that you want from an artist you know can deliver. It’s also the section of the album where she sounds connected to the anger, pain and defeat she’s singing about. These are strong songs that also sound new for her. PARELES I’m with you, Wesley. I think of that middle stretch of the album as the sci-fi section: She’s singing about herself as an interface with technology — “Is it all just virtual?” she wonders in “Enigma” — and the music takes her up on it, with all the vocal effects and harmony swoops in “911” and the way “Plastic Doll” plays hide-and-seek with the 4/4 thump, letting the machines chatter among themselves when it drops out. And “Replay,” despite its title, doesn’t go for easy nostalgia; it’s about scars and psychological torture, and even with its pumping club beat — and the trademark Gaga stutter in the chorus on “r-replay” — she’s surrounded by voices that sound like a self-doubting choir of the damned. At least for a few tracks, Gaga and her producers don’t seem so worried about fitting some format. ZOLADZ I too hear in these lyrics some ambivalence about whether or not outrageous artifice is Gaga’s comfort zone anymore — the sounds and visuals present themselves as wacky and future-minded, but emotionally she still has one cowboy boot in the “Joanne” era. There are some sonic elements I really like, particularly in the album’s cyborgy electro-pop second section, but overall I found myself wishing she’d gone with some collaborators even farther left-of-center (Sophie was rumored to be involved in some of the early stages) or just gotten Max Martin to co-write half the album, as he did the transcendent “Stupid Love.” One of my favorite Gagas is drag-pandering Gaga. Which is to say I enjoy the ridiculous “Babylon,” and it’s probably the “Chromatica” track that makes me most sad about how long it might be until big, splashy pop concerts are a thing again. Oh, to party like it’s B.C. (or even, like, December 2019 A.D.). MORRIS I feel bad for this record. Ordinarily, it would be the soundtrack of Pride month. Now feels like the wrong time for it. Emerging from this increasingly ugly moment and having Gaga’s colors on the other side would be a treat. ZOLADZ One final thought: Gaga always wants to be seen as a good old-fashioned album artist. Friday morning she tweeted a very earnest plea to listen to the album in order, “from beginning to end.” (Somewhere in the beyond, Jackson Maine grunted in assent.) And, Caryn, while I agree that her first two albums are as close to unskippable as pop records get, I think this emphasis on The Album sometimes sets her up for harsher criticism than she deserves. “ARTPOP” and “Joanne” are both spotty for sure, but they also have some excellent songs that complicate the critical narratives about them (that they were a disaster and a staid disappointment). And because “Chromatica” is also a mixed bag, I worry that it will share their fate in the shorthand of the collective imagination. But at the end of the day, while a few of these songs make me yearn for the Ally material from “A Star Is Born,” there are a few stand-alone tracks (“Enigma,” “Alice,” “Plastic Doll”) that I can imagine putting on repeat during this cruel summer. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/arts/music/lady-gaga-chromatica.html I wonder what this score would be on Metacritic. It will 100% be included trolly troll troll Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anveeroy 57,925 Posted May 29, 2020 Author Share Posted May 29, 2020 TIME: Lady Gaga’s New Album Chromatica Is the Soundtrack for 2020's Most Epic Bedroom Dance Parties Musicians have always obsessed with fame, both as an abstract concept and as an aspirational state. The allure is obvious: Being famous has its perils, but the potential upsides outweigh the negatives. No modern pop star is more self-aware about fame’s complications and contradictions than Lady Gaga. From the very start of her career, she viewed celebrity with skepticism, even as she embraced stardom’s glittering prison. That tension has simmered beneath all of her musical identities and eras: futuristic dance-pop practitioner, artsy club kid, wild-child glam rocker, and country-disco balladeer. Much of this friction stems from the distance between Gaga’s flamboyant public persona and her true self: native New Yorker Stefani Germanotta, a talented pianist who grew up doing musical theater and later found her niche alongside Lower East Side musical misfits. Although this background informs her work—no Gaga concert would be complete without a smoldering piano power ballad—her lyrics are another story. Despite their universal sentiments, the self-empowerment anthem “Born This Way” and torchy “Million Reasons” don’t necessarily feel tethered to her own personal experience. Even the emotionally wrenching “Shallow,” which was credited to Lady Gaga, was impossible to hear without thinking of her performance as Ally in A Star is Born. Make no mistake, her catalog is galvanizing and moving—but the over-the-top Gaga-ness of her approach, for better or for worse, often masked her sincerity and depth. That may have shifted with the release of her sixth album. On Chromatica—a term she’s characterized as both “a frame of mind” and the actual physical place where she lives now—Gaga detonates the division between her public and private selves. As a lyricist, she explores her relationship to life-saving antipsychotic medicine (“911”), acknowledges that it’s healthy to admit when things aren’t okay (the Ariana Grande duet “Rain On Me”), and reclaims her identity and gender after a sexual assault (“Free Woman”). In the past, Gaga might have discussed these heavy topics from ironic remove or from the stance that she’s bulletproof; but Chromatica‘s songs are refreshingly direct and don’t sugarcoat any pain. These lyrics are also honest about the fact that merging Lady Gaga and Stefani Germanotta is an imperfect process. “Fun Tonight” is positioned as a heart-to-heart conversation between these two selves, in which Gaga comes to terms with her ambivalence toward fame and tabloid attention. And her ongoing frustration as being perceived as style-over-substance culminates in “Plastic Doll,” which skewers culture’s obsession with perfection and features the inimitable line, “Who’s that girl, Malibu Gaga?” Appropriately enough for the subject matter, Chromatica is a throwback to the relentless dance-pop of her early work, 2008’s The Fame and 2011’s Born This Way. Working again with a variety of collaborators—most notably BloodPop, who co-produced her 2016 album Joanne—Gaga envisions Chromatica as a hedonistic discotheque located on a distant planet. There’s ecstatic modern homages to vintage house music full of skyscraping soul vocals, staccato piano and taut tempos; sizzling dance anthems built around humid disco grooves; and meticulous earworms bringing back Europop’s geometric keyboards and precise beats. Yet like Joanne—which touched on dust-kicking country-rock and electro alike—Chromatica doesn’t necessarily play by standard pop rules. Orchestral interludes arranged by Morgan Kibby, who records as White Sea and is known for her cinematic work with M83, add majestic connective tissue that leads to moments of pure joy. The grand string swells of “Chromatica II” especially are a delight, as they crescendo and swerve right into standout “911,” a stomping robo-pop anthem with bubbly four-on-the-floor beats. And Elton John is Gaga’s perfect foil on the duet “Sine From Above,” a modern house classic reveling in the healing power of music: The pair belt out the lyrics together, two iconoclasts finding solace in each other’s creative orbits. It’s bittersweet that the album is arriving in a time of social distancing and physical isolation. In many ways, Chromatica is ideal for blasting in communal environments, perhaps at a packed club or party, as the music celebrates the power derived from making yourself vulnerable around (and to) other people. However, Gaga’s deep connection to the material, and commitment to being kind to herself even as she exposes her rawest emotions, makes for a rich listening experience no matter where it happens. Consider Chromatica the soundtrack for 2020’s most epic bedroom dance parties. https://time.com/5845014/lady-gaga-chromatica-album-review/ Stream Kylie-Janet Discographies! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anveeroy 57,925 Posted May 29, 2020 Author Share Posted May 29, 2020 3 minutes ago, gumzy3000 said: I wonder what this score would be on Metacritic. It will 100% be included They didn't give any rates - so, I am skeptical. Stream Kylie-Janet Discographies! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
vedetegomes 2,607 Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 3 minutes ago, gumzy3000 said: I wonder what this score would be on Metacritic. It will 100% be included 40-50 maybe Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mugiwara No Luffy 255 Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 NYT again lmao Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haldy 1,061 Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 5 minutes ago, gumzy3000 said: I wonder what this score would be on Metacritic. It will 100% be included I'm gonna guess 50, though could go up or down 10. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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