Reasons Why Chromatica Isn’t Generic

[GovernmentHookah 897]

7 hours ago, ARTGOD said:

The general problem is not that it takes inspiration from old genres, but that it doesn’t really do anything new with them, it’s very straightforward with its references.

That approach works decently when the sound she’s replicating is nostalgic, like 80’s synth music or 90’s House. You don’t really want her to be experimental with them, you just want a familiar House song. That’s why songs like Enigma, Babylon, Sour Candy and Replay are the strongest.

The real problem is when she also recreates early 2010’s EDM verbatim. That sound is considered to be old, dated and passé, but not old enough to have become nostalgic like those other genres. So when you hear songs like Fun Tonight or 1000 Doves you hear all those EDM elements that were done to death 10 years ago, but you still haven’t had the time to miss them and feel nostalgic about them, so you’re still kinda sick of them.

I would also include Sine From Above as it sounds like a rip off of “Don’t You Worry Child” from Swedish House Mafia. Other than the tracks you mentioned and Plastic Doll, I love the 90s lite aesthetic of the album I just wish they would’ve went harder with it. The instrumental sounds lite compared to what I thought it would be. Here’s hoping there is a part 2 to this album! 

[Borislshere 53,044]

The album does nothing for me. I was so hyped pre release thinking it’d sound completely new and fresh but what we got instead, to me at least, was an outdated sounding album. 
like an album full of why did you do thats 

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

You are literally the first person I know that used Chromatica and generic in the same sentence  

[Head Empty 25,122]

7 hours ago, ARTGOD said:

The Chromatica II - 911 transition is good, but if you think it’s one of the best moments of all time all I can say is that you need to listen to more music.

Engima is great. A call and response bridge is nothing to write home about.

The outro of SFA is just standard breakbeat with an amen break sample, there’s nothing in it that’s new.

Babylon pulls HEAVILY from early 90’s House.

There is nothing about Chromatica that is new or groundbreaking. It didn’t need to be, to be honest. Taking familiar genres and references of decades past and putting them through the Gaga lens was enough, and a bunch of the album succeeds at that. However, there’s also a big part of the album that doesn’t really take those references in any new or exciting direction. Is that being generic?, that’s up to personal opinion. But I think there are so many missed opportunities in the album that are really hard to ignore.

This and your second response capture my feeling about the album really well. I love the album and it's my second favorite after Born This Way. Chromatica is well-crafted, extremely personal and it has some of Gaga's biggest bops.

The only reason I rank Chromatica lower, is because Born This Way was extremely ambitious on every front. Those songs are so "Gaga" all the way through, that it's hard to imagine any other artist singing it. Lyrically I could say the same thing about Chromatica, but in terms of sound and production the goal was obviously not to revolutionize pop music. 

Wasn't it Bloodpop who said in an interview that they wanted the music to sound familiar? They wanted the listener to feel like they had already heard these sounds before. Which makes sense both creatively as well as personally for Gaga. Right now she wants to be a metaphorical warm blanket for the world, instead of the ice bath that she tried to be in 2011-2013.

[GovernmentHookah 897]

2 hours ago, Why am I on GGD said:

This and your second response capture my feeling about the album really well. I love the album and it's my second favorite after Born This Way. Chromatica is well-crafted, extremely personal and it has some of Gaga's biggest bops.

The only reason I rank Chromatica lower, is because Born This Way was extremely ambitious on every front. Those songs are so "Gaga" all the way through, that it's hard to imagine any other artist singing it. Lyrically I could say the same thing about Chromatica, but in terms of sound and production the goal was obviously not to revolutionize pop music. 

Wasn't it Bloodpop who said in an interview that they wanted the music to sound familiar? They wanted the listener to feel like they had already heard these sounds before. Which makes sense both creatively as well as personally for Gaga. Right now she wants to be a metaphorical warm blanket for the world, instead of the ice bath that she tried to be in 2011-2013.

I agree with everything that you’ve said. Pre-album release I was convinced that there was no way Gaga would produce an album that featured filler tracks. Now that it’s been a month - 911, PD, SFA are total skips for me and it does feel like a loss because the songs on this album are a lot shorter than BTW. I pictured Chromatica as an album which featured anthemic music inspired by 90s house and instead it feels a little 90s-lite to me. They could’ve gone a lot harder with the production and lyrics. Scheiße was a perfect example of how to capture 90s sound with hard and anthemic lyrics and production. I wish RedOne exec produced this album versus Bloodpop because he understands this type of music.

[HausOfAntonio 8,021]

10 hours ago, ARTGOD said:

The general problem is not that it takes inspiration from old genres, but that it doesn’t really do anything new with them, it’s very straightforward with its references.

That approach works decently when the sound she’s replicating is nostalgic, like 80’s synth music or 90’s House. You don’t really want her to be experimental with them, you just want a familiar House song. That’s why songs like Enigma, Babylon, Sour Candy and Replay are the strongest.

The real problem is when she also recreates early 2010’s EDM verbatim. That sound is considered to be old, dated and passé, but not old enough to have become nostalgic like those other genres. So when you hear songs like Fun Tonight or 1000 Doves you hear all those EDM elements that were done to death 10 years ago, but you still haven’t had the time to miss them and feel nostalgic about them, so you’re still kinda sick of them.

I feel like 1000 Doves is much more referential of early 2000s/Late 90s eurodance and club music than it is of early 2010s. FT is the only song I would say doesn’t feel really inspired and referential enough, but it still echoes the likes of Robyn really well to still be enjoyable imo. 
 

Also I feel like the cacophonous/dissonant dance breaks on Replay are quite experimental  

[MelbHawker 6,583]

11 hours ago, ARTGOD said:

The Chromatica II - 911 transition is good, but if you think it’s one of the best moments of all time all I can say is that you need to listen to more music.

I think it's a standout moment in recent Pop Music. It came left afield and literally made my jaw drop. & I've listened to plenty of music. Each to their own. 

[MelbHawker 6,583]

4 hours ago, GovernmentHookah said:

I would also include Sine From Above as it sounds like a rip off of “Don’t You Worry Child” from Swedish House Mafia. 

They literally sound nothing alike though. How is it a rip off exactly? 

[ARTGOD 3,266]

26 minutes ago, HausOfAntonio said:

I feel like 1000 Doves is much more referential of early 2000s/Late 90s eurodance and club music than it is of early 2010s. FT is the only song I would say doesn’t feel really inspired and referential enough, but it still echoes the likes of Robyn really well to still be enjoyable imo. 
 

Also I feel like the cacophonous/dissonant dance breaks on Replay are quite experimental  

Replay is the exception though, I have to admit. It’s the only song that actually does something fresh and interesting with the genre it’s referencing. I don’t think it’s that weird or experimental, but it is a nice, tasteful blend of 70s disco and modern pop and electronic production styles. The album would’ve been much stronger if more songs had taken this approach.

1000 Doves does take influence from a lot of things, but the drop in specific sounds like a standard 2010’s EDM drop, and it’s kind of the Achilles heel of the song.

[A Hybrid 11,049]

12 hours ago, ARTGOD said:

The Chromatica II - 911 transition is good, but if you think it’s one of the best moments of all time all I can say is that you need to listen to more music.

Engima is great. A call and response bridge is nothing to write home about.

The outro of SFA is just standard breakbeat with an amen break sample, there’s nothing in it that’s new.

Babylon pulls HEAVILY from early 90’s House.

There is nothing about Chromatica that is new or groundbreaking. It didn’t need to be, to be honest. Taking familiar genres and references of decades past and putting them through the Gaga lens was enough, and a bunch of the album succeeds at that. However, there’s also a big part of the album that doesn’t really take those references in any new or exciting direction. Is that being generic?, that’s up to personal opinion. But I think there are so many missed opportunities in the album that are really hard to ignore.

Literally this, thank you, 100% agree with no further comments. "Lmao" reacters just have very narrow music tastes if they think Chromatica brings anything new to the table.

[FlopSlurper 34,336]

11 hours ago, Bobbylon said:

I don’t like those dj summer type of beatdrops on free woman, fun tonight and 1000 doves. It’s screaming 2015 to me and it’s the only part that I’d say is generic. Otherwise the album is safe but has it’s own vibe

I will forever be pressed over the downgrade to FW from the demo

[HausOfAntonio 8,021]

10 minutes ago, ARTGOD said:

Replay is the exception though, I have to admit. It’s the only song that actually does something fresh and interesting with the genre it’s referencing. I don’t think it’s that weird or experimental, but it is a nice, tasteful blend of 70s disco and modern pop and electronic production styles. The album would’ve been much stronger if more songs had taken this approach.

1000 Doves does take influence from a lot of things, but the drop in specific sounds like a standard 2010’s EDM drop, and it’s kind of the Achilles heel of the song.

To me personally the 2010s EDM drop was more focussed on loudness, whereas 1000 Doves has that understated muted quality with the air releases that take me back to 2002 New Years for some reason 

 

But overall I don’t think Chromatica is experimental at all. That doesn’t make it a bad album, I really love every single song in its own way.

 

I think she probably had some pressure to deliver an album with short songs for the streaming era and that really narrows down the possibilities to really give a song space to breathe and be looser and more experimental in form. 

[HausOfAntonio 8,021]

7 minutes ago, A Hybrid said:

Literally this, thank you, 100% agree with no further comments. "Lmao" reacters just have very narrow music tastes if they think Chromatica brings anything new to the table.

I don’t think its an experimental album at all, but claiming that it brings nothing new seems to deny it of its many qualities. It doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel to bring something new imo. I don’t think the album is derivative as much as simply referential and exclusively of the streaming era (ie. track lengths). It brings many new elements though in terms of subject matter in the realm of pure pop that I think are really exciting and have helped me through a really hard time  She made a song about antipsychotics for God’s sake 

[ArtpopAct2 2,672]

23 minutes ago, ARTGOD said:

Replay is the exception though, I have to admit. It’s the only song that actually does something fresh and interesting with the genre it’s referencing. I don’t think it’s that weird or experimental, but it is a nice, tasteful blend of 70s disco and modern pop and electronic production styles. The album would’ve been much stronger if more songs had taken this approach.

1000 Doves does take influence from a lot of things, but the drop in specific sounds like a standard 2010’s EDM drop, and it’s kind of the Achilles heel of the song.

I love 1K doves but it sounds as if it were a remix of a Gaga ballad bc of that drop. 

[ALGAYDO 32,613]

4 hours ago, Why am I on GGD said:

Right now she wants to be a metaphorical warm blanket for the world, instead of the ice bath that she tried to be in 2011-2013.

Wow, this perfectly sums it up.