What went wrong - Chromatica?

[Plastic Flower 4,354]

I love Chromatica and have good memories of the era but after 5 years of listening to it, it feels a bit bland, which didn’t happen for me with her other albums. 
I still listen to Replay like it just came out tho. That’s a hit for me.

[LUST FOR GAGA 10]

sterile and lacking soul. in a way joanne felt more gaga than chromatica did. MAYHEM reminded us how when she is motivated she can make much better music 

[Anderson123 37,477]

The thing that went wrong was COVID19. 

But speaking of the album itself. Coming from someone who absolutely loves Chromatica, it feels like Gaga just took a step back and trusted Bloodpop to create a pop album for us. It does lack that Gaga edge that we got from The Fame to ARTPOP and feels back again with Disease, Abracadabra and most of Mayhem.

Gaga was going through some really bad time in her personal life and still decided to make this dance pop album for us which follows a very good formula but it's very clear now that she has talked about it that she wasn't in the best place.

 

[monstertoronto 9,266]

I still love it. It’s one of my all time faves. But I do think the rollout was so disappointing. It started with such a promising start witha great start for SL, excitement building for ROM, with fun little promos like their weather girls joke videos, and a number one debut for ROM…. And then George Floyd was murdered and a racial reckoning happened on release day and we were also plunged into a pandemic. Gaga stopped all promo. She even stopped selling her album on her own website briefly. It was a horrible time in the world and it always felt like the era was interrupted and never got a chance to recover. 

This time around, once again it is a horrible time in the world. But Gaga has been promoting like crazy and we’re getting fed. And she seems so much happier now than she was then.  It’s just a more hopeful and happy release despite the horrors of the world.  So maybe some people can’t help but think negatively of Chromatica in comparison  

but I just did your megarate and it confirmed how much I love Chromatica. 
 

 

[Sugar Baby 773]

Chromatica was cute when it was released and the visuals were stunning

HOWEVER it did not age very Well and it is now her pop álbum with the least replay value 

 

[ReplayBoss 234]

Chromatica is one of her most cohesive records. It's very solid from start to finish. Replay is still my favorite Gaga song to this day. I have a lot of fun memories with the album and it helped me during the pandemic so I couldn't possibly hate it. It's the album that brought me back to Gaga. It's the album that got me through some tough times by dancing through the pain with Gaga. It's the first Gaga concert I saw live. Is it perfect? No! Just like any other record. I feel like a lot of songs from Mayhem had the opposite effect where a lot of the personality went into the production rather than the with the lyrics from Chromatica.

[Gagaism 10,984]

I think the main problem with Chromatica is the fact that its production sounds flat. It’s not a dare Gaga album we can expect from her on that aspect. The pandemic situation doesn’t help even tho the project got some amazing visuals. 

[AVeryGagaHolyDick 23,286]

Honestly? Imo, Chromatica has its cute moments but it’s her worst album by far.

I would say most songs have mediocre, if not bad lyrics. A couple (but rare) songs even have horrible lyrics. Even the best songs sometimes have at least one really bad line (I’m completely numb, why you acting dumb?)

The production is not producing. I was gonna say it sounded like the album was made to promote Haus Labs tutorials on YouTube, but Replay is the only song that can (eventually) compete with The Lash Song sonically.

Vocally, it’s not really it either. It’s not bad by any means but she recorded it when her voice was very strained, and it wasn’t enhanced a lot. You can almost taste the tobacco in some songs. You could say the same thing about Joanne and honestly she sounded AMAZING during both world tours. But Joanne was much more analog and her voice kinda made its charm. Chromatica is an electronic album and there’s a reason why electronic albums have always been heavily autotuned (MAYHEM included) and I think Chromatica missed that mark. 

She was in a very bad place, and she still made the effort to make a whole album for us. So I appreciate what it is for that reason but the record itself just didn’t do it for me personally.

And at the end of the day, the Chromatica Ball was absolutely magnificent. She managed to give life to an album that sounded completely dead, and that’s the most beautiful thing. <3

[A Fried Egg 8,297]

I don’t have any major issues with Chromatica. I wish a few songs were longer and maybe better produced. Yes it lacks grit but I do enjoy the clean sound. I’ve loved it since day 1.

I think I am drawn to the lyrics and melodies so much because they’re a reflection of my own life, and I love house music. 

Edited yesterday at 04:55 AM by A Fried Egg

[NewUsername 11,343]

Hot take: for the moment I still like Chromatica more than MAYHEM

[Ziggy 11,311]

To me it’s music that mostly anyone could do and/or material that is hallmark of writer’s block-ga (clunky lyrics, reliance on formula, other writers, etc.). Chromatica doesn’t feel very passionate imo aside from a few tracks which are BLEAK but very good. Mayhem, by contrast, even at its most generic is so full of energy. I haven’t listened to a Gaga album and smiled at first listen in a while and mayhem did that. Chromatica my first thought was, well ok that was good.

i love house so i expected more especially after the playlist they made to tease the album on Apple Music. Genuinely great stuff on there

Edited yesterday at 05:15 AM by Ziggy

[Nagini 707]

Both Joanne and Chromatica feel milquetoast and stale. And yes, it's in large part due to the production... both of which Bloodpop produced (and to be fair, Gaga signed off on). Both are also her weakest albums imo.

Very glad to see her rebound as strongly as she did with Mayhem (and ASIB, let's not forget about that gem). 

[bpmMonkey 5,271]

1 hour ago, OliviaRodrigoStan said:

, amd I could tell she had fun recording it. 

she said many times she was crying a lot, depressed and bloodwurst had to drag her back into the studio from chain smoking on the porch.. guess we have different interpretations of fun 

[doppelganger 3,915]

I love Chromatica

[Raivo 176]

I love Chromatica. It is still my favourite album. The only one I don't have any skips on and I can listen to it front to back. It has that amazing dancability aspect to it. It is very cohasive. The lyrics for the most part feel so real and relatable. I on the contrary love that it followed the formula and that it was produced by Bloodpop. Nothing wrong with that in my book. I still listen to Alice, Replay and 911 frequently.

It is interesting to see that we enjoy different things about Gaga's music. And some parts others dislike I actually love about Chromatica. Our little sad pink space princess album