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.
Lady Gaga’s “Chromatica” is a return to the dance-pop that marked her earliest albums, with a twist.
Credit...
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
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.
Thanks for reading The Times.
Subscribe to The Times
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.
----------------------------------------------------
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/arts/music/lady-gaga-chromatica.html
----------------------------------------------------
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق