“Stupid Love” Proves that Lady Gaga Has the Range
Lady Gaga’s latest release solidifies that she is pop music’s ultimate shapeshifter.
Written by Delaney Davis
Photo courtesy of Trendsmap
On Feb. 28, Lady Gaga released “Stupid Love,” the lead single from her upcoming studio album, Chromatica. But this wasn’t the first time the world heard the track — the song went viral after it leaked online in January, much to Gaga’s annoyance.
Despite the fact that the single wasn’t exactly a surprise, fans were overjoyed that Mother Monster had finally returned to music. After racking up several awards for her role as Ally Maine in the 2018 remake of “A Star is Born,” Gaga joined fellow pop star Rihanna in the beauty world by releasing her own makeup line, Haus Labs. Little monsters were happy to see Gaga working on something new, but many were left wondering — where was the new music? The singer even teased her new album in a tweet, telling the world that she was “pregnant with LG6.”
A year later, Gaga has finally given birth, and fans can finally let out a sigh of belief. “Stupid Love” is a return to Gaga’s roots in the best way possible. With a fast-paced electropop beat, the song sounds reminiscent of something from her 2011 album Born This Way. She also calls upon one of her song-writing staples from early in her career: catchy repetitive hooks.
Freak out, freak out, freak out, freak out (look at me)
Get down, get down, get down, get down (look at me)
Freak out, freak out, freak out, freak out
Look at me now 'cause all I ever wanted was love
The song’s music video is full of the theatrics and camp that made her visual work the standard in pop music videography. Beginning with the text “The world rots in conflict. Many tribes battle for dominance. While the Spiritual ones pray and sleep for peace, the Kindness punks fight for Chromatica,” the video then fades a “Mad Max”-esque desert fantasy world, with Gaga leading the Kindness Punks to break up a battle between competing warrior factions.
Even the styling in the video is a throwback to the early fashion choices that made Gaga a household name. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Sarah Tanno, the pop star’s makeup artist, revealed the inspiration for the “kindness armor” Gaga is seen wearing throughout the video. “In the Born This Way era she had these cheek prosthetics — so I thought, what is the new special thing that I can make for her?” she said.
Photo courtesy of The Atlantic
With this era’s sound and stylistic choices in mind, many have been quick to praise Gaga’s comeback to pop music. This new release, however, is more than just a return to the genre that first catapulted Gaga to the top of the charts — it is a testament to her range as an artist.
Gaga first took a break from pop music with Cheek to Cheek, her 2014 collaboration album with big band legend Tony Bennett. Topping both the Billboard 200 and the Jazz Album chart, Gaga had seemingly done the impossible — she transitioned from pop star to jazz musician.
But Cheek to Cheek wasn’t Gaga’s only experimentation with genre. In 2016, she released her fifth studio album Joanne, which took a deep dive into the world of country music with songs like “Sinner’s Prayer,” “A-YO,” and “Grigio Girls.” Even the era’s styling reflected the singer’s change in sound, with Gaga typically donning stripped-down outfits like a white t-shirt and jeans with the iconic baby pink cowboy hat featured on the album’s cover. It is hard to believe the woman who wore the meat dress would be seen wearing denim jeans in public, but Gaga’s look changed as much as her sound.
Following the release of Joanne, Gaga both starred in “A Star is Born” and helped write and produce its soundtrack — both of which garnered her critical acclaim. While several of the songs, such as “Why Did You Do That?” and “Hair Body Face,” somewhat mimic Gaga’s off-screen pop star persona, most of the songs on the album are country and blues ballads. The most notable song from the soundtrack is, of course, the smash hit “Shallow,” which won Gaga the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
We’ve seen Gaga bounce from pop to jazz to country to blues, and back to pop again. In an industry where we see artists frequently break away from the conventions of genre, it is hard not to believe that Gaga and other modern pop pioneers didn’t help contribute to the resurgence of this trend in recent years in at least some capacity. If “Stupid Love” is any indication, LG6 will be full of the electropop bangers that fans have anxiously awaited. But after this album, there is no telling where Gaga might go. Don’t “freak out, freak out” if Gaga releases a punk album or dabbles in folk rock — it’s all still Gaga in all her glory.