Album Review: Lady Gaga Finds Healing on the Dancefloor in ‘Chromatica’
Lady Gaga soothes her pains with pounding basslines and catchy melodies in her sixth studio album.
Written by Delaney Davis
Photo courtesy of Norbert Schoener
The four years since Lady Gaga released her last studio album, Joanne, have been the biggest of her entire career. Her aerobatic 2017 Superbowl halftime performance was loved by critics and fans alike. 2018 saw her acting career soar to similar heights when she won widespread acclaim for her role as Ally Maine in “A Star is Born,” receiving multiple Academy and Golden Globe award nominations, including an Oscar win for Best Original Song for the film’s power ballad “Shallow.” Not to mention Haus Labs, Gaga’s beauty brand that allows customers to emulate the avant-garde, forward-thinking style that has made her a fashion icon.
Still, despite her success, fans desperately wanted the singer to return to her electropop roots. Her past releases saw the singer stray from the computer-generated beats of her debut album The Fame (2008) toward jazz (Cheek to Cheek), country (Joanne), and folk music (the A Star is Born Soundtrack.) While the music was well-received (see the over one billion streams for “Shallow” on Spotify), a question lingered: Would Lady Gaga would return to pop music? And if so, what would that return look like?
Gaga answers that question with Chromatica, an album rife with contradiction, in the best possible way. The singer navigates heavy topics, centered around her struggles with her mental health, on top of thumping house beats that could be ripped off the playlist from NYC’s most exclusive underground party (in a coronavirus-free universe, of course). Beyond cementing her status as the current reigning Queen of Pop, Chromatica proves what lovers of the genre have known all along: dance music can be just as emotional as ballads.
The album, which Gaga has described as a “journey through pain toward healing,” is sectioned off into three acts designated by orchestral interludes. The first, titled “Chromatica I,” sets the stage for her journey with lush strings and stoic horn chords — the track appropriately sounds like the opening to the latest fantasy blockbuster film.
The instrumentals quickly transition to the album’s opening track, “Alice,” which introduces us to the internal chaos Gaga has been dealing with over the last few years. She compares her experience to Alice from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” drawing a parallel to the titular character’s fall down the rabbit hole to her own descent into madness. “I’m tired of screaming / I’m tired of screaming / At the top of my lungs / I’m in the hole, I’m following down, down / So down, down,” she sings over an upbeat electronic pulse. The decision to couple such dark subject matter with a discordant instrumental backing is the first glimpse at Gaga’s decision to navigate her pain where she’s most powerful: on the dancefloor.
Up next are the album’s two singles, “Stupid Love” and “Rain On Me (with Ariana Grande).”. Both songs showcase how Gaga has perfected pop songwriting, with repetitive, catchy hooks layered over earworm-inducing melodies. While not the most lyrically complex on the album, the two tracks show that Gaga has perfected pop music production down to a science.
Act I of the album finishes with its most emotionally gripping song, “Fun Tonight.” More restrained than the album’s previous songs, Gaga finally has the opportunity to let her vocals truly shine. While lamenting the impact mental illness has had on her ability to go out and have fun with her friends, her mezzo-soprano voice belts, “I’m feelin’ the way that I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ with you / I stare at the girl in the mirror, she talks to me too.” Though crafted by production veterans Skrillex and BloodPop, the song’s genius lies in its lyricism. Gaga beautifully articulates how isolating the battle with depression and anxiety can be, speaking from her own experience while also weaving together a story that is universally relatable.
Act II opens with “Chromatica II,” a much darker interlude than its predecessor. The more sinister tone of this transition foreshadows the darkness of one of the album’s standout tracks, “911.” The song sounds reminiscent of tracks released earlier in Gaga’s career, easily passing as a cut track from The Fame Monster or Born This Way, mimicking both album’s experimental avant-garde pop sound. The superstar opens up about her dependence on anti-psychotic medication, robotically crooning “Turnin’ up emotional faders / Keep repeating self-hating phrases / I have heard enough of these voices / Almost like I have no choice.” While not the first artist to pen songs about mental health, the choice to be so unapologetically candid about taking an antipsychotic is certainly commendable, especially given the stigma toward using prescriptions as a remedy for mental health issues.
This act’s closer, “Replay,” is lyrically the most impressive cut on the album. Gaga likens her experiences of PTSD to a monster, similar to the monster metaphors that dominated The Fame Monster. Sampling Diana Ross’ “In My House,” the dizzying production of the track mirrors the destructive nature of the condition Gaga battles. The song’s instrumentals work together with its lyrics to create the “abstract expression of what it is like to be triggered when you have PTSD” that Gaga hoped for. While she does not shy away from admitting the power the condition has had over her life (“Every single day, yeah, I dig a grave / Then I sit inside it, wondering if I’ll behave”), Gaga has reclaimed some of that power, singing in the track’s bridge:
Psychologically, it's something that I can't explain
Scratch my nails into the dirt to pull me out okay
Does it matter, does it matter? Damage is done
Does it matter, does it matter? You had the gun
You had the gun
You had the gun
You had the gun
“Chromatica III,” the album’s final interlude, provides the perfect introduction to the album’s best collaboration, “Sine from Above,” with Sir Elton John (sorry, Ariana and BLACKPINK). After dancing through her pain in the album’s previous tracks, Gaga pays homage to what has helped her through her recovery: music. Sound, as Gaga explained to Apple Music, is her God, hence the reference to sound waves (or sine waves) in the song’s title. The closest the album gets to a traditional ballad, Gaga and John’s voices mesh together beautifully, both celebrating how music has “healed [their] hearts.” While John may at first seem out of place on a dance track, the pairing makes complete sense, given how music has, quite literally, saved both of their lives. (Required viewing: “Rocketman.”) The only critique of “Sine from Above” is that it would better serve as the album’s closer, instead of the house-track “Babylon.”
Image courtesy of Streamline and Interscope
More than just a dance album, Chromatica chronicles Gaga’s journey to self-acceptance, following her through the beginning of her tumultuous last few years to her eventual healing. This journey has built the foundation of the artist’s best album in years— one that is both uniquely vulnerable and yet also completely relatable. Rather than shying away from her struggles and imperfections, she douses them in electronica and presents them to the world.