(Interscope)
After a po-faced stab at country,
Lady Gaga returns to the land of make-believe on a vivid new album that excites and heals
What a relief: the “real” Lady Gaga is gone. For a while, it looked like pop’s high priestess of serious silliness was being sucked into the Slough of Authenticity – first with her supposedly stripped-back, country-inspired 2016 album Joanne (in truth, about as stripped back as Universal Studios is when compared with
Disney World), then with her garlanded turn in
A Star Is Born and its painfully earnest soundtrack album.
Being real is a look every artist has to try on at least once, but it was never going to become Gaga’s signature style. Chromatica, her sixth album, brings back the spectacle, manifesting a parallel reality she’s had one foot in since childhood, centred on colour, kindness and connection. “Earth is cancelled,” she declared. “I live on Chromatica.”
Coronavirus temporarily put a halt to the world-building begun in the Star Trek-flavoured video for lead single Stupid Love, forcing her to delay the album (she curated the One World: Together at Home concerts in the meantime) and leaving her summer tour up in the air. The songs, though, are more than vivid enough to conjure Planet Chromatica by themselves: Gaga’s always tended to overstuff her records, but the hit rate on these 16 tracks is her highest since the gothic techno cabaret of 2011’s Born This Way.