Lady Gaga’s fans have had to wait almost four years for her to release a new album after Joanna and on May 29, Chromatica was finally released. Since it’s release less than two weeks ago, it has quickly reached the top of the charts around the world, becoming her sixth album to reach No. 1. The album has 13 songs with three orchestral interludes that break her album into three parts.
There’s no doubt that Gaga is incredibly talented as she has shown in previous albums and in A Star is Born, and her incredible, powerful voice shines through in this album as well. However, the album isn’t really going anywhere.
The opening song, “Alice,” inspired by Alice in Wonderland, sets the beat-pumping, supernatural tone for the rest of the album. The album features ’70 disco, house, new wave, and electro and the highlights are “Stupid Love,” “Rain on Me” (with Ariana Grande), and “Sour Candy” (with BLACKPINK), but once you’ve heard these three songs, you’ve pretty much listened to the whole album as all the songs sound pretty similar.
Songs like “Free Woman” and “Fun Tonight” have empowering messages about not letting past assaults or relationships define you, but it’s hard to take the messages seriously as they’re accompanied by upbeat background music.
Nonetheless, songs like “Rain on Me”, the Ariana Grande collab, are the girl-power anthems we needed during the quarantine and we will not complain. Gaga told Paper that the single is “a celebration of all the tears… It’s two women having a conversation about how to keep going and how to be grateful for what you do.”
Even though the album seems repetitive, the Little Monsters in us are excited that Gaga is back and we can’t wait to hear more of her upcoming albums. What can we say, we needed these catchy dance floor tunes to get us through these dark times. But we didn’t need all of them.
3/5
