Chromatica 克罗马蒂卡

Lady Gaga has canceled Earth. She lives on planet Chromatica now. Yes, this is Stefani Germanotta’s return to all that is Lady Gaga: bizarre and theatrical and ambitious, swathed in electrodes, operating with a ga-ga-galaxy brain, delivering dance bangers for us canceled Earthlings. Chromatica is her first pop-pop album since 2011; unlike the non-“Why Did You Do That?” parts of the A Star is Born soundtrack and the beige acoustica of 2016’s Joanne, there’s not a ballad to be found. Specifically, according to Gaga lore, “Chromatica” is some kind of far-flung pink-prism Mad Max planet where “ballads are illegal.” Who doesn’t love world-building?
嘎嘎姐把地球给整没了，现在住克罗玛蒂卡星了。对，这就是斯蒂芬妮·杰曼诺塔回归嘎嘎姐的全部：稀奇古怪、戏剧化、野心勃勃，裹着电极，用嘎嘎星脑瓜子运作，给我们这些被取消的地球人送来舞曲炸弹。克罗玛蒂卡是她自 2011 年以来的第一张流行专辑；不像《一个明星的诞生》原声带里那些不是“你为什么这么做？”的部分，也不像 2016 年《琼安》里那些平淡的原声，这里一首抒情歌都找不到。具体来说，根据嘎嘎姐的传说，“克罗玛蒂卡”是一个遥远的粉红棱镜疯狂麦克斯星球，在那里“抒情歌是非法的”。谁不喜欢构建世界啊？

But while Chromatica is a return to Gaga’s dance-pop days, that doesn’t mean quite the same thing now. It’s been 12 years since her debut album The Fame, released when “EDM” was just corporate jargon and “dance” meant stompy electroclash. In 2020, a Lady Gaga dance album comes out as an unabashed revival of ’90s house music. But if anyone’s earned a trip to the house, it’s Lady Gaga, who is among the few big pop stars today who can legitimately be called a diva. When Gaga sings, she sings out: not chill, not Idol-pretty, but unafraid to go there, whether there be throaty rasps or sotto-voice commands or feral desperation. It’s why her hard-rock dalliances largely worked, and why Chromatica feels more substantial than other artists’ throwaway dance turns. So much nu-house is producer-driven, its vocalists reduced to decorations if even credited; there is no risk of this with Gaga. Everything here would be unmistakably her even if self-reference didn’t abound. Lead single “Stupid Love” salvages the juddering sequencer of “Do What U Want,” kicks up the speed, and weaves Gaga’s past lead singles around it like Maypole streamers: the oncoming-juggernaut heft of “Bad Romance,” the melodic contour of “Born This Way,” the conceit of “Applause.”
哎呦，这 Chromatica 虽然是嘎嘎回归舞曲流行的节奏，但现在可不一样了。自从她出道专辑《名声》发行以来都 12 年了，那时候“电子舞曲”还只是公司术语，“舞曲”就意味着跺脚的电音。到了 2020 年，Lady Gaga 的舞曲专辑就成了 90 年代浩室音乐的复兴。但要说谁配得上浩室音乐，那还得是 Lady Gaga，她可是当今为数不多的能称得上天后的流行巨星。嘎嘎唱歌的时候，那可是真唱：不装逼，不偶像派，敢于放开嗓子，不管是沙哑的嘶吼还是轻声细语的命令，还是野性的绝望。这就是为什么她玩摇滚也挺成功，为什么 Chromatica 比其他歌手的舞曲更耐听。现在的浩室音乐大多都是制作人主导，歌手只是个装饰品，连名字都不带提的；但嘎嘎可不一样。这里的一切都毫无疑问是她自己的，即使没有到处都是自夸。 领头单曲“Stupid Love”拯救了“Do What U Want”里磕磕绊绊的音序器，加快了速度，还把嘎嘎过去的领头单曲像五一彩带一样编织在周围：“Bad Romance”的势不可挡，“Born This Way”的旋律轮廓，“Applause”的创意。”

The other line about Chromatica is that it’s Gaga’s most personal album. You may recall that Joanne was also called Gaga’s “most personal album.” That time, it was “personal” in the same way all pop stars’ unplugged albums get called that: the arrangements had acoustic guitar, and the AutoTune was kept to a tasteful touch-up. Chromatica loses the guitars but certainly handles heavy subject matter: PTSD triggers, antipsychotic meds, sexual assault. In fact, most of Lady Gaga’s music since The Fame has been very personal. For every shiny, poppy song like “Telephone” or “Hair,” Gaga’s recorded three more with wounds at the core: the personified fears of The Fame, the parts of Born This Way that are more darkwave or Warcraft than bubblegum; the bitter mess of 2013’s Artpop. Themes recur: fragmented identity, soldiers to emptiness, drinking tears, dying a little when being touched. The art is often messy, the specific mess of art written from trauma. Even when Gaga dons freaky costumes or writes high-concept songs about Judas or swine, the artifice cracks. It’s why her albums hold up surprisingly well. It’s telling which Gaga moments have resurfaced from the early 2010s into current cultural memory: the deadpan, panting intro to “Monster,” or the sludgy-gothy “Bloody Mary,” which TikTok made even sludgier and gothier.
嘎嘎的 Chromatica 这张专辑，有人说这是她最私人的专辑。你可能还记得，Joanne 也被称为嘎嘎的“最私人的专辑”。那次，它之所以被称为“私人”，就像所有流行歌星的原声专辑被称作“私人”一样：编曲中有原声吉他，自动调音只用作点缀。Chromatica 虽然没有吉他，但肯定处理了沉重的话题：创伤后应激障碍的诱因、抗精神病药物、性侵犯。事实上，自 The Fame 以来，Lady Gaga 的大部分音乐都非常个人化。对于每一首像“Telephone”或“Hair”这样的闪亮流行歌曲，嘎嘎都会录制三首以上带有核心伤痛的歌曲：The Fame 中人格化的恐惧，Born This Way 中更像是暗潮或魔兽世界而不是泡泡糖的部分；2013 年 Artpop 中苦涩的混乱。主题不断重复：破碎的身份，空虚的士兵，饮泪，被触碰时死去一点点。艺术往往是混乱的，是创伤中写出的艺术的具体混乱。即使嘎嘎穿上奇装异服，或者写出关于犹大或猪的高概念歌曲，这种虚构也会破裂。这就是为什么她的专辑出人意料地经久不衰。 嘎嘎早年间那些名场面，现在又重新火起来了，一看就知道：那死鱼眼，喘着粗气唱《怪物》的开头，还有那又黏又暗黑的《血腥玛丽》，在抖音上整得更黏更暗黑了。

Chromatica reverses this effect. This is house music at its most shiny and immaculate, a genre made from ache and escapism, high strings and numbing throbs. But Gaga’s lyrics are plainspoken, mostly free of religious metaphors and pretense; of the two high-concept songs on Chromatica, one is deliberately silly (“Babylon”) and the other (“Alice”) immediately yanks the metaphor back into reality: The first words are “my name isn’t Alice” and the song is inhabited not with white rabbits but the more terrifying creatures inside one’s mind. The emergency in “911” refers to olanzapine, a fast-acting antipsychotic that Gaga says saved her life. The track begins with a cold, stark beat, her vocals affectless and vocoded. The whole thing sounds off, and when the sweet, singsong chorus arrives, it just sounds off even more. The counterpoint never quite resolves with the melody, and the most painful lines (“Wish I laughed and kept the good friendships”) are tossed off, almost missable. But these are wonderful details, ones you can dance through now, then catch later.
Chromatica 把这效果反过来了。这是浩室音乐里最闪亮最干净的，一种由痛苦和逃避、高音弦和麻木的悸动组成的音乐类型。但嘎嘎的歌词很直白，基本没有宗教隐喻和装腔作势；Chromatica 里有两首高概念的歌，一首是故意搞笑的（“巴比伦”），另一首（“爱丽丝”）马上就把隐喻拽回了现实：第一句歌词是“我叫的不爱丽丝”，这首歌里住的不是白兔子，而是人心里更可怕的生物。“911”里的紧急情况指的是奥氮平，一种起效快的抗精神病药，嘎嘎说它救了她的命。这首歌一开始是冷冰冰、赤裸裸的节拍，她的唱腔没有感情，还用了变声器。整首歌听起来都不对劲，当那段甜美、抑扬顿挫的副歌出现时，听起来就更不对劲了。对位旋律和主旋律始终没有完全融合，最痛苦的几句歌词（“希望我笑了，还保持着那些美好的友谊”）被随口唱出，几乎让人错过。但这些都是精彩的细节，你现在可以随着它们跳舞，然后在以后慢慢体会。

For all Gaga’s emphasis on Chromatica being an album meant to be heard start-to-finish with no skips, the sequencing is a bit off. The string interludes, composed with Morgan Kibby (M83, White Sea), separate the albums into three acts, each with its own filler. The climactic redemption of Ariana Grande collab “Rain On Me” comes about ten tracks too early, and “Free Woman” and “Fun Tonight” lose energy so close together. In act two, “Plastic Doll”—the basic idea of which you can guess just by reading the title—would have been too on-the-nose on The Fame. “Sour Candy,” the break-the-internet collaboration with K-pop superstars BLACKPINK, is sassy enough, but on a Lady Gaga album, and particularly this album, it feels out of place. That’s partly because there’s no Gaga until over a minute in, partly because we’ve literally heard it before: “Sour Candy” is at least the fourth pop song built on a sample of Maya Jane Coles’ “What They Say.” Then there’s the unavoidable fact that Chromatica is an album explicitly made for big communal dancefloors, released just before Pride month, a big celebratory mood, in a year when none of those things quite exist like they used to.
嘎嘎老强调《Chromatica》这张专辑要从头到尾听，别跳着听，可这顺序整得有点不对劲儿。那些弦乐间奏，是跟摩根·基比（M83、白海乐队）一起编的，把专辑分成了三幕，每幕都有自己的填充物。跟爱莉安娜·格兰德合作的《Rain On Me》是高潮，结果早了十首歌就来了，“Free Woman”和“Fun Tonight”挨着放，劲儿都泄了。第二幕的《Plastic Doll》，光看标题就能猜到啥意思，放在《The Fame》里都太直白了。“Sour Candy”是跟韩国女团 BLACKPINK 合作的，火得不行，但放在 Lady Gaga 的专辑里，尤其是这张专辑，就觉得格格不入。这部分是因为一分钟以后才出现嘎嘎的声音，部分是因为我们之前真听过：至少有四首流行歌都是采样了玛雅·简·科尔斯的《What They Say》。还有个不可避免的事实，《Chromatica》这张专辑就是为大型舞池做的，偏偏在骄傲月之前发行，气氛特别嗨，可今年这些东西都不像以前那样了。

Chromatica’s two strongest tracks are near-total opposites. Imagine an axis from bizarro transcendence to pure transcendence; “Sine From Above” is all the way at the left. Each individual part of it makes sense, kind of. Lady Gaga and Elton John? Sure; they’re godfamily, after all, and he’s a livelier duet partner than Tony Bennett or Bradley Cooper. Elton John with two-thirds of Swedish House Mafia? That was the idea, back in 2013. An ode to a literal sine wave, dropping decibels from the heavens? If anyone would write that, it’d be Gaga. Attacking that theme with zero-irony gusto that Eurovision would co-sign, going for it and never looking back? Chopping everything up for a drum-and-bass tangent at the end? To borrow the theater-kid saying, it’s big and wrong—yet so big, it’s hard to call it wrong at all. 

If “Sine From Above” runs on WTF, “Enigma” runs on familiarity: Every musical and emotional beat arrives precisely on cue, as if the club had muscle memory. It’s massive, it has a gravitational pull. Uncoincidentally, the chorus recalls a certain other song about being heroic lovers, just for one night. It slots right into Gaga canon: Enigma is the name of her recent Vegas residency, and the snippets of sax that crest above the choruses recall the late E Street Band member Clarence Clemons on Born This Way. And, crucially, it nails the desire of meeting someone in all its urgency. On planet Chromatica, “Enigma” is otherworldly: the atmospheres light up violet, dragon’s eyes and phantoms abounding. It’s the same drive that’s powered dance music, from disco to house to Gaga—turning a moment heightened, more fantastic, and, even at its most strobe-lit and artificial, somehow entirely human.

Lady Gaga: Chromatica

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