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Lady Gaga Is Back and Smaller Than Ever

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The sometimes-dazzling dance pop of Chromatica is a return to form, but she’s not overselling it.
Fame is pain. That’s always been one of Lady Gaga’s messages. Whether via spiked shoulder pads, skyscraper heels, or raw-meat pleats, her early persona read as mad-scientist fashion model: someone shellacking and reshaping herself for the public’s amusement. As she sang assaultively catchy songs about excess and applause while spurting blood or in gilded wheelchairs, she reminded viewers that the destruction of the body has too often been the rite through which human beings have become popular icons. Maybe, it seemed back then, she could circumvent that rite by acknowledging it. Maybe by going meta she could become a true immortal.
Sadly and sure enough, Gaga’s performance art did not prevent serious torment. She broke a hip on tour in 2013. She began speaking of a pain disorder, and of mental anguish, and of having survived sexual assault. She gave up on jackhammering dance music and instead took to the gentler swaddling of jazz and folk. She made a movie, A Star Is Born, that depicted the early thrills of fame leading to addiction and doom. She recorded lyrics about healing and cures. All along, many fans wished for her to return to the superhuman persona and aggressive sound of before. But Gaga’s growing interest in displaying human fragility hinted that it could be unsafe to go glam again.
Yet here comes Gaga’s new album, Chromatica, a front-to-back rave that she has billed as a return to form. Like in her early days, there are disco drums and spoken-word passages in vaguely European accents. There are colorful costumes, otherworldly music videos, and even a half-baked thematic gimmick. (Chromatica, you see, is a planet of translucent mountains and warring tribes. There is no mention of this in the songs themselves). But the album’s not a reversion—it’s a deescalation. It is pop music that tries to wash itself of the trappings of popularity, so as to be more nourishing or therapeutic. The results include patches of fabulosity and long stretches of just-okayness, suggesting that she’s made peace with the idea that not every track needs to change the world.

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