Switched on Pop - The Many Colors of Lady Gaga’s ‘Chromatica’

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

Lady Gaga’s 6th album is a conceptual release about a future that is neither utopian nor dystopian. Despite its sci-fi visuals, the album looks more to the past and present than the future. Chromatica gives us a world that sounds like 90s house music made for this summer’s cancelled Pride parties. It is lyrically somber, but musically upbeat, a productive tension that inspires hope. Gaga shared that she made this album to help her and her ‘little monsters’ dance through the pain. So we called on our listeners to dig up the most meaningful moments on the album and help us tour the world of Chromatica. SONGS DISCUSSED Lady Gaga - Chromatica I, 1000 Doves, Alice, Bad Romance, Stupid Love, Fun Tonight, Paparazzi, The Fame, Rain On Me, Since From Above, Babylon Gwen McCray - All This Love Cassius - Feeling For You Avicci & Sebastien Drums - My Feelings For You MORE "Welcome To Chromatica" playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6nIb85jPqtjhjuOB3DUI49?si=Vy9LLNWcSAeih_V2Amq6Aw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate, I would like you to join me on a journey into the world of Cromatica. Charlie, I thought you'd never ask. Hello, string orchestra. That's pretty, isn't it? Hmm.

So Lady Gaga has released her sixth studio album. It's a follow up from her Oscar win, the song, from a Star is Born and her 2016 album, Joanne, that took a bit of a country term. This album, Chromatica, is what people are calling a return to form, as in dance, music, Gaga. She's got a bunch of amazing collaborators here, executive produced by Blood Pop. We've got Ariana Grande. Elton John and Black Pink are on the album. Yeah.

This is a BFZ. Excuse me. A ballad free zone. There's some things that approximate ballads. What approximates a ballad on here? Oh, the thousand doves? Ballads don't have house drums, Charlie. Okay.

This is a ballad free zone. Cromatica is not just any old album. It's a concept album. This is an album that Gaga asks people to listen to all the way through. And while we're not going to listen all the way through, what I want to do today is take a breezy tour through the world of Cromatica. See, what does it feel like? What's going on?

How is this world being created? To guide us through the many colors of this music, I've recruited a bunch of our listeners. Fantastic. Here's Austin. One of the things that I've always loved about a lot of her music is that it's very danceable. It's very pop forward.

and it's also something that's so beloved in the gay community that you'll often hear tracks play, you know, at a gay club. And I got the feeling over the past few years, like the Joanne era was fine. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't like a super fan. But I really wanted something fun and upbeat and also something a bit more introspective. And I think that Chromatica has really delivered that. And as we are not able to currently attend any parties or go to any clubs or even see our friends, really, I think it's been really nice to bond with my group of friends about Chromatica and talk about being able to dance to it together in the future. And it's not perfect, but we don't really know where this is going. So for me, that has been a real light in this time of isolation.

I think this is perfect. He talks about dancing together in the future. And I think that's exactly what Gaga wants us to be doing. Because she describes this album as not a dystopian, not a utopian world, but somewhere in between. It actually feels in many ways, I think, a lot like the world that we live in. But she creates this suspended universe with upbeat dance breaks to be able to express some very challenging emotions. To get a taste of that, I think we should start. start with her song Alice. So this is the track that takes us down the rabbit hole, so to speak. Yes, exactly. This augurs exactly what Austin was describing. We are grooving here at Switch Drum Pop HQ. This is music that just gets deep inside your body and you can't help but groove. You're struggling to even find the words because this is body moving music.

Absolutely. But I think one of the things that this dance-oriented music allows for are sorrowful lyrics, that mash up of happy and sad. We can get a taste of it in the second verse of Alice. Sick and tired of waking up and she's saying, hey, DJ, take me on a trip, free my mind. You're saying there's kind of this productive tension between the irresistible grooves of the music and a certain melancholy in the lyrics. That's right. You know, Gaga is known for creating these sort of hyper performative commentary on popular culture. She's often seen as very removed from her work. but the lyrics here

I think Austin described them as introspective. There's actually a lot of Gaga here. What we just listened to will also turn out to be a sort of light motif through this album. Wait, really? Well, every, or not every, but almost every song has a section where Gaga has like a spoken monologue. And they're usually delivered in this very specific voice

that is commanding you to pay attention and is somewhat robotic but also very powerful. It's a voice that we've heard from her before. One of the things that we hear on this album is Lady Gaga reflecting back on all of her earlier work. It is in a certain way, return to form, and we can hear that on Alice. You get the reference.

Oh, Mama, that's the beginning of bad romance. Exactly. So in addition to that sort of sing-talking style that we know Gaga for, she's also making reference lyrically to, well, both this song and a certain style that she has. She's known for that sort of stuttering and rolling R's and ma's and laws. For me, I guess what it's doing here, it feels like she's looking back. This is introspective. Right. Later on the album, she'll reference popper. You're going too far. Okay, okay, okay. You've gone too far.

Austin's not the only one to have noticed this. Our listener Tyler also notes that something about the lyrics here feel, well, unique to Gaga. Chromatica definitely goes back to her dance pop roots that a lot of people really love about her. But I also don't think that she completely lets go of everything that she picked up for Joanne. and a star is born either. Chromatica is a lot more personal than her early work. I think Tyler sums us up really well, that musically, we have like early Gaga,

but lyrically, we're getting later Gaga. What we heard in shallow. I'm falling. Good times I find myself longing for change. This really intense. personal romance. We heard on Joanne an album it was much about Gaga's father and their difficult relationship. And when she talks about this album in an interview with Zane Lowe from Beats. You know I can't wait to dance with people to this music. I

can't wait to just go into you know any space with a whole bunch of people and blast this as loud as possible to show them how much I love them and And until then, I hope that they listen to this record and go on not only my personal journey with me and dance through all the pain, but also go through their own journey and dance through all their pain. And maybe there will be some arc within that sign that aligns us both. And so from afar, how can we connect? We can see that Gaga is really struggling with writing an album that reflects where she's at, which is at a place. place of a lot of challenge, a lot of emotional challenge, a lot of personal challenge,

but simultaneously pair it with something that feels like it can drive her somewhere forward. And while the lyrics don't ever get into intricate detail, I think that we can really hear the sorrow going on here. A great example would be stupid love. First impression of this song for me was just fun, right? Oh yeah The beats driving us Stupid being the operative word here But you know

I think that there's something Quite heartfelt here as well Right like she opens up the verse with You're the one I've been waiting for Gotta quit this crying Nobody's gonna heal me if I don't open the door Kind of hard to believe Gotta have faith in me

She's like struggling to figure out Whether or not she feels comfortable opening up And the stupid love Can feel like Maybe that's just a stupid love song but she also says like all she's been wanting for is love. Like she opened up her career with wanting fame. But here she's pleading for love just to be appreciated.

They're very different qualities. The chorus of the song kind of illustrates that idea. If stupid in this context is like more of a practice of putting feeling over intellect or something. thing, then the chorus seems to exemplify that by just being this cacophony of like half-uttered sounds. Like it's not really about making sense. It's about expression and sort of guttural communication. Like the voice responding to the music rather than with words, just the, yeah, that's exactly

what I'm feeling. Yeah, it's beyond words. You tried to preempt a wonderful moment earlier on where she does continue to reflect on this struggle with fame. In the song Fun Tonight, she makes some direct allusions to this earlier work. Obviously, we have allusions to paparazzi. And the fame Two of her most famous Songs that in their time

felt like they were self-consciously commenting on the sort of ridiculousness of fame And yet now we hear the underbelly of that Not feeling like she trusts herself Not feeling like she can go out I mean, if you watch her interviews, it's really broken her. And it's pretty devastating to watch.

I think that this music in a certain way is reclaiming how to feel safe, speaking what's really going on for her. And part of the way you do that is you just, you put those lyrics over really fun dance beats and then you're going to bring people along. Charlie, this has been thoroughly illuminating, but I can't help but yearn to talk about. one of the biggest songs on this album. Tell me that's going to happen. Yeah, we're going to talk about Rain on Me just after the break.

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We're not alone in feeling this way. Many listeners wrote in with some great thoughts, comments, and questions about rain on me. Hi, Nate and Charlie. My name is Amanda, a long-time listener. The track I'm putting on a repeat is Rain on Me. The song is produced by Blood Pop, and when he goes in, he can really make an amazing pop masterpiece. That makes me never want to stop dancing.

The first time Ariana's vocals come in, I literally get chills. like her vocal riff just floats over Gaga preparing us for what's to come. There's just something about this song that makes me want to play it on repeat for an hour straight, and I never feel this way about a song, even a month after it's released. I'd love to pinpoint what it is.

I mean, I love both artists, the production quality is great. The drop is really fun. It's a very full and vibrant production, but I can't put my exact finger on what makes me keep hitting repeat. Let's zoom in on that moment when Ariana comes in,

and let's figure out what makes it so compelling. I know exactly. exactly what Amanda is talking about. I am not ashamed to say that I was just doing a full breakbeat routine to this song in my studio

before we started recording. Let's see if we can't pinpoint some of the musical hooks that keep us coming back to this song. There are a lot of elements that pull us in here. One that I think is particularly strong are references to other

songs. So a more obvious one when Ariana says that she's wiping tears from her eyes is an allusion to her song, no tears left to cry. Perhaps, yeah. Okay, I'll give it to you.

All right. But the deeper reference in this song is in the base, and its origins are revealed to us by a close friend of the pod. Nate and Charlie, this is Micah Salkind. I am so excited that you guys are talking about Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande's new single Rain on me. It makes such good use of disco singer Gwen McCrae's

1979, all this love that I'm giving baseline, which you may know from 1999 track feeling for you by Cassius, or even 10 years later, Avicci and Sebastian drums my feelings for you. Similar use of this baseline. And it's all. to devastating effect. This is truly the pride anthem we all need for a canceled pride season. Wow. Micah, I never would have connected those dots. That's really cool. It does make me appreciate this track even more. Yeah, Micah is our resident house expert. He joined us on an episode a little while back, breaking down the house. He literally wrote the book on House. He literally wrote the book called Do You Remember House?

I want to talk more about this baseline for a sec. Tell me. It is a palindrome. Ooh, interesting. I've never thought of a musical line as a palindrome. Okay, take the first three notes. Bum, bum, bum. Yep.

We're going to kind of hold up a mirror to those three notes and sing them in reverse. Bum, bum, bum. And we're just going to do that throughout the chorus. First part, bum, bum, bum, flip it. Bum, bum, bum. You know, if we think about this metaphorically, maybe it's like, you know, there's two sides to every emotion.

And we need that duality. I'd rather be dry, but at least I'm alive. You know, the rain, the hardship makes you feel human in some ways. That's a, wow, that was a stretch. That was a Mr. Fantastic kind of stretch. But yeah, I'll stand by it. It's a really lovely way to read that sound. I also just think musically, it's one of those things that demonstrates how anybody with a sequencer can approximate trying to make house music.

Because oftentimes the bass lines are simple and the kick drums are on every beat. But creating a baseline that is that simple and you want to keep hearing is fundamentally so challenging. and that's why you get these samples and repeating versions of it because someone found that perfect little palindrome and you just want more of it and more of it and more of it. People keep sampling it, recontextualizing it, and it's incredibly satisfying. Kind of like Duolipa's track, don't start now,

that we examined a few months ago. Chromatica has just endless references, and we can have a lot of fun finding every single one. It's not just this one baseline, but she's actually done the work for us. There's a playlist that she put out just four days before the album was dropped called Welcome to Cromatica. It was eventually replaced by the album, but people have archived it. And it's basically this mega playlist of all of the things that they were listening to and referencing in this album.

So I'm going to share that in our show notes because it's really fun. It's a total memory palace of house music. Oh, and then this song has one of the best spoken interludes in it. What's that? We get one of the most distilled expressions of the Gaga voice. I mean, I guess it does, it feels very outer space in that way, doesn't it? I'm about to fly. Yes.

Rain on me, rain on me. So I mentioned at the top of the episode that Gaga imagined this as a concept album, something to listen to all the way through. And it's something that many of our listeners noted that this is a complete work that wants a long, full listening. And I want to share with you some notes from Brandon, Sam, and Jackson. Brandon here with some thoughts on Lady Gaga's new album, Chromatica. So I think this is her most cohesive album yet, and maybe by a significant mark. Hot dance tracks just bangor after banger that feel sonically of a piece and are arranged to tell a story and are somehow presented as if this were a 70s arena rock concept album complete with movements and instrumental interleads. And I think it's indicative of this album's clarity that it climaxes with a club-ready power ballad about the divine

healing power of music featuring Elton John whose hook is a cringe worthy pun. That is so exactly the intersection of camp and raw sincerity at which Lady Gaga lives and frankly it's a triumph. My name's Jackson, I'm 19. I'm from Australia. I think some of my favourite parts on it would have to be the drum and bass breakdown at the very end of sign from above. It's kind of got that sort of 1995 sort of thing. Hi Nate and Charlie. My name is Sam and I'm from London. Chromatica, I think, is no doubt one of Gaga's finest bodies of work.

It's her strongest concept album, but I had to listen a couple of times to get into it fully. It's a perfect nightclub soundtrack and it feels as though it could be a continuous DJ set, played all the way through. I feel the album's energy is heavily 90s influenced with dance synth-pop takes and the post-corrhose dance breaks after most songs on the album definitely reinforce that 90s club culture vibe. Admittedly, I had to listen a couple of times to really understand the realm of Kramatica as it does require a niche listening style of imagining yourself in a club and those interludes

and transitions acting as your time to go and refill your drink. We have to stop doing these calling episodes. Our listeners are too smart and articulate. It's very distressing. Are you worried about losing your musicological pedigree? Yeah, I don't want to give anyone any ideas, but I mean, it's, I feel a little threatened. So I feel like the overarching note that I got from Brandon, Sam, and Jackson is that it's not just a concept album, but this is an album that feels like it's a DJ mix.

And many of the songs on this album are produced with the quality of a DJ behind a set of turntables, mixing things, turning knobs, filtering things, as if they're moving fluidly between songs. One of my favorite examples is On Rain on Me during the Bridge. Here it feels like things are being filtered out. The DJ is ready to sort of blend in the next beat. But it's a bridge. Hands up to the sky.

I'll be your galaxy. I'm about to fly. Rain on me, tsunami. Hands up to the sky. I'll be your galaxy. I'm about to fly. Rolling drums in our back. It feels like you could hear this entire album in a club,

song to song to song, and it would have felt like a complete set. Yeah. Nate, you're really into the Gaga voice. Yes. Yes. And I think that we would be at a loss if we didn't take a brief detour to the final song on the album, Babylon. And I'm going to let Jackson introduce this track.

I especially really like the super 90s cliched Babylon, which it's definitely, I can definitely smell the 909 from here. You know what I'm saying? It's really in your face. It's so, it, it does, it homages Vogue very well in my personal opinion. Walk a mile, servant, ancient city style, talking out, Babel on, battle for your life, Babel on, that's gossip, what you are, money don't talk, rip that song, gossip, Babel on, battle for your life, Babel on. Yeah, wow, that's really fun.

I mean, we've got a lot going on here. those 90s references, certainly the 909 drum machine that Jackson mentioned. The 909 being the younger sibling of the 808. 808 drum machine known more in hip hop. But the 909 is definitely the sound of house, techno, acid music. And then we've got the Yamaha DX7 electric piano. We've spoken about this before on the show. That is one of the characteristic sounds of 90s house music.

The DX7 was the synth of the 80s. This is actually a Corg M1, like traditional 90s house sound. Okay, fair, stickler. And then we've got the sacks. We got some sacks. Shout out to Rachel Mazer, amazingly talented musician, who's given us that tenor here. It's an element of something organic and acoustic

in this electronic world that just brings a whole warmth to the proceedings. And there's two more references that I just absolutely love here. Okay, show off. What are they? Right at the very beginning. Okay, what's that? What do you think it is? I don't know.

It's a loon call. Oh, okay. It's a loon. You've never heard a loon? No, I'm not, I wasn't born in a lake in Maine. I don't hang with loons. It's a loon call. There's a really fun article by Philip Sherburn about the history of the loon call in electronic music.

They're everywhere. And it just happens to be that one of the originators of one of the first samplers, the emu, included a loon call. And so you can hear it in all kinds of tracks. That is fascinating. But I think the most important reference here, Jackson's pointing out that this is a real homage to Madonna's Vogue. That Gaga voice, which you so love, is, feels quite derivative of Madonna's Vogue, which I was asking actually Mike about, you know, where does this come from? Because we know that Vogue is very much appropriated from Ballroom culture and house culture. Right. From queer communities. And

the way that Mike had described it to me is like, he says, it's like Madonna is mimicking the voice of a man mimicking a woman, mimicking a drag queen. So there's like many performances of androgeny and gender that are happening in that particular vocal timbre. I love that. Yeah. I knew there was a reason I was so drawn to it. And hearing some of the layered history of that voice makes sense. And so many people have been pointing out here that this is an album that feels like it's the album that would be playing during all of the pride celebrations that have had to be canceled for the year.

From what I can gather, Gaga is thoroughly ammeshed in that music and is making something that is for her queer community. It can be really joyous to talk about Lady Gaga's grammatica, but it feels incomplete. an album that was meant for celebration, for getting together. And to sign off today, I want to leave with some advice from our listener, Sean. This album was meant to dance along to, and that's tough right now because you can't go to a nightclub or a concert or even a house party to dance with your friends. And so to get the full Chromatica experience, I really recommend dance like no one's watching as corny as that sounds, because if you are quarantined, there's a good chance no one is watching. And you'll enjoy the music so much more, and you can start practicing your dance moves now for when we are eventually allowed to dance in a big group, and you'll be able to bust out the best moves on the floor.

So Chromatica, it's not an album to sit still to. Switched on Pop is produced by Bridget Armstrong, Megan Lubin, Nate Sloan, and me, Charlie Harding. Our mixing, editing, and engineering is done by Brandon McFarland. Illustration by Iris Gottlieb and social media by Abby Barr. our executive producers are Nashak, Karwa and Liz Nelson, and we're a part of the Vox Media podcast network. I also want to thank all of our listeners who supplied us with brilliant voicemails. I wish we could have played them all. There were just way too many. Thank you for your brilliant insights. You can find more episodes of Switched on Pop anywhere you get your

podcast and you can reach out to us on social media at Switched on Pop. And you should do that because next week we're going to have a brand new episode about the song of summer. You have an idea what that might mean this year. Shoot us a note at Switched on Pop. Until then. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.