ARTIST: Lady Gaga
ALBUM: Born This Way
LABEL: Interscope
RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2011
A Different Breed
Photo by Mariano Vivanco
Written by Katie J. Norris
Most gossip about Lady Gaga’s new, highly anticipated album, Born This Way, claims that, although the record is good, it is busy, too pretentious, and the fad is fading. They must have made the mistake of comparing her to other artists. Not to deny the potentially pretentious part, but it seems to be more of a harmless over-confidence than an out of control ego.
First of all, the new album is jam-packed with diversity on every level. Gaga knows how to pair her intense fashion ideas with a collection of electric pop tunes, using as many genres possible that she can fit into an hour of material. If she’s trying to make a statement with this style, it seems that mission is to do what you love and don’t give in to conformity if you know it’s right. Believe it or not, Gaga first started out as Stephanie, the struggling artist playing 11 p.m. time slots on rainy Wednesday evenings in N.Y.C for crowds of six. She has pulled through the failures every musician endures, one time opening one of her shows by announcing in a sultry, laid-back voice: “My band was bad, so I locked them in a box.” She proceeded to push play on her little laptop resting on the piano at that tiny venue and performed, of course, as if she were playing a stadium. She will carry the same fiery passion way beyond this point in her career and continue to transcend, whether anyone likes it or not.
The self-declared hype of this collection of tunes feels like it must have been created because of the subject matter. Gaga didn’t expect the world to just say, “Okay, yeah, sure, why not” to lyrics like, “I’m still in love with Judas…,” “Jesus is the new black…,” and the outspoken inclusion of every type of member in the LGBT movement. Maybe everyone already expected her to be wild and test the limits of our culture, so her statements are just part of the fashion and the show. Or maybe society as a whole is becoming more tolerant, and she is truly an influence. In any case, she seems completely genuine about being herself in every way and inspiring all to do the same.
“Marry the Night” opens this album. It’s a nice, easy ballad intro that drops listeners off a cliff into an electro-pop nightclub. The title track, “Born This Way,” is a genius hit. The classic message of “be yourself” is reinvented with a killer hook and has become the theme song for club-goers, rebels of all types and pride parades of 2011. Not to mention the music video for this track, where we see Mother Monster giving birth to an entire alien-humanoid race, that again, grabs attention from everyone. Along the lines of the thematic “free yourself” message throughout, Gaga adds “Hair,” a pop track that conjures images of hot pink, purple, and a hypothetical remake of the ’60s musical and “Bad Kids,” a list of rebellious ways with a catchy chorus intertwined with synthesizers saved from the ’90s.
There are some interesting turns in this album. Most notable are “Judas” and “Bloody Mary,” perfect contextual contradictions of each other that both stir things up lyrically and get the party started sonically. Bubble gum blends with hard rock in “Heavy Metal Lover” and “Electric Chapel.” Or maybe it’s just the five studios worth of production jammed under the raw rock ‘n’ roll lyrics. Gaga sang in French in “Bad Romance,” so of course, now she’s on to German in “Scheiße” and Spanish in “Americano.” The anything-goes girl even includes a saxophone solo by Clarence Clemons—recently deceased member of the E Street Band—in the middle of pounding electro-rock track “The Edge of Glory.” The outright danceable song is about living the very last moments on Earth. There are a few selections that could have been skipped on this album and subsequently made it less than an hour. But no song is bad, including the six Gaga-released remixes of her originals. “You and I” is absolutely the high point of this album. It’s the sweetheart winnin’, story-tellin’, future karaoke singin’, heart-filled song that brings one back to that little venue in N.Y.C. listening to a passionate little lady play her soul out unabashedly for six people and the whole world that would finally get to hear her.