Lady Gaga – 10 of the best
1. Paparazzi
This may come as a shock, but Lady Gaga always wanted to be famous. Her songs often touch on the different facets of fame – from the early wide-eyed outsider perspective of her 2008 debut, The Fame, to the rabbit-in-the-headlights distortion of companion EP, The Fame Monster. While her attitude to fame became increasingly solipsistic when she became the biggest pop star of the last decade, her early songs were about making it a universal experience. “The Fame is about how anyone can feel famous,” she said. “But, it’s a shareable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle.” The album’s fifth and best single, Paparazzi, conflated this combination of fantasy and reality into one of her finest pop songs. Despite its layers – the conflict between fame and love, the implications of wooing the paparazzi and courting the media – there’s a stylish effortlessness to it all. While her later work would occasionally see her tying herself in knots to make a point, here it’s easy to appreciate the song as intensely or as superficially as you want to. While the verses are underpinned by an undulating, industrial-tinged beat and little flourishes of ominous zither-like synth squiggles, the chorus is pure melodic sunshine. Always a visual artist, Paparazzi also marked her first real visual statement after Just Dance and Poker Face, its Jonas Åkerlund-directed video a gloriously OTT statement on the lengths people will go to for fame, and a real marker for the future.
2. Bad Romance
If Paparazzi cemented Gaga’s status, then the imperious Bad Romance – about falling in love with your best friend – built a tower on the top with a beacon flashing the message: “It doesn’t get better than this!” A techno-inspired, electropop juggernaut, Bad Romance was written on a tour bus somewhere in Norway with regular collaborator RedOne. Emboldened by the reaction to her more outré creative statements, Gaga was keen to make what she called “a pop experimental record” with a more 90s edge. It pulls off that rare trick of making kitchen-sink production seem crisp and clear, each element fulfilling its purpose and elevating the whole. In fact, almost all of it is a hook of some kind. Just when you think it has reached peak lunacy the “walk, walk, fashion baby” bridge emerges (the song was debuted at an Alexander McQueen runway show), before the middle eight, including some A-level French, flutters into view. It reaches a glorious cacophony around the four-minute mark, before Gaga wails “WANT YOUR BAD ROMANCE!” and pop is recalibrated all over again.
3. Telephone feat Beyoncé
Just over a year after The Fame came the eight-track EP The Fame Monster, a concise and fat-free concept album offering the seedy underbelly of celebrity as a contrast of The Fame’s wide-eyed hope. Originally written for Britney Spears (she recorded a demo of it, which leaked in May 2010), the Rodney Jerkins-produced Telephone seems to be about escapism and the suggestion that perhaps a club isn’t the best place for a chinwag. This being Gaga, however, there’s slightly more to it than that. She told MTV the song was actually about suffocation and the fear of not being able to enjoy yourself. It’s possible that explanation was crowbarred in afterwards, because a pop star in their imperial phase can say and do what they like and get away with it – and this was definitely Gaga’s imperial phase. Telephone starts with two verses, rather than the typical verse, pre-chorus, chorus. Its dynamics and tempo are so perfectly balanced, however, that it only takes 45 seconds to get to that chorus, its arrival shoving a proverbial rocket up the song’s backside. Even without its guest star, the song would exist towards the upper reaches of very good, but Beyoncé – deliriously half-rapping her way through the third verse like a woman possessed – creates the perfect time capsule of pop in the late 00s.
4. Alejandro
Alejandro is one of Gaga’s oddest singles, and one of her slowest, its 99 bpm tempo placing it in the space between banger and ballad. Perhaps that’s why her label was reluctant to push it as a single. In the end, Gaga got her way and the song became her seventh successive US top 10 hit. The song – deliciously OTT – is about Gaga saying goodbye to her ex-lovers, including the titular Alejandro, poor old Fernando and the forever unloved Roberto. Its string-led opening is juxtaposed brilliantly with the slight tinge of 90s holiday camp teen disco that follows, all click-track beats and soap opera relationship drama. But, as was typical of those early years, all the disparate elements are wonderfully sewn together by Gaga and RedOne, the pair allowing the song enough space to breathe and for that glorious chorus to take centre stage.
5. Dance in the Dark
Dance in the Dark is a song about self-loathing that doesn’t offer a solution: it marks the point for Gaga where the private and the public conflate; where the Fame Monster starts to win. The chorus of “Baby loves to dance in the dark/ ’cause when he’s looking she falls apart”, however, is still anchored in the relatable, dealing with issues of sex and self confidence. “She doesn’t want her man to see her naked. She will be free, and she will let her inner animal out, but only when the lights are out,” she explained to the Los Angeles Times. The song was given a new dimension whenshe performed it at the 2010 Brit awards, shortly after the death of her friend Alexander McQueen, anchoring the song’s message that fame is a mask that can’t rescue everyone. Musically, the song is a glorious juxtaposition of textures: the harsh, stuttering vocal meshing with that glacial riff, while the processed vocals of the verses burst into the sunshine of the chorus. Even the robotic spoken-word part towards the end is eventually washed away by a warm synthetic breeze. Dance in the Dark is also the first song that seems to be for and about her fans. “I hope and pray that I can inspire some sort of change in people subliminally through the show,” she told MTV. They’re singing Dance in the Dark, but they’re dancing and they’re free. They’re letting it out.”
6. Judas
Imperial phases only last so long of course. Born This Way in 2012 was, for some, a step too far – a well-meaning but patronising gesture that felt like another superstar convinced they could save the world. For the first time, the message was clouding the song. To others it just sounded too much like Madonna’s Express Yourself. The album campaign also showed signs of slipping, with previously immaculate artwork and videos replaced by rushed jobs. Stripped of that extraneous stuff – which is easier said than done when it comes to Gaga – and you’re left with the music, and much of the sprawling Born This Way album holds up. One of the few RedOne productions was Judas, a brutal jackhammer of a song that ramps up the juggernaut feel of Bad Romance but sweetens the pill with a glorious chorus that feels almost comically upbeat. Judas also brilliantly showcases Gaga’s varying vocal styles, with the thudding verses delivered in a blank, half-rap style, before the sweet pop chorus briefly lights the way. Then there’s the peculiar spoken middle eight (“fame hooker prostitute wench vomits her mind”), mixed with an unhinged cry about “ear condoms”. Judas is a reminder of how ludicrous pop can be.
7. The Edge of Glory
Born This Way contains several supercharged power ballads, the default genre for anyone looking to indulge their musical fantasies. The best of the bunch is The Edge of Glory, a song that takes those stadium-sized Springsteen influences to their obvious conclusion by employing the services of saxophonist Clarence Clemons. Inspired by the death of her grandfather and his 60-year marriage to her grandma, the song is about “the glorious moment of your life … when you decide that it’s OK to go, you don’t have any more words to say, more business, more mountains to climb.” Perhaps it’s that personal connection that makes her performance more soulful than elsewhere on the album. Once again the chorus is immaculate, a joyous burst of energy that ramps up towards an impassioned “I’m on the edge with you.” By the time Clemons’s sax solo screeches to a halt, the song feels almost overstuffed, and yet Gaga and co-producer Fernando Garibay manage to eek out another minute’s worth of drama before the song deflates, exhausted by its own ambition.
8. Yoü & I (Mark Taylor Remix)
Every Lady Gaga album includes an ode to her days shlepping around New York playing smokey bars. The Fame had Brown Eyes, The Fame Monster had Speechless, Artpop had Dope. Born This Way’s ode to whiskey-stained rock’n’roll was supposed to be Yoü & I, a song she premiered in June 2010 and added to the Monster Ball tour shortly after. Originally just a relatively low-key piano ballad, the version that appears on Born This Way stamps all over its original subtlety and features Brian May, a sample of We Will Rock You, and production by Robert John “Mutt” Lange. The result was bloated and suffocating, but the song was later saved by Mark Taylo’s remix. With the tempo increased, the backing vocals pushed to the forefront and a sparkly synthetic bassline slapped underneath it, the song shimmies and shines. This version also pushes the bar-room piano front and centre, brilliantly, and then follows that with a brief banjo solo. Just when you think it can’t get anymore perfect the backing track falls away by the song’s end to leave Gaga alone at her piano again, likely gazing into the bottom of a whiskey glass.
9. Do What U Want feat Christina Aguilera
Hobbled by a sense of panic around the campaign and far too many elaborate pre-release gimmicks, 2013’s Artpop album was a blip. Though Gaga’s innate earnestness overtook her talent, it still contained highlights, not least the album’s second single Do What U Want, a pulsating shimmer built around one of her best choruses. Inspired by her time spent living in Chicago, Gaga created her version of an R&B song. Many were furious that Gaga – who claimed to be an advocate for the voiceless – chose to feature R Kelly on the album version, given the detailed accusations that he had sex with minors (he has always denied the allegations and has never been convicted of criminal charges, though he has settled a number of civil lawsuits) Just to highlight how bad her decision-making had become around this point, she then got Terry Richardson to shoot a video, which, thank goodness, has never seen the light of day. Keen to keep the song in the charts following the reaction to the Kelly/Richardson controversy, Gaga rereleased a single version featuring Christina Aguilera. Rather than sing Kelly’s overtly sexual second verse – which jars heavily with Gaga’s first – Aguilera sings what one assumes was the original, pre-Kelly version, about how “her bones hurt from all the shows”, which is obviously in relation to the hip injury that forced Gaga to cancel the remainder of her Born This Way Ball tour. It’s a credit to the song that despite all the tinkering, it still sounds amazing.
10. Sexxx Dreams
There’s a parallel universe in which Sexxx Dreams was the first single from Artpop and everyone was a lot happier. Artpop’s actual lead single, Applause, was good, but it was essentially a song by Lady Gaga about being Lady Gaga for fans of Lady Gaga. The throbbing squelch of Sexxx Dreams, however, is just a straight up pop song with some delicious disco flourishes about “really nasty” fantasies. That’s it. No ulterior motives. It stands out a mile on Artpop because it’s one of the few genuinely carefree moments. Gaga’s playful vocal performance brings out various different textures in the song – she’s probing on the back and forth of the verses, playful on the pre-chorus and then in full-on seductive mode in the chorus. There’s also a brilliant spoken-word interlude bit where she giggles “I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I’ve had a couple drinks and … Oh my God!” before the chorus and those delirious, chunky synths wash over the song one last time.
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