“Earth is cancelled” and Chromatica is a new planet, according to Lady Gaga. Lord knows we could do with one.
At one stage, it looked as though the pop giant’s sixth album was cancelled instead. She postponed it from an April 10 release, saying it “just doesn’t feel right” during the pandemic. Thankfully, she changed her tune, perhaps having noticed that Dua Lipa pushed ahead with an album of hands-in-the-air party starters in late March, and scored both high chart placings and lashings of praise.
In the absence of nightclubs, Chromatica brings the dancefloor to you. The only pauses for breath are three brief orchestral interludes. Otherwise the thudding house beats are relentless, the electronic sounds are proudly maximalist and Gaga uses the guttural end of her wide vocal range to summon Nineties dance divas on tracks such as empowerment anthem Free Woman and the fizzing BLACKPINK collaboration Sour Candy. Ariana Grande and Elton John are also present but it’s all Gaga’s show.
It’s exactly the kind of thing that Bradley Cooper’s weary rocker character hated when her Ally Maine headed in this direction in A Star is Born. But it’s also what she does best. Stripped of the pretensions of her third album, Artpop, and the Meat Loaf influences of her second, Born This Way, it’s a non-stop pop rocket into space and a welcome reminder of the unlocked world we once knew.
