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REVIEW: Lady Gaga – Judas (Drops April 19th)
Listening to Lady Gaga’s next single is an enjoyable experience.
In short:
‘Judas’ is extremely good.
In long:
Imagine a highly evolved, Titanium-plated ‘Bad Romance’ from the year 2511 travelling half a millennium back in time to save music from a tidal wave of ‘in the club’-obsessed pop drivel, and that’s ‘Judas’. We love this song so much. It’s pop in all the right ways, it’s noisy in all the right ways, it’s brash and bombastic and funny and audacious and stupid in all the right ways, and it’s smart in all the right ways, too. [FULL]
Q&A TIME
What is the BPM?
Somewhere in the region of 130. Yes, you will be dancing to this song.
Is it actually about Judas out of The Bible or is it pretending to be about Judas when in fact it is about something else?
The first time Lady Gaga played us the tune she told us that in broad terms it was about being in love with the worst guy you’ve ever met, but as you might expect there’s more to it than that. “It’s about leaving your darkness behind in order to come into the light,” she added the other day. “I have a lot of things that have haunted me from my past – choices, men, drug abuse, being afraid to go back to New York, confronting old romances – and Judas represents, for me, something that is bad for me that I can’t escape. I keep going back and forth between the darkness and the light in order to understand who I am.” So, very broadly, the main portion of the song is about Gaga in private and the middle eight is about Gaga in public, two themes that are explored elsewhere on the album too.
Is it better than ‘Bad Romance’?
It’s too early to say yes but it’s too close to rule it out.
Does it actually sound like ‘Bad Romance’?
Well, ‘Judas’ is to ‘Bad Romance’ as ‘Bad Romance’ was to ‘Poker Face’. It’s a new experience in familiar territory, like dancing in your favourite club after it’s had a new soundsystem fitted. The nods to ‘Bad Romance’ are deliberate – Gaga told us that while sometimes it’s important to push herself in new directions, as she does throughout the album, “sometimes I do count my stripes and make sure they’re all there, and ‘Judas’ was one of those records. I wanted it to be an evolution from where I’ve been before but in terms of the formula I wanted there to be something about ‘Judas’ that reminded people of what I’ve done in the past”. So there’s a post-chorus like the ‘Bad Romance’ “whoah-oah-oh” bit (here it’s “whoah-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh I’m in love with Ju-u-das, Ju-u-das”), there are some ra-ra post-chorus hook bits (“Juda-Judas, Juda-Judas, Juda-Judas, Juda-Gaga”) and the song unfolds similarly too: post-chorus, post-chorus hook, song slams in with verse one, then pre-chorus, big explosive chorus out of nowhere, then back down to post-chorus, post-chorus hook and so on.
Is it better than ‘Born This Way’?
We think it is 2.5x better than ‘Born This Way’. ‘Born This Way’ could/should only have been the lead single from the album, and it does make more sense in the context of other album tracks, but ‘Judas’ is more up our street. It’s a pop song that’s happy being ‘just’ a pop song and it immediately feels more ‘proper Gaga’ – whatever that really means – than ‘Born This Way’.
Does it sound like any songs by other notable recording artistes?
No.
Will some people dislike it?
Yes, and it is important that these people are able to accept that they are wrong. They will need your love and your respect while they come to terms with this difficult truth. Do not pity them, just offer them your help.
[SOURCE: POP JUSTICE]
REVIEW: What the critics are saying about ‘Born This Way’
What are the critics saying?
Guardian.co.uk – It’s one of the most tweeted, blogged and hyped pop singles in recent memory. The title was announced more than six months ago, with the lyrics leaked piecemeal by the lady herself. Elton John has claimed it’s “the new gay anthem”, Justin Bieber and James Blunt tried to predict what it would sound like, while others have criticised the racial terminology in the lyrics. It was due to premiere on US radio at 6am EST, but has since been shoved online by Perez Hilton.
So what does it sound like? Well, a lot like Madonna’s Express Yourself, so much so that those two words are currently trending on Twitter. There’s also some spoken-word bits a la the Material Girl (as no one calls her any more), but it doesn’t sound copycat, more a knowing nod and a cute wink.
Born This Way is a thumping, almost disco anthem that stomps along until the chorus crashes in with the weight of a discarded meat dress. Lyrically, it’s all love yourself whoever you are and “don’t be a drag, just be a queen”. Within the ridiculously camp musical context, the lyrics sound a lot less heavy-handed than it would suggest. One suspects it will probably shift a few copies.
Rolling Stone – “Don’t be a drag/Just be a queen,” Lady Gaga chants in this instant-classic club anthem, over the Eurodisco beats of producers Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow. She shouts to the gays, lesbians, bis, disabled, and monsters of all races, with the hilariously dippy line: “You’re black, white, beige, chola descent/You’re Lebanese, you’re Orient!” Despite the obvious tip of the cap to Madonna’s “Express Yourself” (which was just Madge’s knock-off of the Staple Singers’ “Respect Yourself”), it’s steeped in decades of gay disco tradition — it sounds a lot like Patrick Hernandez’s 1978 classic “Born To Be Alive.” “Born This Way” sums up all the complex Gaga mythos, all her politics and Catholic angst and smeared lipstick, in one brilliant pop blast.
Akon – “I think ‘Born This Way’ is the kind of record that if you are really paying attention you will get the full depth of Gaga as a songwriter. Sometimes the creative image hides the element of her lyrical content,” “That’s why she wanted to give people a better idea of what she was saying outside of her image when she dropped those lyrics.”
The track has a clear message: Everyone should be treated equally no matter who they are or what they believe in. “Gaga says a lot of stuff in her records,” Akon added. “But I know these parents and critics are not really listening to her lyrics. I know that for a fact. She’s singing about a lot of adult subject matter. She’s not just making dance records. Unfortunately, people pay more attention to what she is wearing.”
LA Times – In pop, liberation is often the linchpin in a marketing plan. Whether or not personal conviction compels an artist to tell stories that inspire listeners to strive toward greater compassion toward themselves and others, pop stars and their producers know that fan loyalty is most predictably earned by generating good times: A sad song usually gets its hooks into listeners one at a time, but with a party song, you can acquire the jumbo pack. The savviest crowd pleasers perfectly balance danceable music that sheds inhibitions like so many jackets thrown off on a dance floor with bearably pious lyrics that make getting down feel like a form of moral uplift.
