Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Crushing On

Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “Million Reasons” (Track 07)

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14612367_10154750429999574_973463793454855765_oI’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, which will bring a monster month of daily music and comics content with it.

“Million Reasons” isn’t a country song or a pop song. It’s not an anything song. It’s simply a great song. It imagines a world where Lady Gaga could topple Adele from her throne as world’s most-signature balladeer if she choose, not only because she has the pipes for it, but because she’s a damn good songwriter.

Imagine that for a moment. What if, instead of an acoustic, country-tinged pop LP, Gaga released a straight up ballads disc with just one or two upbeat tracks the way that Adele has in 21 and 25. Gaga doesn’t linger on her ballads, but they’ve all been standouts – “Brown Eyes,” “Speechless,” “Dope,” and “Till It Happens to You.”

Until this point “Speechless” was the crown jewel of that collection, a meticulously crafted classic rock song that easily references The Beatles and Elton John. It wasn’t a huge hit. Having played it many times over with Ashley (it was sort of the reason we even got together in the first place), I think that’s because it’s just too complex compared to the ballads of today. People want a simple song with repetitive chords and a simple melody, a la “Hello.”

Welcome to “A Million Reasons,” a ballad so intent on communicating its hook that it repeats it three to five times in each verse, frequently emphasized with a single plain harmony part. I was singing along with the harmony before I even hit the first chorus.

It’s dead-simple I vi IV V chord progression is as common as rain, and inverts itself for the chorus. It’s mostly built on one piano and one acoustic guitar, to the point that I hardly remember if any other instruments enter. It’s relatable – not about dope, but about just wanting to trust.

Head stuck in a cycle I look off and I stare
It’s like that I’ve stopped breathing But completely aware

There’s barely the hint of country here, maybe in Gaga’s inflection on “if I had a highway” on the verse and “try” and “worn out” in the chorus. Mostly she sounds authentically like herself. No put on pop voice, not the monotone of “Dope” or the weird throatiness of “Speechless,” and none of the rasp of “Joanne.”

This is all her, and it’s great. It is, without question, amongst Lady Gaga’s chief achievements in songwriting, if not her best.

Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “Dancin’ in Circles” (Track 05)

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Lady Gaga in bed for The New York Times Style Magazine.I’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, when I debut a month of major daily content!

Lady Gaga continues her trip back through time with “Dancin’ In Circles,” a song that sounds ripped from The Fame Monster in more ways than one.

As soon as the song begins we hear a familiar sound – what we now know to be Gaga’s fake, swollen-tongued, pop voice, in which she talk-sings, “let’s funk downtown.”

That tiny voice was all over her first two efforts, as on the title hook from “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich” – usually contrasted against full-throated belting (also present here). Yet, it was banished as of Born This Way. It returns here, as if to say, “Do you remember when I was the newbie weirdo in your headphones? I do.”

Maybe it’s just a sign of my age, but any sort of reggae-by-way-of-pop tune like that always seems to be influenced by Ace of Base. Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time Lady Gaga has referenced the early-90s Swedish hitmakers. “Alejandro” on Fame Monster was an obvious sound-alike to their “Don’t Turn Around,” and “Dancin’ In Circles” could easily be Gaga’s version of “All That She Wants” (or the less well-known “Wheel of Fortune”).

If we weren’t already firmly in The Fame Monster zone within the first ten seconds of the song, the lyrics invoke yet another element. Gaga nearly quotes “So Happy I Could Die” with the lyric “[I] touch myself to pass the time” in the first verse.

On the topic of touching oneself, “Dancin’ in Circles” may well be Lady Gaga’s own official ode to female masturbation, a la Cyndi Lauper’s “She-Bop.” Try reading the lyrics to her second verse through that lens:

I fool myself, swirl around as if I’m someone else. Your hands are mine
I do a trick , pretend that I am you until it clicks. I come alive, come alive

In the fire I call your name out
Up full night tryin’ to rub the pain out

I’m singin’, “Baby don’t cry Baby don’t cry”
Dancin’ in circles, feels good to be lonely
Baby don’t cry Baby don’t cry
I’m singin’, “Dancin’ in circles, feels good to be lonely”

Are you with me on this? Between the lyrics and the pelvis-thrusting reggae rhythms of this song, the connection is undeniable.

The quick “baby don’t cry, baby don’t cry” refrain with its dressing of harmony is another memorable hook, which allows the “let’s funk downtown” refrain to stay quirky and memorable without the burden of acting as a chorus like the “discostick” chant from “Lovegame.”

Just as easily as Gaga let us believe she had made a country record with “A-YO,” “Joanne,” and “John Wayne,” the combination of “John Wayne” and “Dancin’ In Circles” quickly snaps Joanne back to dance-pop territory, making the title track seem like the sonic outlier. Not only that, but they virtually erase the memory of ArtPop by drawing a direct connection to Gaga’s vastly more-popular original trio of releases.

Like I said: she’s smart. It doesn’t hurt that every one of the songs so far has been great, despite my minor songwriter’s quibbles with “Diamond Heart” and “Joanne.” Can Gaga really deliver a full-length effort where every song is distinct and memorable the way she did on The Fame Monster EP?

I’ve got another week of Gaga in store for you to answer that question!

Music Monday: “Undress You” – Mutlu

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It’s rare to spend a night out of the house unless it’s to rehearse or play a show, so I took great delight in kicking off a few weeks of birthday-adjacent celebrations on Saturday with an outing with Lindsay and her beau J. We converged on my old South Philly stomping grounds to see two songwriters and friends of ours play The Boot & Saddle – Katie Barbato and Multu.

I know Katie from being out and about on the open mic scene in what seems like a very long ago and far away life, plus splitting a memorable Arcati Crisis show with her band The Sleepwells. She’s also famous for helping me break out of one year of my February Funk (and pushing me to finish “Dumbest Thing I Could Do” – a good call on her part). Earlier this year she released an outstanding EP with her band Dirty Holiday that is amongst EV’s major favorites, and she has a new solo record out this fall.

I could write you an entire essay on Katie and her music and how Lindsay leaned into my ear at one point and remarked, “Her voicings are so much like yours, but she plays like Gina. So, obviously, you love her.” But, that will have to hold – perhaps until I hang out with her in a few weeks.

mutlu-onaralI’m actually here to talk about Mutlu.

Saturday night was the first time I’ve ever seen Multu perform without our dear friend Dante Bucci playing by his side (and, as it happens, only the second time seeing him without being behind the mixing desk, thanks to the music festivals that Lindsay, Dante, and I produced over the years).

I had second thoughts about going. Or, more accurately, about staying. It seemed impossibly hard to start celebrating my birthday there in the absence of Dante, who was synonymous with Mutlu for me, whose birthday traditionally marked the end of our various Virgo/Libra birthday shenanigans in college.

I thought it might be too hard. I thought I might slip out after Katie was done her set, or maybe stay for just a song or two, telling Lindsay and J I was exhausted after a long day.

Dante would never do that. Dante never missed a single show of mine if he could physically get to it, and he’d never leave before my set was over.  How could I use the absence of him as an excuse to miss live music when it was his favorite thing in the world?

Maybe I was supposed to simply get lost in my emotions and in the crowd and dance, like all my friends have been doing for fifteen years of seeing Mutlu perform.

So that’s what I did, undulating to the music without a care. At one point, Mutlu announced, “This is a new one from my EP Caffeine and Whiskey, you might not know it.” He began to play and I knew it within a second. It was “Undress You,” a song he had first written and performed live nearly a decade ago just now enjoying its time in the spotlight.

I know what that feels like. I’ve been sitting in my living room rehearsing decade-old songs for weeks, checking to see if it’s their time.

How was it not this song’s time in the spotlight a decade ago when it is so instantly memorable? I’m not sure. I don’t remember it being this relaxed, the jazzy guitar quite so articulated. Maybe it was a little too eager to undress a decade ago? Maybe it needed the years to give heft to “Why we wasting time when we could be together?” Maybe the old falsetto hook of “Can I undress you?” was played for laughs instead of being a soulful call-and-response with the following “probably the last thing I should do”?

Maybe there was a through line from this song of Mutlu’s I had forgotten to my own “Dumbest Thing I Could Do,” who Katie helped to coax into the spotlight with its own response of “is be along with you.”

While I was wondering those things in my songwriter’s brain I was dancing, singing along, and remembering. The song brought back flashes of friends lost to time and circumstance, and of Dante’s lawn and a song that was suddenly and improbably my new favorite thing, pulling me out from the mixing desk to dance and sing along.

It was an indelible moment that I had completely forgotten, but it all came rushing back as I sang along to words I didn’t even realize I knew with Lindsay smiling at my side in her own instant recognition.

It is my new favorite thing all over again.

Music Monday: “Perfect Illusion” – Lady Gaga

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Lady Gaga - Perfect IllusionIf you were returning to the mainstream after tepidly-received synthesizer-based record but also two years of acclaim as a jazz singer and actress, what would you want your comeback single to sound like?

That’s highwire challenge Lady Gaga faces this fall – a perilous popstar tightrope walk without a net.

First, no song will ever be as good as her sophomore comeback stunner “Bad Romance,” but there are other pitfalls. Too synth-y and it’s labeled as more of the same, too dance-y and it’s a regression. Too many repeated words and self-references and you’ve descended into schtick. If the vocals aren’t off the charts you get pegged as an also-ran who faked her way through the jazz period.

What’s a global icon to do? I’m not sure, but I’m also not sure you could do much better than “Perfect Illusion,” the sizzling single Gaga dropped at midnight on Thursday. It might not be a perfect pop song, but it’s a smartly-constructed comeback.

Let’s review all the parts, shall we?

First, note that this is a rock song. That’s signaled clearly by the sizzling i-VII-VI electric guitar riff that underpins the entire song and the pulsing fuzz bass that drives the verses. It’s also got a hint of disco which is unleashed in the outro – listen for the guitar stabs coming out of the key change chorus and a brief sample of a sawing string section.

With Katy Perry taking over for Lady Gaga in the world of synthetic pop and even Taylor Swift stealing Gaga’s tangle of minor key synths on songs like “Style,” Gaga couldn’t go back to the well. Dance-influenced rock is a radio mainstay now thanks to songs like “Shut Up and Dance” and this year’s breakout by 21 Pilots. It’s also Lady Gaga’s ancestral home where love of Bowie and Queen merge with 80s influences like Whitney Houston and Madonna.

A collaboration with Mick Ronson (of Amy Winehouse and “Uptown Funk” fame) and Kevin Parker (from Tame Impala) added tangible texture that Gaga usually reserves for ballads like “Speechless” and “Dope” without relying on an acoustic piano. That was necessary coming off of the critical acclaim from her past few years. Her chance to cross over to new fans or just more mature old ones is to present a more unvarnished version of herself and her sound. “Perfect Illusion” hits the mark, complete with a slight scream-y edge to the highest vocals.

When she was last on pop culture center stage, it was unquestioned that Gaga was a vocalist above all competitors save for Beyonce. She retakes that crown here, with all of her idiosyncrasies intact. Show-off-y key change aside (it tops out on Eb5 in chest), listen to how she carefully over-pronounces “i-loo-shun” every time. It’s a minor reference to her kooky heritage, repping for the obsessive theatre kids who keep their vowel sounds in check.

Another thing that’s intact? Gaga’s dead simple songwriting. If you’ve heard some complaints that this is just two verses, a brief brief, and an endless refrain, they’re from people who forgot “Love Game,” “Poker Face,” “Born This Way,” “Applause,” and all the other songs that fit this cookie-cutter structure. Gaga doesn’t waste a lot of words on verses.

All of that analysis skirts the issue of if the song is any good. I’d say it’s just “okay,” but so are many of Lady Gaga’s singles until they’ve been drilled into your brain. “Perfect Illusion” is no more or less basic than her debut on “Just Dance,” which features nary a memorable vocal hook and relies on repeated chords to be memorable.

Similar to “Just Dance,” “Perfect Illusion’ has verses that rely on simple two-note phrases and a chorus that is all bite-sized intervals. Another singer might have inverted the stepwise descent of “it wasn’t lo-o-ove” in the chorus to go up rather than down or introduce a leap of a third to make a more distinct hook. Yet, that would sacrifice the space to belt the key change as well as the dead-simple singalong quality of the chorus.

Also, note that she bagged the feel-good for-fans-only message of “Born This Way” and the self-reference of “Applause.” This is just a song, not a meta statement.

Beyonce might be the better singer and Katy Perry and Taylor Swift now the bigger pop stars, but Lady Gaga seems to have recalled that her past success was predicated on the fact that the best pop songs are best even when stripped down to their underpinnings. Here’s Gaga debuting “Perfect Illusion” live (and NSFW) not on a network morning show’s sweet spot, but in sweaty London club The Moth. If she has more of this savage energy for us in store on her record, it’ll be a hit.

Crushing On: The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo

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Once, in high school, a teacher asked us to keep a log of all the television we watched in a week. If I recall correctly, mine tallied at 36hrs – one of the highest in the class.

A lot of that came from consuming sitcoms. This was a world before prestige dramas – the closest we had was Baltimore: Life on the Streets. Instead, there was a two hour block of comedies each night, plus a preceding two hour block of re-runs of Cheers, Seinfeld, and other modern classics.

Maybe it’s burnout from those days, but I haven’t been able to stomach a funny TV show in years aside from 30 Rock. Nothing about any of them seem remotely funny. The internet is no different – people link to amusing web series and I’m a stone face. It’s like my TV overdose permanently broke my funny bone.

Maybe that’s because sitcoms are so… situational. They depend on so many of the same archetypes being filled – the clueless dad, the vapid attractive woman, the brainy kid, the wacky sidekick of color. Even with a giant bucket of archetypes, you see a lot of the same things over and over.

That’s why I am genuinely surprised and absolutely obsessed with The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo, a TV-quality YouTube show from the mind of sketch comedy pro Brian Jordan Alvarez. It’s the funniest non-animated thing I’ve seen on a screen all year.

It’s Seinfeld-esque in being a show about nothing other than the entanglements of the titular Caleb Gallo and his group of friends – each occupying some part of the fabric of the LGBTQ community. It’s also a 30 Rock inspired show filled with fast-paced dialog, wicked wit, and occasional flights of fancy.

Here’s the first episode:

I love it. Every cast member is my favorite. Caleb has the easygoing likability of Paul Rudd crossed with Jimmy Fallon as he tries to maintain a long distance relationship with the sweet, young Benicio while pining after seemingly-straight Billy, who in turn really wants to date Caleb’s best friend Karen, a man-crazy bombshell who uses Caleb to clear out her one-night stands more quickly while she obsesses over Lenjamin, a wannabe actor who is considering being bisexual “for professional reasons” and wants to ease into dating men by being set up with Caleb’s friend, the gender-fluid Freckle.

the-gay-and-wondrous-life-of-caleb-galloIf you find yourself thinking, “Oh, a gay show. I probably won’t like it,” you need to reset your expectations. Maybe you’ve seen a clip of of a “gay” web series that was a lot of sex jokes that went over your head and you suddenly felt uncomfortable and othered.

That’s not a bad thing to experience sometimes, but that’s also not this. Gay and Wondrous Life of Jacob Gallo is a show about people first, like like Blackish and Off the Boat are shows about people. Despite all of the potential hookups, this show doesn’t find all of its humor in sex, but in relationships (though there certainly is some sexual humor, as with the erection joke that opens the episode). The misunderstandings and neuroses of all the characters aren’t unique to their sex, gender, or orientation.

While the entire cast is charming, Freckle is a scene-stealer of Jane Krakowski magnitude. It’s not because of their gender-fluid character, but because they are gifted only terrific great lines and a magnetic grin that pulls focus from everything else in view. Actor Jason Greene developed the character outside the bounds of this production, and it shows in the implied history of hijinks expressed in their twinkling eyes.

Yet, when Freckle isn’t on the screen, all of these actors are MVPs. Ken Kirby as Lenjamin is delightful in subverting the unsexy Asian guy stereotype by being a hunk that’s at the center of love triangles while also vying for the sort of parts he probably wouldn’t get cast for in real life. Stephanie Koenig as Karen bursts from the screen in every scene, her natural comfort and scarlet locks recalling Karen Gillan’s turn in the under-appreciated Selfie.

The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo was funded for five episodes, the last of which went up this week. While the fifth does resolve a few plot threads, you couldn’t be blamed for wanting more. I can’t imagine it’s making enough as a streaming show to subsidize more episodes of this visual caliber, but hopefully a web or television network gets interested and picks it up – it’s gold. A Daily Dot feature went behind the scenes of the indie production.