Lady Gaga

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

October 23, 2016 by krisis

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!

Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “John Wayne” (Track 04)

October 22, 2016 by krisis

Lady Gaga's title cards from this week's SNL.

Lady Gaga’s title cards from tonight’s episode of SNL, where she is the musical guest.

I’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, when I debut a month of major daily content!

Hearing “John Wayne” tracked after “A-YO” and “Joanne” made me appreciate just how canny Lady Gaga is.

A song title like “John Wayne” seems to clearly confirm the country bent of this album. Doubtlessly, some pop fans will be in a panic after the acoustic “Joanne” and another country-tinged tune could cause them to tune out.

What does Gaga do after the shock to reel us back in? Delivers a track named “John Wayne” with a decidedly country-fried guitar lick that’s more in line with her typical minor-key dance-stomp, so much that it feels ripped right from the back half of Born This Way.

Yes, Born This Way. Listen to Gaga’s vocal tone and intonation here. There are still shades of her country drawl from “A-YO,” but it also has the cooed alto notes of Born. Add the bass groove with minor synth work exploding into a big hook feels like it could be tracked right next to “Highway Unicorn (Road To Love).”

The stomp of the drums during that big hook make even more sense when you know that “John Wayne” is one of two cowrites with Josh Homme, of Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal (the other is “Diamond Heart”). Homme’s guitar work – muscular and sour – is usually his sonic signature (heard clearly on the chorus hook and outro solo), but many listeners don’t know he also plays drums. He’s the one behind the sticks here for the massive wallop of chorus drums with emphasized upbeats, which is another QotSA trademark.

Josh Homme

It’s hard to dissect Homme’s guitars from Gaga’s own wordless chants in the hook of this song, and I suspect they’re each doubling the other. Combined, they’re a sort of slow-mo version of a down-home fiddle riff, as you might be dancing along to in “Cotten-Eyed Joe” at half speed. Gaga can never attack a genre head on, so just as “A-YO” turned radio pop into a line-dance, here she perverts a line-dance into a modern rock song with Homme’s assistance.

On both “Diamond Heart” and “John Wayne” Gaga casts herself in the role of selling her body, there dancing for money and here proclaiming “Every John is just the same” (“John” is the noun that many sex workers use to describe a customer, basically a spin on “John Doe.”). While ArtPop was shameless sexual across its full length, for me the more specific callback is to Born This Way tracks like “Government Hooker,” “Judas,” and “Scheibe.” There, Gaga was toying specifically with the Mary Magdalene aspect of the “virgin/whore” dichotomy, versus the more generally sex positive ArtPop.

Yet, Gaga isn’t offering subservience here – she’s wishing for a better quality of man. “Every John is just the same,” she begins, “I’m sick of their city games. I crave a real wild man. I’m strung out on John Wayne!” Of course, Wayne is noted as a paragon of American masculinity. Yet, is Gaga talking about the literal, historical man here? Or, is John Wayne simply her nickname for any country man with rough hands who can take her on a “three-day bender”?

The answer doesn’t matter – it’s the question that defines this record. If ArtPop was a celebration of all things artificial that are crafted to be obsessed over, Joanne is about appreciating things that are authentic and tangible – anything that isn’t a “Perfect Illusion.”

More on that on Monday. Before then, we have another throwback track to discuss tomorrow.

Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “Joanne” (Track 03)

October 21, 2016 by krisis

I’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, when I debut a month of major daily content!

The title track of Joanne introduces yet another new facet of Lady Gaga – a finger-picked, acoustic folk-rock ballad.

I am one of those music fans who tends to fetishize acoustic instruments as being “real” music. That doesn’t stop me from loving buzzy, synthy music from the likes of Garbage and Gaga, but I’m always a little more excited when I see an artist I love at an acoustic piano or wielding and acoustic guitar. I was excited over the idea of Madonna holding a guitar a a prop when the first images of Music debuted at the very start of this blog, and later lost my mind when she actually played one in concert.

Yet, I don’t have that same thrill with Lady Gaga. Almost the opposite, actually.

I’ve seen her tear things up on piano and dance while playing keytar. I know she writes her own songs. I’m sure she can play guitar, but it’s not going to be her most expert skill, so why waste time there?

“Joanne” answers that question.

Lady Gaga can certainly play these exact arpeggios on piano, but certain songs need the acoustic guitar – belong with it. This song is akin to Paul McCartney’s solo Beatles cut “Blackbird,” with its carefully merged set of picking, tapping, and bass sounding like a single instrument. “Joanne” adds a sheen of shimmery organ behind its choruses to fill out the sound, but that’s no different than McCartney’s simple dressing of bird song.

The verse starts simply enough, picking through a standard I-V-IV progression in G. “Take my hand, stay Joanne, heaven’s not ready for you” is about as treacly simple as any folk song can get – way past “Hey There Delilah” on the treacle scale. On my first listen, I was already girding myself for an awful, earnest tune.

Then I reached the chorus.

The simple “Girl, where do you think you’re going? Where do you think you’re going, girl?” chorus is a hook for the ages. It recalls the sharp knife simplicity of the best Neil Young refrains. (Don’t forget, she name-checks his “Heart of Gold” on “You & I.”)

Lady Gaga's fingers are sore from playing Joanne.

Gaga posted this photo on her Facebook, of newly callused fingers hovering above a lead sheet for “Joanne.”

So many tiny, deliberate choices in the chorus make it a classic. That Gaga starts the first one in a softer, more mixed voice before launching into a full-throated belt. The higher melodic jump on “think” in the second phrase. The surprising dip to the minor-seventh step to resolve on IV on its otherwise verbatim repeat.

The power, sentiment, and performance behind this one vague line makes it one of the most memorable in Lady Gaga’s entire catalog.

When you have a chorus that plain and powerful, you don’t need fancy dressing on the rest of the song. You can afford a plaintive, almost-silly set of lyrics that includes lines like, “I can’t wait to see you soar.” If the verses were too complex, too poetic, they would would disarm the simple power of that chorus.

I sometimes feel this tiny-voiced, swooping, raspy singing from Gaga on the verses is somehow “fake” because I’ve heard her do so much big-throated belting. Who I am to say what Gaga’s “real” voice is? Maybe this is the way she loves to sing? Her ability to occupy a spectrum from her weird melodic mumble on “Poker Face” to her lovely Sound of Music medley on the Oscars to the too-perfect pronunciation on “Perfect Illusion” to this folk Americana vocal sound proves the prowess of her musicianship.

Lady Gaga truly is as much Whitney House as she is Madonna. You can’t do the things they’ve done vocally and sonically, respectively, without being acutely aware of your choices. And, just as Gaga acknowledged and interpolated her Beatles influences on “Speechless,” here she does the same for influences like Neil Young and even Dolly Parton.

Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “A-YO” (Track 03)

October 20, 2016 by krisis

I’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, when I debut some much bigger daily content!

“A-YO” is a fun, radio-ready clapper that might have done better over the summer months when its nonsense chorus could have been playing at every packed bar of vacationing college students. It’s got a steady bounce to it that feels just right for a smokey dance floor.

The first thing I noticed about the song is that it feels to me like a clap back at some of the newer acts that have co-opted Gaga’s place on the radio as dance pop stars, like Icona Pop and Charli XCX. Gaga has never gone for those trebly, hand-clap kinds of drum loops before, but they tend to mark the songs of those other stars. Here she uses them, but shamelessly sheds all of her typical synths for guitar rock instead (pushing it even more into Charli’s glossy territory).

One unmissable aspect of “A-YO” is the country tinge to Gaga’s clean, up-front vocal. Listen to the first line – How the “I” stays an “ah,” never closing to the dipthong “E”; the throaty A in “wait”; the drawling “aw” in “all”; and, later, the “uh” in other. It’s not a world different from the affect she puts on in “You & I,” but where that barroom stomp got dressed up in a Queen sample to glam it up, “A-YO” is much closer to a rock song.

She’s also pushing the country theme in the lyrics, as she name checks Marlboros, “tearin’ up” the gravel, “city gravy,” and more down South turns of phrase. The vocal twang and vocabulary at first seems like a strange combination with the modern rock guitar solos strewn throughout the song. It’s one of her most guitar-driven tracks of all time – I especially dig the adventurous mid-neck solo.

Once the chorus hits everything becomes obvious: this is Gaga’s take on a line-dance. It’s classic Gaga, especially with its rapid-fire chorus, but all of the production choices push it away from “PokerFace” and nudges it closer to “Achy Breaky Heart.”

It’s an interesting move from Lady Gaga. It isn’t as if one twangy song will get her played on Country radio, but there are some aspects of it clearly calculated for success. It’s a dancefloor cut that isn’t just for dance clubs. The bright, clear vocal takes her out of her clubland weirdo schtick and puts her in a realm of comparison with different artists. Yet, elements of the schtick remain intact, like the repeated words and phrases.

I’m actually surprised this wasn’t selected as the lead single, especially since it’s [spoiler alert!] a much better portent for the unusual remainder of the LP than the more disco-tinged “Perfect Illusion.” But, I’ll have more to say about that tomorrow.

Finally, if you had any doubts about the country thing, here she is playing it on guitar while wearing a cowboy hat and an embroidered shirt.

Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “Diamond Heart” (Track 01)

October 19, 2016 by krisis

I’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, when I debut some much bigger daily content!

Lady Gaga has never quite recovered from the sophomore success of the stunning Fame Monster EP in 2009. Born This Way had a handful of strong singles but was manic and didn’t have legs. ArtPop found a deliciously dirty synth sound but brought too few good songs along with it.

Her new LP Joanne is a step in the right direction, and that step is discarding the idea that Lady Gaga must always equal synth pop. It was an unwinnable equation that left her stranded on a shrinking island of radio play. Even the keyboards of the first tune on the record quickly give way to a sizzling live band sound that currently works just as well on pop or rock radio.

Opener “Diamond Heart” vibrates with the warm, fuzzy, analog sound of electric piano. Gaga plays it loosely, which pairs well with her live-sounding, unprocessed lead vocal. This goes beyond the sparse opening measures of “Marry The Night” to sound like something vintage. If “Speechless” was Gaga’s take on The Beatles “Something,” this might be her version of Linda Ronstadt. “Some asshole broke me in,” she sneers, “rag-dolled my innocence. I’ll just keep go-go-ing this dance for you.”

A tangle of electric drums break the throwback spell and drag us to the present day before everything drops away but Gaga’s voice, though the transitional phrase of “Young wild American, come on baby, do you have a girlfriend” seems wasted on the sudden focus, with the actual refrain shoved into the back half of the chorus. “I might not be flawless, but you know I’ve got a diamond heart,” she proclaims, inserts a slurred interval leap in the middle of “diamond” (the only big ascending jump in the chorus).

It definitely feels like this song came from a pair of disparate elements – the coming-of-age travelogue “Young Wild American” which could have been a solo ballad, and the stormy “Diamond Heart” which could have easily been a part of an earlier stage of “Perfect Illusion.” Both concepts are strong, but the two don’t especially match up. You can hear the creaking of gears every time the song transitions from one to the other.

Even if it’s not Gaga’s most coherent tune, it’s still a bracing opening salvo on her first solo album in three years . It rocks as hard as anything she’s released previously, and the live vibes, guitars, and drums are a good portent for the rest of the album.

Chords to play this song after the jump: [Read more…] about Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “Diamond Heart” (Track 01)