FEATURE:
Groovelines
Lady Gaga - Bad Romance
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ONE of the biggest songs of 2009…
I am spotlighting Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance in this Groovelines. Taken from her third E.P./album, The Fame Monster, Bad Romance is a huge song that was written and produced by Nadir ‘RedOne’ Khayat and Lady Gaga. In terms of its themes and lyrical inspirations, it relates to Gaga's attraction to individuals with whom romance never works. Documenting the lonely relationships she goes through on tour, Bad Romance reached number two in the U.S. and one in the U.K. There are a couple of articles that I want to bring in that explore Bad Romance in more depth. Before that, and going to Wikipedia, this is what critics said about one of Gaga’s best-known songs:
“The video received general acclaim from critics and fans. It was the first video to reach 200 million views on May 9, 2010 and in doing so became the most-viewed video on YouTube, until it was surpassed by Justin Bieber's "Baby" on July 16, 2010. On December 31, 2018, "Bad Romance" surpassed 1 billion views, and as of December 2020, it has received over 1.3 billion views.
Tim Stack from Entertainment Weekly called the video "amazing" and added, "I don't think Gaga has ever looked prettier than in the close-ups where she's more stripped down." Jennifer Cady of E! was also impressed by the video and commented, "This music video really makes us appreciate everything Gaga actually brings to pop music. She's exciting to watch, plain and simple. ... We need someone like Gaga to really bring it. To put actual thought and care into her product so that it feels alive". Issie Lapowsky of New York Daily News thought Gaga laid the "theatrics on thick" in the video but complimented her for wearing minimal makeup, calling it "refreshingly normal". Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times said that the video brought back his faith in performance art, and that "Gaga brings enough [drama] on her own, thank you very much.” He also thought the set for the video was "worthy of a feature-length film". Daniel Kreps from Rolling Stone felt that the scenes from the music video were reminiscent of the work of Stanley Kubrick. He added that in "Bad Romance", Gaga portrays her craziest ideas yet.
Jocelyn Vena from MTV believed that the video was symbolic and portrayed how "the old Gaga is over, here's the brand-new Gaga: the one who seems to delight in pushing the boundaries and exploring all manner of sexual proclivities". She further believed that the video was a testament to Gaga's brilliance "as an artist that uses the video art form as the jump-off point for the next leg of their career". In 2011, Claire Suddath of Time said that although later Gaga videos were more elaborate, "Bad Romance" was Gaga at her best. In Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame, Emily Herbert drew comparisons between the underlying theme of the video and the theme of The Fame Monster—the relationship with fame. She wrote, "Was this the price that Gaga had to pay for the fame she so desired? Did she feel as if she'd had to prostitute herself in some way? The themes were all based around sex, decadence, and corruption; alcohol and even cigarettes, twenty-first century society's biggest no-no, were present, and so by implication ... drugs." The Wall Street Journal noted Gaga as one of the few pop stars of the present time who really understood spectacle, fashion, shock, choreography—all the things that Madonna and Michael Jackson were masters of in the 1980s”.
I think that Bad Romance is a song that had an impact on the Pop world. There are articles that discuss the importance of the video, in addition to how various sounds and aspects of Bad Romance shook Pop and changed the game back in 2009. Before coming to them, Huffington Post provided ten interesting facts about Bad Romance. I have selected some that stand out to me:
“There are three Alfred Hitchcock film titles hidden in the lyrics
Gaga name checks three of the iconic British director’s most famous films (Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window) in the second verse, with the lyrics “I want your psycho, your vertigo shtick/Want you in my rear window, baby you’re sick”, referencing his films’ fascination with the relationship between sexuality and violence.
Gaga set a UK chart record when she eventually reached number one
After Bad Romance eventually hit the UK top spot, Gaga became the first solo female artist to have three chart-toppers in a calendar year, with Just Dance and Poker Face also reaching #1 in 2009.
Bad Romance claimed the top spot nearly a month after its release, but was knocked off by Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name after only one week due to a campaign to keep the X Factor winner off the Christmas number one spot.
Joe McElderry’s The Climb claimed the first number one of 2010, with Bad Romance returning to the top spot the week after, where it stayed for another week.
Gaga wrote the song while in Norway on her tour bus
She penned it with long-time collaborator and producer RedOne. “I remember me and Gaga in a bus doing Bad Romance,” he said in a BBC interview in 2010. “We did it on a bus, with two pairs of headphones. And as soon as I heard that ‘woah-oh-oh-oh-oaahhh’ from the intro, I could just see a whole stadium singing it”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Lady Gaga in September 2010 after accepting an award at the MTV Video Music Awards for Bad Romance/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Pizzello/Associated Press
NME featured Bad Romance in 2019, explaining and exploring how Lady Gaga’s anthem changed things. The video alone had an enormous impact – and it has inspired artists all these years later:
“She’s also keen on simple, high-impact lyrics that revolve around a song’s title: on ‘Bad Romance’ she uses the title a whopping 28 times (well, actually 29 times if we’re counting the one line where she swaps to French).
Some artists just have a magical immediacy that thwacks you around the chops the minute their song comes on the radio – it’s clear it’s by a particular person in the first few seconds. ‘Bad Romance’ is a song that does just that. It has Lady Gaga’s playful pen written all over it, and this is arguably the song that elevated her into the titan she is in 2019.
The pounding repetition of German techno? Sure, chuck it into the mix. Alfred Hitchcock film titles? Namecheck three of them in a row (Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window) in the space of a single verse! ‘Bad Romance’ is a restless juggernaut of a song that blends together the harshest house with theatrical euro-disco – while skewering the toxic trappings of fame, and strutting down the catwalk with a cry of “Walk, walk, fashion, baby”. Gaga’s massive ambition (there’s a film’s worth of plot material in that video alone) was staggering, not to mention the fact that she set up her own creative team – Haus of Gaga – to help execute everything from the meat-dress to ‘Bad Romance’s infamous pyrotechnic bra (more on that very shortly)”.
The last thing that I am going to source comes from i-D. Like NME, they wanted to mark a decade of a modern-day Pop classic. Lady Gaga’s high fashion and increasingly outlandish and eye-capturing fashions helped turn the Bad Romance video into something iconic:
“Notions of her weirdness, however, were encouraged by increasingly outlandish outfits, gasp-inducing hats made of lilac hair and even a refusal to acknowledge entirely inappropriate rumours of intersexism that briefly followed her. Likewise, with every single release she upped the ante, pushing against the era’s anodyne club-set music videos in favour for weird high fashion takes on the complexities of fame, foreshadowing her next step. Then in September 2009, she stopped teasing the extent of her pop art and bled to death onstage in front of Beyoncé (and the rest of the world) while singing “Paparazzi” full-throated at the MTV Video Music Awards, as if to say: you’ve barely scratched the surface.
Barely a month later, “Bad Romance” arrived and it felt like her artistic vision was finally realised. With the 90s German techno and house-inspired track, produced by RedOne, she delivered a fully formed spectacle that utilised high fashion as costume to make a defiant statement that is arguably better understood in today’s post-#MeToo culture.
To appreciate the magnitude of the single’s impact, it’s important to understand the role haute couture played in its success. After sending late designer Alexander McQueen an early version of “Bad Romance” to debut during his final runway show, he sent Gaga the collection to wear in the music video before anyone else. The collection -- which included the armadillo boots Sarah Mower hailed “grotesque” following its presentation at Paris Fashion Week -- exaggerated the strength that she wanted the song and video to convey. Visually, pop at the time had become imprisoned by formulaic visuals and easily attainable aesthetics (think the Pussycat Dolls or “Party In The USA”) to which Gaga rejected in favour of extremes and extravagance. In marrying her musical artistry with McQueen’s vision, two revolutionaries united to transform the pop landscape into something thrillingly theatrical.
“I was really excited to make the opening scene [of the video] a fashion ad that was slightly moving but bizarre,” she said in a 2015 interview. “Alexander McQueen had sent us all his clothes from “Plato’s Atlantis” [his final runway show] and they were all so beautiful. We couldn’t believe that he’d sent them to us so that was also a very strong dictator in this video.”
Although designers sending musicians their collections was not a novelty 10 years ago, Gaga recognised this gesture as the honour of a pioneer who was actively revolutionising the fashion industry and embraced it to similarly transform music. Thus, the closing look of his show was worn in the video as the song builds to the nerve-shatteringly euphoric final chorus - those legendary armadillo boots included. “I just remember that when I wore that outfit, I just kept saying to everyone on set, ‘We can’t wear anything else by any other designers except for young kids and everything must look good with McQueen’s clothes and anything else cannot be used’,” she later said.
But “Bad Romance” and The Fame Monster also shook the music industry. The latter took inspiration from horror tropes and explored “the dark side” of the themes her debut album was centred around. Instead of being a standard album reissue that tacked a new single on for Christmas sales, she pushed for it to be a standalone project that flipped her debut on its head. Where The Fame divulged in the excesses of wealth, glamour and lust, its follow-up explored the toxicity of obsession, objectification and overindulgence. It wasn’t dismissive of the earlier optimism, but simply more reflective, with Gaga describing them as “yin and yang” in interviews. The heavier, gothic material initiated the industrial sounds she would pursue later on Born This Way, while the 180 degree reboot proved that new artists could reinvent themselves during their debut. Without it, Lana Del Rey may not have taken us to Paradise so soon, while Rihanna’s annual reinventions -- when she was actually a popstar -- may have been more spaced out.
The song itself also reintroduced her as an entirely different artist to the one many had met just nine months prior, one who was creating on a different level -- and at a different speed -- than her peers. The lyric “I’m a free bitch, baby” was more of a mission statement for the entire release, as she delivered her most unrestrained, almost demented, vocal performance with a music video that played out more like a fashion show and feature-length movie hybrid. Each performance peered through another window of the Haus of Gaga from the golden-clad bathroom on The X Factor to the smokey piano room at The Ellen Show. Whether it was a family talent show or daytime fodder, every opportunity was a moment to push her creativity and narrative forward. For this same reason, she redesigned her debut arena tour with weeks to go to complement the new twisted addition to her album”.
I think that Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance is a song that is hard to dislike. Such is its energy and infectiousness; it is a song that lodges in the head! It is clear that it is a hugely important song. Gaga continues to put out incredible music - and, in my view, there is nobody that makes Pop like her. For that reason (and several others), I had to include 2009’s Bad Romance…
IN this feature.