Lady Gaga’s Feb. 28 release of the single “Stupid Love” from her upcoming album Chromatica marks the first time since 2018 that the queen has released her own original music not for a movie soundtrack. Listening to “Stupid Love” for the first time feels like you’ve taken a trip in a time machine and are back in your younger years listening to a track from Gaga’s 2011 album Born this Way. Gaga’s vocals in “Stupid Love” evoke much of the same energy that the title track could barely contain, yet adds a new flare of EDM inspired production sounds. Gaga combines a similar rhythm and sound to the 1977 Donna Summer disco banger “I feel love” with her own vocal style heard in “Born this Way.”
The problem with “Stupid Love” is that it takes too much inspiration from bigger and better more memorable tracks of yore. 2011 pop is much different than today’s pop. And how little Gaga has changed her lyrical content or style does not make her music any more appealing. Yes, you’ve taken a time machine while listening to “Stupid Love,” but it isn’t to the cutting edge future. You’ve gone back to the age of the dinosaurs. It’s so surreal to hear Lady Gaga today in comparison to singers like Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa, Lizzo or SZA.
Pop is not limited to just traditional singers, artists like Post Malone and Brent Faiyaz prove that. Post Malone, arguably at one point a rapper, has changed his sound to become a pop sensation and in the process not only changed what the image of a pop singer looks like, but also what a pop singer sounds like. Looking at 2019’s global sensation “Old Town Road,” what people want to hear has completely changed as the form of commercialized music continues to grow with those tastes.
Gaga used to be an innovator, but if the rest of this Chromatica album is like “Stupid Love,” she has since lost her touch. And she is not the only pop god that has lost their mojo. Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, none of these singers have had any momentum or innovation in the pop world today. Some have even regressed from their overall higher trajectory of quality (Justin Bieber’s “Yummy”). Bieber’s album Changes was also an extreme disappointment, and it was foreshadowed by the release of a bad single (“Yummy”).
Is this a bad omen for Gaga? Will she follow in Bieber’s footsteps of releasing a bad single and then a bad album? This is only one song from the album, so it’s possible that Gaga can strive forward where her contemporaries have fallen behind. Though if history is any indication, then Gaga is already staring her failure in the face. Don’t even bother listening to “Stupid Love,” listen to “I feel love” instead. The track is a 1/10.
