Lady Gaga - The eccentric champion of the social media era

A middle-class upbringing on New York's Upper West Side, education at exclusive all-girls Catholic schools, piano lessons. A background that would seem to point to anything but the making of one of the most important, flamboyant and transgressive popstars of the twenty-first century, capable of delivering an unexpected jolt to the pop scene the likes of which hadn't perhaps been seen since the 1980s.

Italian-American Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta grew up in a household steeped in music and art, so it was only natural for her to enroll at a prestigious art school after high school. However, the desire and need to find her true path, the point where her passions (the great rockers of the 70s, the popstars of the 80s and theatre) converged, led her to drop out of college early and leave her father's house to experiment with burlesque and rock bands in New York City venues. It was a couple of EPs recorded with her band, released in extremely limited numbers, that caught the attention of famous producer and talent scout Rob Fusari (whose clients included Destiny's Child, Will Smith and Whitney Houston). The manager immediately sensed her potential: although she couldn't rely on the kind of physical allure that had by then become a prerequisite for breaking through, he was convinced the time was finally ripe to launch onto the market a popstar who was simultaneously talented, blessed with a great voice, capable of playing and putting on a show like few others, and possessed of a musical culture superior to that of her peers. After all, a figure like this had probably been missing from the scene since the never-sufficiently-appreciated Cyndi Lauper had failed to shake off the comparisons with her own towering recording debut.

After renaming her Lady Gaga in honour of "Radio Gaga" by Queen, a difficult negotiation began to get Germanotta signed, while in the meantime she devoted herself to writing songs for other artists (including Britney Spears and Michael Bolton), performing at various festivals alongside performance artist Lady Stardust, and generally cutting her teeth in bigger settings. Once she finally signed the long-awaited contract with Interscope (also thanks to the intercession of rapper and friend Akon), and the moment came to make the big leap, she was introduced to young Swedish producer RedOne, whose sonic instincts would prove crucial to the making of her debut album.

The rise to fame

The climb to success wouldn't be immediate, but it would still take just a few months for her name and RedOne's sound to gradually yet forcefully impose themselves on the public's ears. It's April 2008 when her first single "Just Dance" makes its tentative appearance. The track is about as different as it gets from what's dominating US radio at that moment, saturated as it is with pop music increasingly contaminated by hip-hop. It is, in fact, a brazenly eurodance number, built on fat, booming synths, amid electronic trinkets and beats decidedly more hammering than R&B's. Nothing new under the sun for Europeans, who initially won't be too impressed, and an anomaly destined to merely survive in nightclubs (as is customary for tracks of this kind) as far as Americans are concerned.

And yet things are destined to change when, over the summer, the album The Fame is released (complete with a dedication at the bottom to Bowie, Prince and Madonna). Word starts to spread that the girl might be something more than a flash in the pan on the dancefloor, and Interscope does everything it can to push her properly, having her appear on various TV shows and events, or as a support act on the reunited New Kids On The Block's tour. "Just Dance" thus manages to make its tentative entry into the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100, and American networks start playing it, realising that, after all, the electronic flourishes underpinning it might just go hand in hand with those produced by Timbaland, and that both the track's cadence and Colby O'Donis's featuring spot manage to create just the right atmosphere to coexist with the urban-pop sound dominating the airwaves. In January 2009, "Just Dance" finally reaches number one not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom, and as a result all of Europe falls back into line: Lady Gaga is the name to watch in the months to come, and she rightly plays her ace card.

"Poker Face", her second single, would score an even bigger and, above all, more immediate hit. Just as contagious and danceable as "Just Dance", with which it shares much of the same production ideas, it still holds a few surprises, such as a taste for alliteration and stuttered vocal hooks (one of her future trademarks) and a vocal delivery that's anything but ordinary, leaving its mark on her promotional appearances. For older listeners, Lady Gaga seems like the heir to Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons, while to younger ones she comes across as a kind of Christina Aguilera on loan to dance music, right at the moment when the former teen star seems to be drifting toward the more electro-pop sounds that would mark the start of her decline.

Her booming voice is indeed similar and just as powerful, but Lady Gaga is decidedly more flamboyant in her outfits and more original in teasing with her vague bisexuality. Decked out like an Eastern European porn star in improbable geometric-cut outfits and retro accessories that heighten the theatricality of her performances, Germanotta doesn't change her look with every video the way her peers tend to, but rather, thanks to her creative team immodestly dubbed the Haus of Gaga, with every public appearance, showing herself off as increasingly eccentric and outlandish each time, leaving the public ever more eager to see what she'll wear next.

Meanwhile, The Fame climbs the charts, helped along by other tracks that cement her status as a rising star. The third single, the energetic "LoveGame", unimaginatively repeats the sonic pattern of the first two, but its melodic-yet-aggressive mix is enough to guarantee its success, even if it doesn't quite replicate the sheer triumph of "Poker Face", which shows no sign of fading months after release. Moving along similarly familiar lines are the rougher "I Like It Rough", the less successful "Money Honey" and a title track that plays the card of a few extra electric guitars to stand out a bit more.

Lady Gaga nonetheless proves her versatility, albeit with mixed results, on the piano-driven rock ballad "Brown Eyes" (rather clumsy, frankly), the electro-cabaret of "Beautiful Dirty Rich" (originally conceived as the second single), the drowsy hip-hop detour of "Starstruck" and two rousing disco-music reworkings like "Summerboy" (a tribute to Blondie) and the bonus track "Disco Heaven".

Elsewhere, though, RedOne's Northern European sensibility takes over, leading her toward sounds that ten years earlier would have appealed to Ace Of Base or even worse eurodance acts: between "Paper Gangsta", "Boys Boys Boys" and the syrupy "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)", it's hard to pick the most unwittingly embarrassing moment.

To extend the album's success, then, everything rides on what is perhaps the best track in the whole collection. Built on a more minimal, elegant electronic finish, a pulsing midtempo beat and a smooth melody, "Paparazzi" is the ideal single to turn Germanotta from a rising promise into an established star. Not only does the track sum up the concept album's theme of achieving fame, but it's paired with a memorable, delirious video directed by renowned Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund, blending stardom and pop art, kitsch and irony, murder and revenge. During the 2009 Video Music Awards, it was even given a live rendition in a performance as spectacular as it was grand guignol.

This is Lady Gaga's crowning moment: in a little over a year she managed to bring European-style dance music back to the top of the US charts after almost a decade of being shunned, launching a musical trend that would last half a decade. Being the first to grasp the potential of YouTube's reach, she also managed to refocus everyone's attention on the music video as a communicative and artistic medium, after years in which it had taken on a purely promotional role, losing any cinematic ambition. Her timing is impeccable: Michael Jackson has just passed away, Madonna is increasingly more focused on cashing in through massive tours than on setting new trends, and Britney Spears has lost her shine amid her nervous breakdowns. The public, the media and even music critics seem almost eager to crown such a charismatic, different figure as pop's new legend, even if it means jumping the gun a bit. Lady Gaga is everywhere, she's the trend on everyone's lips, and people start talking about her not as an up-and-comer but as an institution, as if history had already stamped her name on it for ages, not just a few months.

It's therefore time to strike while the iron is hot, but since The Fame doesn't have any other tracks truly suited to achieve that goal, new songs are needed. And they arrive soon, very soon, while the echo of "Paparazzi" hasn't even faded yet.

Monstrous fame

That autumn, a brand-new single is indeed released to herald an eight-track EP, available either on its own or bundled with the debut album, reissued for the occasion. Again produced by her now-trusted RedOne, "Bad Romance" is Lady Gaga to the nth degree, "Poker Face" on amphetamines, booming like a Formula One grand prix, goofy like a children's nursery rhyme, yet opening into a chorus as dramatic as it is euphoric. And if the track is a bomb, the accompanying video is a true masterpiece: set in a sort of sterile, hazy cybernetic brothel, it sees Germanotta cast as a veritable deity sold to the highest bidder. Her look grows ever more transgressive and disorienting, this time edging close to the more unsettling looks of Marilyn Manson and Grace Jones. To many, Lady Gaga doesn't even have a face (which she herself often keeps hidden behind masks); she's a shapeshifting entity singing the hits of the moment. And "Bad Romance" is yet another triumph, the one destined to become her signature song, her most distinctive track, even though it narrowly misses the top spot on the US chart.

Success naturally extends to the following EP, The Fame Monster, which boosts sales of the debut album and keeps it near the top of the charts for years, making it one of the best-selling records of the new millennium. Thanks to its short runtime, the new record immediately feels more cohesive and less loose than its predecessor and, above all, free of filler. The aggressive "Monster" and the gentler "So Happy I Could Die" are the ideal meeting point between the aesthetic of The Fame and Timbaland-style production, "Teeth" pulls off Aguilera's electro-blues better than Aguilera herself, and the big adult-oriented-rock ballad card is played again with "Speechless". The song is often performed live to showcase the artist's piano and vocal skills: while it never fully shakes off a strong kitsch aftertaste, this time the passion Gaga brings to it is enough to make it oddly work.

It's other tracks, though, that make The Fame Monster a little pop gem, first and foremost that would-be single titled "Dance In The Dark", which manages to blend nostalgia for tracks like "Strangelove", "Careless Whisper" and "Vogue" with the fury of '90s dance music, in a chorus that's nothing short of epic.

To repeat the success of "Bad Romance", however, two other heavyweight tracks are chosen instead, "Telephone" and "Alejandro". The first is a Gaga-style reinterpretation of the R&B of famous producer Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins (who previously worked with Destiny's Child, Jennifer Lopez and the late Jackson), one of her most American and direct tracks up to that point, fittingly performed alongside another huge American name, Beyoncé (a favor returned on a track by Mrs. Carter, the less successful "Video Phone"). The two appear together in another memorable video directed by Jonas Åkerlund, playing two modern-day Thelma & Louise types in improbable costumes, set somewhere between a cartoon and a Tarantino film; once again, everyone applauds Lady Gaga and her Haus's unbridled imagination, their ability to reinterpret symbols of the past in such an irreverent and artistic way.

The media venture a label that's all too overused in pop and has never brought much luck in the past: Stefani Germanotta is the new Madonna. At first, Ciccone's fans don't seem to mind, after all they're among the very first to welcome Lady Gaga's rise to fame with open arms, as she fills the void left by a Ciccone no longer interested in crafting videos and looks worthy of her name. However, when "Alejandro", an irresistible yet shameless electro-gypsy pastiche, is released as the third and final single of an unrepeatable era, relations start to sour. Its dark video draws heavily on the erotic/sacrilegious imagery so dear to Madonna (director/photographer Steven Klein is one of her close collaborators), and many take offense, growing increasingly annoyed at the media's lack of tact in constantly, and at times forcibly, comparing the two.

No matter: thanks to a clever use of social media, and to her standing as a champion of LGBTQ rights and of everyone who has suffered bullying, Lady Gaga manages to build a massive, devoted fanbase: the little monsters worship her, not just as a popstar but as a genuine guru nicknamed Mother Monster. They hail her with cries of "paws up!", the hand gesture she herself has repeatedly shown off in videos and performances, flooding the acclaimed "Monster Ball Tour" in conspicuous costumes mimicking their idol; it had been years since pop music had seen such fanaticism, one that arguably transcended pop music itself. After winning two Grammys and duetting with future collaborator Elton John, Lady Gaga also makes a triumphant return to the Video Music Awards, winning a full eight statuettes and taking the stage to collect them wearing her now-iconic raw meat dress. It's probably the peak of her career as a star, and ever cunning, she knows exactly how to capitalize on the hysteria surrounding her, releasing no further singles from The Fame Monster and letting anticipation for her new project build to a fever pitch, announcing that very night the title of her next album: Born This Way.

The most talked-about feud of the decade

In the following months, despite keeping a relatively low profile but exploiting the "viral" potential of social media like no one else, Lady Gaga manages to create a climate of event and media excitement that only the Michael Jackson of the golden years had been able to generate, albeit through different means. The new single is then unveiled right before the Grammy ceremony in February 2011, during which the singer wins three more statuettes and delivers a sci-fi performance, staging an alien rebirth, to say the least, with a truly otherworldly entrance. Presented as a new generational anthem, "Born This Way" is an exuberant electro-disco number seasoned with an anti-racism/anti-bullying lyric that was all the rage among pop's starlets at the time.

The following day, however, everyone's attention turns elsewhere: although more testosterone-fueled in sound, the song's melodic progression recalls that of the famous "Express Yourself" by Madonna. Many cry plagiarism, while just as many play it down, pointing out that Ciccone's own track was in turn inspired by "Respect Yourself" by the Staple Singers. For the first time, though, Gaga herself shows signs of irritation at yet another comparison and, piqued, declares that the song was actually inspired by Whitney Houston. A statement that will, however, be received more as a desperate dodge or, at worst, as a provocation that will do nothing to calm the waters. Interviewed on the subject again on the Jay Leno Show, this time Germanotta admits the inspiration, explaining that she had received Madonna's blessing via email — but, in a plot twist, Ciccone's spokesperson will hasten to deny it all, casting a chill over the whole affair. When, a year later, the Queen of Pop is asked to give her version of events, she will simply state that imitation has always been the sincerest form of flattery, but that she found the tribute in question rather reductive. As if that weren't enough, on the following tour she will perform a fitting mash-up of "Express Yourself" and "Born This Way", closing it with a snippet of her own "She's Not Me": "She's not me", that old fox Ciccone will reiterate.

It will be the culmination of a diva feud the likes of which pop hasn't seen since the days of Oasis and Blur, but this time on a truly global scale. It's plausible that the two of them, savvy about marketing and strategy, played up and fueled the whole thing to generate mutual publicity and spice up an otherwise overly sluggish mainstream scene. A subtlety evidently lost on their respective fanbases, who will use the internet as an actual battlefield to take turns discrediting their beloved rival, paradoxically ending up damaging both of them in the eyes of the less devoted: on one side, the now-seasoned queen of pop, who for the first time seems to genuinely feel threatened by the rise of a potential successor, and on the other, the aspiring queen who can't — and perhaps doesn't even want to — shake off the cumbersome comparison to her main role model.

The kiss of Judas

"Born This Way" is nonetheless a massive hit — it could hardly be otherwise with such an immediate melody — and Lady Gaga reaches the top of the American singles chart for the third time. The forthcoming self-titled album couldn't arrive in a better climate; everything points to yet another commercial triumph, but it will prove to be a success with feet of clay. Too confident in her own abilities and understandably infatuated with her own creativity, the star doesn't hesitate to call the album the most important of the decade, without realizing that such expectations then need to be backed up by concrete results that won't let her down. And the first disappointment comes precisely with the single released alongside the album: "Judas", a track that recycles, almost verbatim — albeit in a decidedly cheesier and less fresh guise — all the stylistic tropes that had made "Bad Romance" a smash hit, tropes that would have been better avoided to steer clear of the self-parody the song is instead steeped in. Such a predictable track isn't exactly what one expects from a shapeshifter like her, and indeed its chart performance will be less flattering than usual.

Germanotta, however, moves quickly to cover her tracks, claiming she grew up listening to Bruce Springsteen, Queen and Led Zeppelin, and that Born This Way therefore harbors a rock-leaning streak, obviously touted in every interview and immortalized on the deliciously tacky cover art, but one that is actually rather vague and well hidden beneath the usual layered synth carpets. The menacing guitar riffs that open "Electric Chapel" quickly dissolve into a more reassuring, lightweight melody; those on "Bad Kids" are just a cosmetic touch on one of her most vintage and likeable electro-pop numbers, and the hypnotic "Heavy Metal Lover" has only metal's sterile sheen, nothing more.

"The Edge Of Glory" is certainly an euphoric pop-rock romp, though even the saxophone of a star guest like Clarence Clemons (during a very eighties bridge) isn't enough to give it more depth and drag it out of the talent-show atmosphere that also pervades the even more juvenile "Hair". Nor does "Yoü And I", the obligatory country-glam power ballad (with Brian May on guitar and veteran producer John "Mutt" Lange at the helm), move the listener as much as it should, however pleasant it may be. Perhaps because, once again, it never manages to go beyond a crude pantomime of Elton John at his least inspired, rather than lending itself a subtler, more elegant melancholy; that honor goes to another ballad, synthetic and nocturnal, the excellent "Bloody Mary".

In the end, one has to accept that Lady Gaga remains more compelling when she sticks to classic dance territory, whether it's the genuinely pop sound of "Marry The Night" (worthy of the best Cyndi Lauper) and "Highway Unicorn", or the razor-sharp Teutonic edges of "Scheiße", perfect for the trendiest clubs. But while the kitsch of "Government Hooker", spiced with Piaf-style vocalizations and echoes of melancholy Mondays, delivers the album's true killer track, the same can't be said for the gaudy mariachi melodrama of "Americano", which screams away all the lightness that made the equally parodic "Alejandro" so likeable.

Born This Way reaffirms Germanotta's good melodic instincts, but in a far too messy fashion and with increasingly blunt tools. RedOne's creativity starts to show signs of fatigue, and that of newly recruited DJ White Shadow doesn't always bring out the best in Gaga, ending up weighing down and smothering her potential — not unlike her increasingly outlandish masks, which this time around become so excessive they end up disfiguring and, frankly, uglifying her.

By the end of the cycle, the album's chart placements will be quite respectable but less long-lasting than before, and its sales figures, while substantial, will fall short of those racked up by The Fame. Of the many singles released, only "The Edge Of Glory" seems to achieve visibility on par with her biggest hits, and even the new, pharaonic "Born This Way Ball Tour", with its stage shaped like a medieval castle, won't bring in the hoped-for earnings, partly due to a premature halt caused by Germanotta's health problems: her hip, worn down by the choreography, requires surgery. The dramatic turn of events couldn't come at a better time — after three years as a true showstopper, the general sense is that a certain weariness is starting to surround Germanotta's name, due to the incredible media overexposure that has constantly accompanied her brief career. And for the first time she appears fragile, a self-aware victim of fame and gripped by depression; the forced break would seem like an excellent opportunity to clear her head, make peace with her own demons, and prepare a new album that will definitively cement her role as a pop icon.

A mess in the name of art

Yet it is precisely at this juncture that Lady Gaga makes the biggest mistake of her career: rather than presenting herself to the public in a completely renewed, perhaps more humble guise, she returns to the scene in the summer of 2013 with the pretentious battle cry "I am the art, and the art is transformed into me". A work unveiled, as usual, with all the customary pomp: if the title alone, ARTPOP (written all in caps, heaven forbid otherwise), already says it all, Stefani Germanotta's megalomania this time around seems to know no bounds. A cover created by celebrated contemporary artist Jeff Koons, references to Botticelli's Venus (never mind if it gets confused with the Venus de Milo), the inevitable Andy Warhol, the Marina Abramovic method, an iPad app, her vomiting paint on stage, and more besides. In her effort to underline her distance from the rest of the pop-star pack and her status as a well-rounded artist, the Gaga machine this time truly outdoes itself in ambition, pulling out every resource available. Unfortunately, though, once again her aspirations aren't matched by music that fully justifies such strained grandiosity. The cracks show immediately with the much-anticipated lead single; although the urgency and energy running through the synthetic "Applause" (her response to the side effects of fame) earn the track a warm reception, it's clear right away that it doesn't carry the same punch as her previous singles, and it's literally upstaged by the more playful comeback of Katy Perry and the more transgressive one by Miley Cyrus.

Shrewd as ever in feeding her adoring audience gushes of cut-price conceptualism, this time Germanotta decides to play with new colors too, pushing even further her tendency to cram less than four minutes with whatever crosses her mind, all in a strenuous effort to prove she's creative to the nth degree. Convulsive synth blasts, sudden and implausible tempo changes, saccharine choruses, galloping digressions, filtered vocals, bombastic deliveries and much more become her absolute trademark, her cross to bear and her delight. More often than not, her urge to overdo it works against the result, overwhelming the listener, and what's meant to sound like an artistic pastiche simply ends up being a mess; the most glaring case is the raucous "Swine", needlessly aggressive and scattershot. The aborted single "Venus" suffers from a similar problem too, and if it works better in the track listing, that's only because it basks in reflected light from the opener "Aura", the only crossover that, between Spanish-tinged flourishes and a rough electroclash edge, seems to have been conceived with everything needed to amaze without giving up on being enjoyably entertaining.

Even what should set her apart from everyone else, namely her beautiful voice, is often flaunted without nuance, as if she needed to stand out on a talent show, or even needlessly mistreated. One such example is when, putting on her angry-diva act, she tackles the far-from-original stomper "MANiCURE" (essentially a reissue, minus the irony, of the Eurythmics' "I Need A Man") or when, on the new piano ballad, a thoroughly deflated "Dope" for which Rick Rubin is dragged in, she tries, without a shred of grace and with an overblown, unintentionally comic performance, to prop up an extremely thin melody. Yet it is upon hearing (though simply spotting its title in the track listing would suffice) the dreadful "Donatella", dedicated to designer Versace, that one gets the definitive confirmation that the pop art Lady Gaga aspires to is nothing more than very gaudy costume jewelry.

When she manages to nail the purely "pop-song" side of her artistry, though, heading straight for the target without too many distractions and striking the right balance between pop melody and more current production, Lady Gaga can still pull anything but filler out of her hat. The odd appeal of "G.U.Y." (a gritty slice of house-pop in the age of brostep) and the electro-r'n'b excursions of "Sexxx Dreams" (probably the best track on the record, thanks in part to synth bass lines that recall the most irresistible Justice) are both excellent examples of this.

There's also relief to be found in a title track built entirely around a sinuous, elegant midtempo groove, in a "Mary Jane Holland" that recaptures the drive of her early hits, and in the stylish disco-funk of "Fashion!", which - with cameos from two unabashedly flashy guests like Will.I.Am and David Guetta - updates for today the early-'80s atmospheres of her chief idols, Bowie and Madonna. Among the record's other highlights is the track chosen as the second single, the unusually stripped-down r'n'b of "Do What You Want": vocal runs in Christina Aguilera territory (with whom she would later duet on this very song), an effective melodic alchemy, and a rather predictable feature from R. Kelly.

It's precisely his presence, though, that would ultimately seal the fate of both the single and the album as failures. Quite a few people found it distasteful that a self-styled champion of minorities would choose to duet with a man previously investigated for sexually abusing a minor. A video was even shot, directed by the famous (and equally controversial) photographer Terry Richardson, poking fun at the soul singer's alleged fetishistic habits, but Interscope feared it crossed the line and the clip never saw the light of day. It was a hard blow for the singer: no longer feeling surrounded by people capable of advising her properly, she decided to clean house and part ways with her management. Several months would pass before another track was pulled from ARTPOP, but despite the lavish (and ultimately hollow) accompanying video meant to underline yet another rebirth, "G.U.Y." could do little to rescue the fortunes of an album born under a bad star, just as the following tour drew noticeably smaller crowds than before.

A Necessary Rebuild

A sharp, fairly swift change of course was therefore in order, to avoid losing further goodwill and artistic credibility. Curiously, the best opportunity arose sooner than expected, in late 2014, thanks to an offer from a genuine swing legend: ninety-year-old Tony Bennett. Having duetted a few years earlier on an altogether enjoyable version of "Lady Is A Tramp" (on Bennett's "Duets II"), the pair seemed to have found real chemistry, and the unlikely duo decided to record a full album of American standards.

The first thing you notice listening to Cheek To Cheek is that the two of them genuinely seem to be having fun. Bennett does what he does best, the seasoned pro that he is, and seems genuinely intrigued by his latest female foil, at times almost looking at her in disbelief, as if to ask "what on earth are you doing here?". The real revelation, in fact, is Lady Gaga herself, who sheds her meat-dress persona to transform into a sleek jazz diva, reminding everyone that when she wants to, she still has a truly fine voice. The two of them romp through "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and the single "Anything Goes", while on her own she turns in a rather fine solo reading of Porter's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye".

Cheek To Cheek, however, is a record that was born old from the start, not just because of the song choices, but above all because of the arrangements, which are as elegant as they are unchanged for the past sixty years, never offering a flicker of life to suggest the year we're actually living in (or even the millennium). The "Nature Boy" featured here is a far cry from the theatrical version David Bowie once delivered, a reminder that even with the same orchestra playing behind you, the result doesn't necessarily have to sound just like always. Even "Lush Life", however well sung, comes across as merely by-the-numbers, and paradoxically sounds older than the far more imaginative version Donna Summer cut all the way back in 1982. What's missing, in short, is backbone - or at least the pathos Sinéad O'Connor brought to her own covers record of this kind, "Am I Not Your Girl?", or the irreverent wit George Michael deployed on his "Songs From The Last Century" - the kind of thing you might reasonably have expected from a figure like Lady Gaga.

All things considered, though, she doesn't come out of the experience too battered; far from the failed electro gasps of ARTPOP, calm and focused for once on being a serious singer, she at least manages to add another small piece to the image of the all-round popstar she's always aspired to be. No great harm done if, in doing so, she snatches the wig off Cher's head and plays the none-too-original card of a jazzy album in the vein of Madonna's "I'm Breathless". If for many the move reeks of a career on furlough, for others, especially in America, Cheek To Cheek clocks in and even earns a Grammy in the jazz category.

It marks the beginning of the media rehabilitation of the Gaga persona and of her growing desire for restraint. The run of concerts alongside Bennett is a hit with both critics and audiences, she wins a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her role in the series American Horror Story, charms patriotic Americans by singing the national anthem at the 2016 Super Bowl, and is even nominated for an Oscar for the song "Til It Happens To You". Co-written with the celebrated songwriter Diane Warren, the track is a lumbering power ballad serving as commentary for a documentary on sexual violence, and it's her own story of assault, suffered years earlier as Germanotta, that makes headlines and moves audiences. Even so, her star continues to shine a little less brightly than before, no longer managing to outshine her fiercest rivals.

Eight years after her debut, in short, one begins to feel the absence of a substantial body of work worthy of the artistic talent so loudly trumpeted by fans and critics alike - songs capable of lodging themselves in the popular imagination, going beyond the handful of early dancefloor fillers with which the media still largely identify her.

In Search of Restraint

With the release of the new Joanne, named in honor of the aunt she lost at a young age, the impression is that Lady Gaga herself feels the weight of such expectations. And that she's actively running from them, crafting a project that keeps a decidedly lower profile than usual, disowning certain flashy electronic excesses and abandoning the extreme looks that had become her trademark. It's an understandable choice, because whenever she strains to recapture her old radio appeal, the eagerness with which she throws herself into it comes across as performance anxiety. That's what leads her to tackle, with melodramatic delivery, a tropical-flavored little tune written, curiously, with Beck, "Dancin' In Circles", sinking it beyond repair. Worse still when she pulls out every trick, belting away, just to lift the flat chorus of "Perfect Illusion", even managing to distract the listener from the one genuinely decent thing about the track, the arrangement by Mark Ronson and Kevin Parker. Inexplicably chosen as the lead single, it turns out to be a genuine flop by her standards, failing even to crack the top ten on either side of the Atlantic.

With the big hit singles running short, the better strategy is to aim for a strong album as a whole. Focusing on a more conventional, vintage, country-tinged pop-rock must have seemed like the safest bet for credibly slipping into the role of a more mature, intimate singer-songwriter ("Sinner's Prayer", though hardly groundbreaking, is a fine example), while simultaneously winning over an American audience that had by then thrown its lot in with more conservative reigning queens like Taylor Swift.

While the transformation succeeds particularly well on a conceptual level, in practice the results turn out to be rather uneven. Gaga clearly seems most at ease on the acoustic ballads (between the reassuring "Million Reasons" and the overly stiff "Angel Down", it's above all the title track that shines, one that wouldn't sound out of place coming from Lana Del Rey), but certain stomp-blues numbers, like "A-YO", "John Wayne" and the almost Christmassy "Come To Mama", confirm themselves as her Achilles' heel.

Against such a backdrop, two moments easily stand out: a loose-limbed tribute to Springsteen, "Diamond Heart", finally boasting a genuinely glorious chorus, and a tribute to her friend Elton John, on which she and Florence Welch rein in their powerhouse voices to deliver a sleek, elegant take on "Bennie And The Jets".

Joanne is a finally cohesive, concise record, pleasingly produced by Ronson, but it fails to dispel doubts about Lady Gaga's ability to craft new pop classics. So the second single, "Million Reasons", also struggles to make a dent in the charts, and Joanne, after its inevitable initial surge, quickly loses momentum. This time, though, Germanotta has an effective ace up her sleeve: she'll be the one performing during the halftime show of Super Bowl 2017. For one night, in front of millions of viewers, Lady Gaga goes back to being the The Fame-era star she once was, in a pyrotechnic set where, alongside the latest single, all the old songs that had turned her into a top-tier star take centre stage, complete with the same choreography and the inevitable, outlandish costumes. The effects aren't long in coming: "Million Reasons" manages to crack the American top ten and, even if only for a single week, gives the album the hit single it would otherwise have lacked.

Joanne's sales will level off, ultimately matching those of ARTPOP, tickets for the upcoming tour will finally fly off the shelves, she'll share the stage with Stones and Metallica, and filming will begin on her first film as a leading lady: yet another remake of A Star Is Born, a role previously taken on by Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. A brand-new single is even produced to capitalize on her return to fame: "The Cure" wipes the slate clean of Joanne's stylistic coordinates to shrewdly embrace the sound most in vogue at the time, namely the soft-EDM of the Chainsmokers. Once again the chart results won't be especially flattering, but the song will still become something of a sensation on streaming platforms, proof of its appeal among younger listeners as a solid investment for the future. Yet just as things seem to be looking up, Lady Gaga must once again reckon with the psycho-physical fragility that has always, paradoxically, counterbalanced her exuberant image: a hospitalization for confirmed fibromyalgia forces her to postpone the European leg of the "Joanne Tour".

The rebirth of a star

The machinery to bring Germanotta back into the spotlight was, however, well oiled, and it's the film A Star Is Born, destined to become a blockbuster of the autumn 2018 season, that plays a decisive role in her resurgence, even though its accompanying soundtrack, partly and above all for reasons dictated by the script, ends up sharing more than a little common ground with her previous album. Luckily for her, though, this time the heavy lifting falls to what can be considered the unexpected revelation of the project, namely Bradley Cooper's husky voice, perfectly suited to his role as a world-weary bluesman. It's the actor/director who drives almost all of the album's most anachronistic, deeply American moments (in other words, the least appealing to the rest of the global market): from the muscular rock charges in Audioslave territory ("Black Eyes" and "Alibi") to the dusty saloon ballads ("Out Of Time" and "Too Far Gone"), hopping here and there through the most predictable country cadences ("Diggin' My Grave").

This leaves Germanotta free to devote herself almost exclusively to what she's lately proven particularly good at, showcasing her vocal technique on tear-jerking ballads. In A Star Is Born she only occasionally fails to rein in her by-now-proverbial tendency to oversell a song ("La Vie En Rose" strays dangerously close to parody), as in the otherwise fine single "Shallow", where some overly swollen vocal runs needlessly weigh down a memorable refrain worthy of "Bad Romance". These are venial sins, and together with other tracks like "I'll Never Love Again", "Before I Cry" or "Is That Alright" — all written by the book of the perfect cinematic ballad — they'll send the Oscar and Grammy academies into raptures.

In short, Lady Gaga is at her best when she finally sheds her pop-queen persona to chase other, more refined models, from Carly Simon ("Always Remember Us This Way", the most deserving slow number of the bunch) to Carole King (the delightful "Look What I Found", sprinkled with soul towards the end), passing, as it inevitably must, through Barbra Streisand ("I Don't Know What Love Is", one of several duets with Cooper).

Despite the film's contemporary setting, listening to the soundtrack conjures up a curious and, all things considered, comforting vintage atmosphere, as if most of its songs were conceived not only to send listeners' blood sugar soaring but also to sound like timeless classics. That's why, when more modern-sounding tracks suddenly crop up towards the end of the tracklist, it feels almost like a betrayal, and faintly irritating. This happens mainly because, although "Heal Me" is undeniably caressing, neither the tropical breeze of "Why Did You That" nor the synths of "Hair Body Face" (more a nod to the glory days of "The Fame") can proudly claim future-classic status. They're forgiven for narrative necessity, since the songs are presented in the order they appear in the film and thus follow the stylistic evolution of the two characters, with lead character Ally fated, much to her dismay, to become the classic over-produced, over-choreographed popstar before repenting and returning to the essence of music. A trajectory that couldn't be more sympathetic to Lady Gaga's own story, in short.

Ten years after her debut, and following an arc that seemed destined never to recover, Germanotta is finally and forcefully back in the pop spotlight: numerous awards follow for her film performance, including the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Shallow", which reaches a level of fame one of her singles probably hadn't seen since "Born This Way", while the whole soundtrack becomes a massive success, confirming a trend kicked off by "La La Land" and continued by "The Greatest Showman". Yet just as her image and musical output seem to have settled into a decidedly adult-oriented phase, Lady Gaga launches a residency in Las Vegas — the ideal place for someone as impatient with touring life as her — and shuffles the deck once again. Aside from a handful of dates devoted to the great American songbook (a given amid the slot machines of Nevada), kitsch, theatrical flourishes and above all the big hits from her early albums take centre stage once more, at the expense of her more recent work, prematurely consigning Ally and Joanne to the attic.

Back on the dancefloor

By the time she gets back into the studio, what had only been hints become facts: Lady Gaga is ready to close the, all in all, sober chapter of the last five years and return to her first love: masks, sequins and dance music. With renewed visionary flair and the usual pomp and ceremony, Stefani Germanotta thus invites us to put on our ruby slippers and explore a new world, Chromatica, even greeting us with a full orchestra. More than some utopian nation, though, it seems above all to be the scene of a crime — the one in which the heroine of A Star Is Born, the queen of the Grammys, the Oscars, the gossip pages and karaoke nights, gets torn apart and pieced back together, together with what remained of the Gaga of "The Fame", to create a cybernetic monster. Like any self-respecting Frankenstein, her new creation certainly doesn't go unnoticed — it's eye-catching, sure, but it falls short on fluidity and is lacking in feeling, resulting in a sound that draws freely and liberally from the house the '90s and from her not exactly fresh revival, skimming all too much over melodic completeness.

Things kick off with a fairly satisfying "Alice", followed by the pulsing single "Stupid Love", the anthemic "Free Woman", the brash "Enigma" and the melodramatic "1000 Doves", and it quickly becomes clear that most of the new tracks are built on the same template. Many songs are held up, one after another, by heartfelt intros, a relentless four-on-the-floor kick and shouted bridges that lead into vocal samples and "instrumental" breakdowns worthy of the Eurovision Song Contest rather than genuinely gripping, well-structured choruses. A device that's certainly common in modern dance music, but one that grates quite a bit here, given that this isn't the new album from just any DJ/producer (in this case a thoroughly unimaginative Bloodpop) but from one of the most celebrated pop songwriters of the last decade. As if that weren't enough, it's released hot on the heels of Future Nostalgia, on which Dua Lipa showed with total nonchalance that it's still possible to make hit songs that are not only danceable but also genuinely listenable.

The decision to drop the experimentation-for-its-own-sake that hobbled Artpop, in favour of greater straightforwardness, is nonetheless welcome, and in some cases — like the instant hit "Rain On Me", the sax flourishes on "Babylon" or the hallucinogenic "Replay", which seems to revive the Teutonic bite of the old "Scheiße" — the formula works distinctly better than elsewhere. Still, the paradoxical (given the title) monochrome quality of the album is so wearing that when the electro-pop pairing of "911" and "Plastic Doll" bursts in — about as close as it gets to the naivety of her debut — it's almost a relief. Short-lived relief, unfortunately, because one would never have expected to find Elton John (as out of place as he was back in the ill-fated "Victim Of Love") caught up in a Buddha Bar pastiche so bad it cries out for justice, excusable only by good old Reginald's unconditional admiration for his friend.

Credit must still be given to Lady Gaga for her boldness in not simply returning to the reassuring, lucrative adult-oriented pop of her last soundtrack, as well as for the shrewdness with which she targeted this new work at a very specific demographic. The collaborations with two streaming heavyweights like Ariana Grande and South Korean girl group BLACKPINK, the fact that most of the tracks clock in under three minutes (making them perfect for TikTok challenges), and the well-worn nods to an EDM scene that's been picked clean to the bone but is still beloved by the LGBTQ community, leave no room for doubt. Chromatica is decidedly more a marketing triumph than a feat of pop craftsmanship, and Lady Gaga makes sure we know her antennae are still finely tuned to where the current mainstream is (unfortunately) headed.

The last crooner

In 2021 comes her return as a duo with Tony Bennett. The ten songs making up Love For Sale offer two possible readings: either it's her definitive promotion, in case there were still any doubts, from chromatic Poker Face to all-round captivating interpreter (ever more in the footsteps of Madonna, who in 1990 attempted the same leap to Broadway with "I'm Breathless" and "Dick Tracy"), or, from Bennett's point of view, a farewell party meaningfully organized alongside a young contemporary star, he who, in over seventy years of career, had never wanted to hear even the faintest mention of opening himself up to contemporary stardom.

For the legendary Italian-American crooner, this will likely be his last record: last summer he had already announced his retirement, at the insistence of family members and doctors, not so much because of his advanced age (according to the Guinness World Records, at 95 he's the oldest person ever to record new material) but because his health is sadly undergoing a progressive and inexorable decline. Long affected by Alzheimer's disease, Bennett hasn't forgotten at all "how it's done", and with Lady Gaga he has by now found the right chemistry: overall, the songs — all covers of old standards drawn from Cole Porter's extraordinary catalogue — come across as less stiff and formal than their prequel, "Cheek To Cheek", which had stumbled precisely over a certain sterile, repetitive surface mannerism. Recorded in several sessions between 2018 and 2021 at Electric Lady Studios in New York, "Love For Sale" is superbly orchestrated by the Brian Newman Quintet, with 1940s/50s-style arrangements by Marion Evans and Jorge Calandrelli.

The painstaking production pairs beautifully with the successful vocal interplay, making you forget the double (if not triple) generational gap between the two leads. The dominant theme is love in all its many facets: in the lively ouverture "It's De-Lovely", the thirty-five-year-old Lady Gaga opens the dance with a slow, full voice after a drum intro and trumpet fanfare, while the more seasoned Bennett then makes his sly entrance with the line "the night is young", and everything glides along to a pleasant final decrescendo. It's the same leit-motiv in "So In Love", "I Get A Kick Out Of You" (released as the first single) and the title track "Love For Sale", where romantic feeling becomes a celebration of the friendship and the bond the two have rebuilt ten years after their first collaboration. They converse, joke and wink at each other, while the piano fills in the empty spaces with great care: two voices utterly different in history and training, merging in unison into a gentle idyll, where the popstar, now ever more at ease and relaxed in the musical idiom, has the tact and intelligence never to steal the spotlight entirely.

The only criticism one could paradoxically level at it is perhaps precisely the excess of lightness and joyfulness in its tones, which keeps a song like "Night And Day", with its flutes and xylophone, from getting quite the touch of melodrama the script calls for. In the end, though, that's fine: no coup de théâtre, just impeccable, graceful and essential renditions. Not the whole songbook is sung as a duet: "So In Love" and "Just One Of Those Things" (one of the best) are Bennett's alone, while on "Let's Do It" and "Do I Love You" the spotlight turns back to Lady Gaga, who recently decided to get a jazz trumpet tattooed on her right arm as a tribute to her colleague, and for this reason even chose to alter the original lyrics of "Under My Skin" (included only on the deluxe CD editions), adding to the final verse the line "and I'll love you like a tattoo under my skin". Beneath that ink proudly worn on her skin is the signature of the sketch's author, "Benedetto": the real surname of Anthony Dominick "Tony Bennett", son of emigrants from Reggio Calabria seeking their fortune in the United States — and one certainly cannot say he never found it. With Love For Sale, the curtain falls, wistfully, on the extremely long artistic journey of the last great crooner still among us, but fortunately we can now be certain his music will never be entirely set aside by our generation, or at least not as long as Lady Gaga is there to remind us of it.

Meanwhile, Germanotta keeps courting the film world: she wins new acclaim, along with a Golden Globe nomination, for her portrayal of Patrizia Reggiani in "House of Gucci", though the film itself isn't particularly well received by audiences. Enter now also the soundtrack of "Top Gun: Maverick", the true blockbuster of 2021, with the track "Hold My Hand", which turns out, however, to be yet another lumbering adult-oriented power ballad, and a fairly modest success at that. The real masterstroke in store, though, is something else: the role of Harley Quinn, Joker's longtime girlfriend, in the hugely anticipated sequel "Joker: Folie à Deux". Everything pointed to guaranteed success, yet the film, reworked as a musical, turns out to be an unexpected and resounding flop with both critics and audiences, to the point that even the companion album Harlequin, inspired by the film and made up largely of covers again done in a jazzy style, is forgotten within a week. A string of major setbacks, and yet they end up overshadowed by an unexpected collaboration that will give her career new life and serve as a launchpad for an ambitious new record project.

Gothic Restoration

Who knows what must have been going through the mind of Lady Gaga when, right after finishing recording a new album that was meant to steer her away from those big adult-oriented ballads that the general public now wants to identify her with, she agreed to team up with Bruno Mars for that “Die With A Smile”, itself perfectly suited for karaoke nights and weddings, which ultimately turned into a massive and perhaps unexpected hit. “It's a separate project, it won't be part of the upcoming album because it doesn't fit its sound” her record label representatives were quick to clarify. An album marked by electro-industrial sounds and dark moods that are proudly on display in the actual lead single of the new project, the aggressive and grandiose “Disease”. Backed by a glorious refrain, it's probably Lady Gaga's best single since the days of “Born This Way” but despite this, its release has been literally overshadowed by the now-famous and overbearing duet.

It's only natural to scramble for damage control in a situation like this in the mainstream world: "the duet will be part of the album, it always was" — heaven forbid a pop album, however good, shouldn't contain at least one chart-topping single. And in the end another hit really does seem to have arrived: blending the aforementioned ingredients with her usual echolalic vocal tics, nods to Siouxsie Sioux and operatic bridges, the latest single "Abracadabra" has been triumphantly embraced by the little monsters, even though, setting aside a highly effective hook tailor-made for TikTok reels and a successful, self-referential video, the result aims more for the clumsy gaudiness of "Judas" than the pop perfection of "Bad Romance". The obvious question then arises: doesn't an old-fashioned, romantic song like "Die With A Smile" risk looking utterly out of place in such a maximalist, dark sonic context, one even titled "Mayhem"? The answer is, in fact, yes — but for reasons rather different from what one might have expected.

Once you've digested the two official singles (also the first tracks on the record), the perception of what you're listening to shifts abruptly as early as the third song. It's the melodious, more reassuring "Garden Of Eden" that turns out to be the real indicator of what will form the album's backbone. This time Lady Gaga has retreated into her own past, especially into those tracks that served as filler around the four mega-singles of her debut album — that polished yet, all told, fairly conventional pop-dance, sprinkled with funky-disco, with beats that always skirt the edge of shallowness and that, in the years since, has become a source of inspiration for plenty of, let's say, not especially memorable starlets. When the self-quotation works, she pulls impeccable numbers out of her hat, like the euphoric "LoveDrug", which wouldn't be out of place (quite the opposite, actually) on the tracklist of "The Fame"; elsewhere, though, she risks not even out-dazzling your average Ava Max ("Vanish Into You" and "Don't Call Tonight") or, at best, the sweeter side of Taylor Swift ("How Bad Do You Want Me").

Germanotta tries to give things more backbone and grit to justify the much-touted but unfulfilled ambitions of the project: a few synthetic guitar stabs, a rough electronic crust, and her aggressive "now I'm stepping on stage to tear it all up" vocal attitude (all tricks that end up hobbling tracks like "Perfect Celebrity", which reeks of Garbage, and the murky ballad "The Beast"), fooling herself, and us, into thinking a spiked collar is enough to turn a chihuahua into a pitbull. To really make it work, what was probably needed was a more French-flavored house touch, hefty doses of irony (which she vaguely pulls off on "Zombieboy"), or sensuality. Indeed, when Gesaffelstein steps into the producer's chair (assisting the more conventional Canadian, Cirkut), the result changes drastically, and "Killah", with no real effort, stands out as one of the album's highlights — even if, with its funky riffs, rather than evoking Bowie's "Fame" , it ends up recalling, above all, the nonetheless admirable experiments of Duran Duran straddling the late '80s and early '90s.

Fortunately less camp than its predecessor "Chromatica" and more accomplished melodically, "Mayhem" thus sounds like a restorative record for a Lady Gaga who's barely thirty-nine, and while it doesn't quite live up to its own premises, it will still delight her earliest fans, now rather nostalgic, if somewhat less those still hoping for more refined and mature compositions. It's a constant in a career still too stingy, since the earthquake of her debut, with truly striking songs, but one that certainly never bores in its chaotic unpredictability.

It remains hard to picture which direction Miss Germanotta's next musical steps will take, forever caught between choosing a more adult path or sticking with dance music and its flashier excesses, at the risk of being crushed by comparison with a debut that still seems impossible to replicate. If, however, she manages in the future to find a balance between these two seemingly opposed sides of herself, trimming the exaggerations and some of the megalomaniac excess, then yes, a few missteps along the way would have been well worth it. In the meantime, you can bet the show we'll get to watch will be anything but boring.

Contributions by Vassilios Karagiannis ("ARTPOP") and Damiano Pandolfini ("Cheek To Cheek"), Giuseppe D'Amato ("Love For Sale")

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