Some concepts are too difficult to focus down into a quippy opening line. Some artists yearn to embody and transplant emotional states one brain over. And some humans are too enigmatic to introduce in brief. That’s Lady Gaga.

At the turn of the last decade, The Fame Monster stepped onto the scene embodying the role of pop culture icon in music, fashion, and philosophy. Her carefully crafted image spoke to the importance of escapism and expressing your truth, no matter how muddied and dark it was. Of course, this was always done with a taste for the macabre, a glittery electronic sheen, and the attempted unification of haute-couture ideas and fashion with the marketability of good pop music.

Chromatica, Lady Gaga’s sixth studio album, has long been anticipated as a “return to form.” The problem – when you’re a self-proclaimed chameleon and enigma, what form is there to return to? Stylistically and in reception, the canon of Gaga’s work has undulated from dance-pop chart-topper, to crooning jazz songstress, to American songwriter turned actress. 

Land on planet Chromatica, an album rollout and visual theme that communicates so many of Gaga’s early visual ideals, and the form returned to is a rocky, barren landscape sparsely populated with oasis’ of yesteryear. Lady Gaga’s defining form was never boring pop music. Underpinning every shift in costume, every pivot in musical genre, and every lyric of conquered trauma was Gaga’s unique ability to unite a sophisticated strangeness with her musicianship. 

Instead, the dystopic sci-fi theming in music videos and visuals spills into the music in an apocalyptic way. While promoting the album, Gaga reiterated that “No one thing is greater than another on Chromatica,” which sounds nice in theory, but here, leads to disaster. Most of Chromatica sounds of generic dance-pop that is masterfully engineered but lacking in interest.

One track blends into another, not due to the orchestral cinematic interludes, which are actually quite beautiful, but because the production of every track is simply generic sounding. Frustrating, given even when Gaga shoots and misses, we are left with beautiful messes. ARTPOP, her first downturn in public opinion, was perhaps the little sister of this newer effort. What it lacked in focus, it made up for in pure aggression, emotional catastrophe, and character.

“You can serve it to me, ancient-city style, we can party like it’s B.C., with a pretty sixteenth-century smile”

Babylon, Chromatica

That character is still here to a lesser degree, but now it is drowning under the weight of a production team that is unwilling to take risks, rigidly tied to the idea of respecting genre and writing ratio friendly dance-pop in a time when radio is kicking the can and pop music is transforming entirely.

Back to the music landscape metaphor, in 2015, Grimes released the genre-bending and beautiful art-pop album “Art Angels,” after partnering with BloodPop (then Blood Diamonds) to release “Go,” a track so polarizing to fans it lit Grimes own efforts on fire. The track was a clear turn towards a commercial sound that was catchy in its own right, but a tainted and dilapidated vision of the Grimes sound.

During that same time, Charli XCX pivoted from top-40 pop-punk to futuristic abrasiveness with up and coming producer Sophie of PC music fame. Both BloodPop and Sophie were brought on board for Chromatica, but whatever material Sophie touched never saw the light of day. The point – one navigated the future of pop and failed, the other succeeded.

The closest we get to a successful push into the future from Gaga is “911,” a funky, off-kilter dance track about mental health and the usage of antipsychotic medication. It seems BloodPop is a double edged sword – Lady Gaga’s interviews and social feeds are filled with reference to their crucial personal friendship that carried her through depression and substance abuse.

“I’d rather be dry but at least I’m alive”

Rain On Me, Chromatica

Tracks like “Rain On Me” are clear in message – dance through the pain. If you ignore how vastly uninteresting it is musically, you can buy into the utopian idea of Chromatica and have a fantastic time. One giant planet of sweaty bodies moving in waves across a dancefloor. “Replay” is a standout but would sound more at home on Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, which might be due to Future Nostalgia embracing 90’s house and it’s light to a greater degree.

This all comes with one caveat – these criticisms only stand when lined up in comparison to Gaga’s past achievements. The anthemic chorus of Bad Romance, the dimly lit but vibrantly creative night of Born This Way’s second half, or the guttural and heart wrenching “Dope” which hit every single emotional beat Chromatica set out to in one song.

“Babylon” is campy and fun beyond words – “That’s gossip! Babble on, battle for your life, babble on!” It’s the sprinkle of personality and fun instrumentation that is sorely missed elsewhere. “1000 Doves” and “Alice” also have their place in any confident catwalking playlist, but the simple truth is Lady Gaga can do better than songs that you’d hear at a Forever 21 during a clearing house sale.

“My name isn’t Alice, but I’ll keep looking for wonderland”

Alice, Chromatica

Remember last year when Miley Cyrus proclaimed she was coming and then she never came? Well, she was on the right track, with the first of her three EPs (the later two never releasing) perfectly encapsulating her talents and musical histories. It was confident in sound, abrasive in some points but sultry and country in others – a matured and self-aware culmination after a rollercoaster decade of genre hopping, similar to Gaga.

So why couldn’t Gaga do the same? Are we to believe she predicted the state of the world in 2020, positioning the album as a dance floor away from the outside world? An escape-pod to a euphoria that is everyday more fleeting?

Unfortunately, no. If Gaga albums were all planets, the others would be worth visiting first. Chromatica is a small misstep in the journey towards her magnum opus, a world beyond simple dance tracks, a world where all things are intentionally unequal, so that lows can frame highs, the entire gamut of Gaga’s emotional and musical talents fully realized.