Chromatica

• Russian Translation
• Farsi Translation*
• Polish Translation*
• Portuguese Translation*
• Spanish Translation*
• Turkish Translation*

During an interview with Zane Lowe, Gaga said of the record:

The symbol for Chromatica has a sine wave in it, which is the mathematical symbol for sound, and it’s from what all sound is made from, and, for me, sound is what healed me in my life period, and it healed me again making this record, and that is really what Chromatica is all about. It’s about healing and it’s about bravery as well and it’s really like, when we talk about love I think it’s so important to include the fact that it requires a ton of bravery to love someone."

On what she wants the record to accomplish:

I want to put out a record that forces people to rejoice even in their saddest moments. And by the way, I’m not standing over here with a flag going, ‘I’m all healed, everything’s perfect.’ It’s not; it’s a fight all the time. I still work on myself constantly. I have bad days, I have good days. Yeah, I live in Chromatica, it took a minute to get here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember what happened. So if you’re in pain and listening to this music, just know that I know what it’s like to be in pain. And I know what it’s like to also not let it ruin your life."

– Via PaperMag (March, 2020)

On the deeper meaning behind why the album was delayed:

It’s a super interesting time, it’s been a very difficult time for a lot of people and we stopped the drop of the record and everything that we were doing because I really wanted it to be more specific at one point. I wanted to do something to help the world that was very focused and working with the World Health Organization and Global Citizen. It was a way for me to talk about kindness and the things that I believe in, in a very focused way, as opposed to a more abstract way, which for me is what Chromatica is. It’s a beautiful abstraction of my perception of the world and I just wanted to wait a second and do something specific and then when it felt appropriate I was like, ‘OK, we can get abstract.’"

– Via Zane Lowe Interview (May 21, 2020)

BloodPop

Almost all of the songs were started with Gaga or Gaga and I on a piano or a very basic track. We would build the track up after a semblance of a song existed, and I would tune it up to the point I felt it had the right spirit. Then, we assessed the feeling of the music and invited collaborators based on their strengths to re-imagine the song or production. For example, we loved this record by Axwell which was being played in all the clubs at the time called “Nobody Else.” It had a punch and sonic energy we wanted in "Alice” and “Free Woman.”

Axwell

The selling point was that I like Gaga, and I thought it was cool how they [were doing] full-on dance music. It wasn’t EDM-ish [pop], but old-school, retro house. That excited me, and these were great sounds at their foundation…. “Free Woman” was a super upbeat, genderless empowerment song. The retro sound they had at the beginning really got me going. I was picturing clubs in New York in the ‘90s when I heard it.

Johannes Klahr

I’ve been helping Axwell out with production [for years]. Since we did “Nobody Else” together, we naturally did this together…. “Free Woman” is a banging club record, but it’s more chill. We amplified the ‘80s and '90s sounds and added our flavor to see where we could take it but kept the soul. We’re groove oriented; the bass needs to bang with the drums, and with Gaga’s lush vocals on top of that, we wanted to make the groove as nice and fluid as possible to make it authentically club.

Axwell

They were looking into house music history, and I play a little bit into that history…. The cool thing is they asked me for a reason. They knew what they wanted.

Johannes Klahr

We just did what we thought the track was already heading toward. If you look at Gaga’s first album, it has those elements already, but now it’s a bit more developed and scaled toward the club. Gaga has this special nerve that comes through when you put authentic dance underneath. To enhance the album’s retro-house sounds, BURNS, Axwell, and Klahr began using vintage techniques.

BURNS

We weren’t going for modern EDM, we were going for classic-feeling dance music. “Authentic” was a word I used a lot; it had to be familiar, but also fresh at the same time.

Johannes Klahr

We used this classic Korg M1 organ bass [for “Alice”] that’s used in all of those old-school house tracks, and it worked perfectly. It’s a harmonic bass, so it has a warm tone to it and fit with the vocals.

BURNS

I was conscious of trying to steer away from that polished, crisp sound you hear in a lot of current pop-EDM production. I wanted everything I was a part of to have character and a bit of grit to it.

–via EW Music (2020)

Chromatica debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 during the chart week of June 13, 2020 after moving approximately 274,000 copies during its first week. The album is her sixth to top the chart.

“We didn’t even have to have a conversation about it,” Chromatica executive producer BloodPop tells EW of the album’s creation, which was a deliberate turn from the country-tinged detour she took on 2016’s Joanne. “It felt right for her to revisit electronic elements, so we came straight out of the gates with pulsating synths and house rhythms.”

Though BloodPop co-produced all 11 tracks on the standard edition of Joanne, he hadn’t committed to making Gaga’s follow-up LP. That changed after he traveled to the Kansas City stop on the Joanne World Tour, where he played her a song called “Stupid Love,” which he had previously workshopped with Max Martin. From there, Gaga and BloodPop began recording the album with a revolving door of producers including SOPHIE, Boys Noize, and BURNS.

BloodPop

After the Joanne tour and during/after the filming of A Star Is Born, we started working on demos at her home studio. Early on, we didn’t have a hyper-clear vision. We were getting the ball rolling. We knew that “Stupid Love” felt good, and the other songs we were writing gave gloomy, hard, tearful days bright endings. The silver linings kept us pushing, and with songs like “Enigma,” “Alice,” and “Babylon” taking form, she saw the album coming together.

BURNS

Blood and I first met in late 2018, and it was in early 2019 when he asked if I’d be interested in helping on the project. He played me some of the rough demos and we discussed ideas for the direction…. Blood and Gaga were quite deep into the writing aspect, but the sound hadn’t fully been carved out yet.

BloodPop

We worked with SOPHIE very early on. [She was] the first collaborator of those sessions. Those days were fun. We set up six microphones and recorded [Gaga’s] Lamborghini exhaust, and SOPHIE cut it up into samples. [Though they didn’t make the album], we still plan to finish those songs and present something special within the Chromatica universe.

BURNS

[The early demos] had an underlying feeling of rejoice in the vocal delivery — even if some of it was a bit somber in subject matter. Gaga sung the demos with such power and conviction, almost like a release.

BloodPop

It was probably the demo for “Enigma” [that set the album in motion]. It was more about her vocal performance than anything, and how she wrapped around that track. It felt powerful…. It felt like a mix of Studio 54 and threads of all our favorite dance records. It evoked that fleeting, euphoric feeling that comes from good dance music.

–via EW Music