【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Lady Gaga 2020年专辑《Chromatica》（神彩）
搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
原作者：Katherine St. Asaph
翻译：Joonly EC/Ryan-Chopin/Will Lin
审译：Ryan-Chopin
排版：Ryan-Chopin
With incomparable flair, the pop diva returns to her dance-pop days with a fabulously fun and deeply personal album that is at turns bizarre, theatrical, and ambitious.
凭借着无与伦比的天赋，这位流行天后用一张华丽有趣且不失深度的私人专辑，回归到了曾经的舞曲年代，怪异、夸张且野心勃勃的Gaga回来了。
Lady Gaga has canceled Earth. She lives on planetChromatica now. Yes, this is Stefani Germanotta’s return to all that is Lady Gaga: bizarre and theatrical and ambitious,swathed in electrodes, operating with a ga-ga-galaxy brain, delivering dance bangers for us canceled Earthlings. Chromatica is her first pop-pop album since 2011; unlike the non-“Why Did You Do That?” parts of the A Star is Born soundtrack and the beige acoustica of 2016’s Joanne, there’s not a ballad to be found. Specifically, according to Gaga lore, “Chromatica” is some kind of far-flung pink-prism Mad Max planet where “ballads are illegal.” Who doesn’t love world-building?
Lady Gaga已经废除了地球。她如今在Chromatica星球定居。没错，这就代表着曾经的史蒂芬妮全面回归为Lady Gaga了：怪异、夸张且野心勃勃，在电极之间旋转跳跃，用来自嘎子银河系（ga-ga-galaxy）的大脑掌控全局，向我们这些被废除了的地球人传输着跃动的音符。《Chromatica》是她自2011年之后的第一张、地地道道的流行专辑；不像《一个明星的诞生》原声带里面的“Why Did You Do That"，也不像2016年那张毫无特色的《Joanne》，新专辑里面一首抒情曲都找不到。特别是，根据Gaga所说，Chromatica星球上，广泛分布着《疯狂麦克斯》般的粉色棱镜，“情歌在这儿不合法”。谁会不喜欢这种世界构建呢？
But while Chromatica is a return to Gaga’s dance-pop days, that doesn’t mean quite the same thing now. It’s been 12 years since her debut album The Fame, released when “EDM” was just corporate jargon and “dance” meant stompy electroclash. In 2020, a Lady Gaga dance album comes out as an unabashed revival of ’90s house music. But if anyone’s earned a trip to the house, it’s Lady Gaga, who is among the few big pop stars today who can legitimately be called a diva. When Gaga sings, she sings out: not chill, not Idol-pretty, but unafraid to go there, whether there be throaty rasps or sotto-voice commands or feral desperation. It’s why her hard-rock dalliances largely worked, and why Chromatica feels more substantial than other artists’ throwaway dance turns. So much nu-house is producer-driven, its vocalists reduced to decorations if even credited; there is no risk of this with Gaga. Everything here would be unmistakably her even if self-reference didn’t abound. Lead single “Stupid Love” salvages the juddering sequencer of “Do What U Want,” kicks up the speed, and weaves Gaga’s past lead singles around it like Maypole streamers: the oncoming-juggernaut heft of “Bad Romance,” the melodic contour of “Born This Way,” the conceit of “Applause.”
《Chromatica》虽然标志着嘎妈妈回归流行舞曲，但并不和以前的舞曲一样。距她发行首专《The Fame》已经有12年了，当时的"EDM"还只是行家间的术语，舞曲也只局限于"人们忍不住跺脚"的电音。2020年，Lady Gaga新专辑发行，这是一张无所畏惧的九十年代复古浩室风格唱片。如果说是谁赢得了通往浩室音乐殿堂的旅游券，那就是Lady Gaga，她是如今少有的、够格被称为Diva（女歌唱家）的流行巨星。当Gaga唱歌的时候，她歌声嘹亮，即便会需要粗糙、低沉、阴郁的嗓音，她也不会有一丝冷漠和一点偶像包袱，只有一颗毫无畏惧的心。这正是她成功玩弄重摇滚的原因，也是《Chromatica》比其它漫不经心的舞曲听起来更沉稳有力的原因。很多浩室音乐都是看制作人的功夫，就算署了名的人声都只能算是装饰；不过对于Gaga，这就不是冒险当装饰了。尽管专辑中自我创作的东西不够丰富，但它的每一处，仍然无可挑剔。首支单曲"Stupid Love”的震颤感像是“Do What You Want"的续集，快速地节奏和Gaga以前的首单编织在一起就像是节日里的彩色纸带：迎面而来的是“Bad Romance”般的破坏力，主体是“Born This Way”的旋律轮廓，同时还富有“Applause”的狂妄自大。
The other line about Chromatica is that it’s Gaga’s most personal album. You may recall that Joanne was also called Gaga’s “most personal album.” That time, it was “personal” in the same way all pop stars’ unplugged albums get called that: the arrangements had acoustic guitar, and the AutoTune was kept to a tasteful touch-up.Chromatica loses the guitars but certainly handles heavy subject matter: PTSD triggers, antipsychotic meds, sexual assault. In fact, most of Lady Gaga’s music since The Fame has been very personal. For every shiny, poppy song like “Telephone” or “Hair,” Gaga’s recorded three more with wounds at the core: the personified fears ofThe Fame, the parts of Born This Way that are more darkwave orWarcraft than bubblegum; the bitter mess of 2013’s Artpop. Themes recur: fragmented identity, soldiers to emptiness, drinking tears,dying a little when being touched. The art is often messy, the specific mess of art written from trauma. Even when Gaga dons freaky costumes or writes high-concept songs about Judas or swine, the artifice cracks. It’s why her albums hold up surprisingly well. It’s telling which Gaga moments have resurfaced from the early 2010s into current cultural memory: the deadpan, panting intro to “Monster,” or the sludgy-gothy “Bloody Mary,” which TikTok madeeven sludgier and gothier.
还有人认为，《Chromatica》是Gaga最私人化的专辑。你可能还记得《Joanne》当时也被称为Gaga“最私人化的专辑”。所有流行歌手的不插电专辑都被称为很“私人化”，那时候的《Joanne》的“私人化”也是如此而已：所有歌曲都带有原声吉他，自动调音也被认为算是有品味的润色物。《Chromatica》里就没那么多吉他音了，但又突出了其沉重的主题：创伤后应激障碍(PTSD)的触发因素、抗精神病药物和性侵。事实上，Lady Gaga自发行《The Fame》以来的大部分音乐都是非常私人化的。对于每一首像“Telephone”或“Hair”般出色的流行歌曲，Gaga都满怀创伤地又录制了更多:《The Fame Monster》中拟人化的恐惧感、《Born This Way》中黑化的魔兽世界般景象和2013年发行的《Artpop》中的艰苦岁月。相同主题反复出现：个人身份支离破碎，士气磅礴的过去变得空虚疲软，常常以泪洗面，更是惧怕亲热。艺术常常是混乱的，是由创伤造成的某种特定的混乱。即使Gaga穿上奇装异服，或者写一些关于“Judas（犹大）”或“Swine（白猪）”的高级概念歌曲，其表面的伪装终会褪下。这就是为什么她的专辑质量保持得出奇的好。我们得以知晓，从2010年代初开始，哪些属于Gaga的高光时刻又会重新出现在当下的文化记忆中:是歌曲“Monster”里那面无表情、喘着粗气的怪兽前奏曲，还是更加血腥的哥特式歌曲“Bloody Mary”，当然抖音还让这首歌变得更有内味了。
Chromatica reverses this effect. This is house music at its most shiny and immaculate, a genre made from ache and escapism, high strings and numbing throbs. But Gaga’s lyrics are plainspoken, mostly free of religious metaphors and pretense; of the two high-concept songs on Chromatica, one is deliberately silly (“Babylon”) and the other (“Alice”) immediately yanks the metaphor back into reality: The first words are “my name isn’t Alice” and the song is inhabited not with white rabbits but the more terrifying creatures inside one’s mind. The emergency in “911” refers to olanzapine, a fast-acting antipsychotic that Gaga says saved her life. The track begins with a cold, stark beat, her vocals affectless and vocoded. The whole thing sounds off, and when the sweet, singsong chorus arrives, it just sounds off even more. The counterpoint never quite resolves with the melody, and the most painful lines (“Wish I laughed and kept the good friendships”) are tossed off, almost missable. But these are wonderful details, ones you can dance through now, then catch later.
《Chromatica》逆转了这一效果。这次是最无暇耀眼的浩室音乐，该流派融合了情感创伤和逃避主义，高音弦乐和鬼畜律动。但是Gaga的歌词直言不讳，几乎没有宗教隐喻和伪装在里面;《Chromatica》中有两首概念高级的歌曲，一首(“Babylon”)有些故作愚蠢，另一首(“Alice”)则快速将隐喻拉回现实：开篇便唱到“我的名字不是爱丽丝”（注：爱丽丝是《爱丽丝梦游仙境》中的主人公，此处想表达她并非是生活在仙境的主人公），这首歌里住着的生物也不再是小白兔，而是Gaga构思的更骇人的妖魔鬼怪。“911”歌词中的紧急情况指的是她急需奥氮平，这是一种快速起效的抗精神病药物，Gaga说它救了她的命。这首歌以一种冰冷、僵硬的节奏开始，利用了声音编码来体现她那冷冰冰的毫无感情的声音。整首歌听起来很不协调，当甜美而单调的副歌到来之时，这歌听起来就更不对劲了。其多重声部永远没有完全融入旋律，最痛苦的那一句词(“希望我能笑着，留住那场美好的友谊”)就像一颗随意发射的高尔夫球，几乎不可能进洞。但这些细节依旧美好，你现在跟着音乐蹦迪，可能会错过这些细节，那就尽情舞蹈去吧，过后再去慢慢捕捉。
For all Gaga’s emphasis on Chromatica being an album meant to be heard start-to-finish with no skips, the sequencing is a bit off. The string interludes, composed with Morgan Kibby (M83, White Sea), separate the albums into three acts, each with its own filler. The climactic redemption of Ariana Grande collab “Rain On Me” comes about ten tracks too early, and “Free Woman” and “Fun Tonight” lose energy so close together. In act two, “Plastic Doll”—the basic idea of which you can guess just by reading the title—would have been too on-the-nose on The Fame. “Sour Candy,” the break-the-internet collaboration with K-pop superstars BLACKPINK, is sassy enough, but on a Lady Gaga album, and particularly this album, it feels out of place. That’s partly because there’s no Gaga until over a minute in, partly because we’ve literally heard it before: “Sour Candy” is at least the fourth pop song built on a sample of Maya Jane Coles’ “What They Say.” Then there’s the unavoidable fact that Chromatica is an album explicitly made for big communal dancefloors, released just before Pride month, a big celebratory mood, in a year when none of those things quite exist like they used to.
尽管Gaga强调听《Chromatica》得从头按顺序听到尾，但它的曲序却安排得不是很恰当。由M83/White Sea的Morgan Kibby创作的弦乐插曲把整张专辑分成三段，每一段里面都有充数的曲目。与Ariana Grande合作的“Rain On Me”副歌部分的救赎之情来得太早了，至少提前了十首歌，“Free Woman”和“Fun Tonight”两首歌挨得太近，削弱了各自的强大能量。在第二段中，“Plastic Doll”——你一看歌名就能猜出它的基本概念——和《The Fame》的概念太像了。“Sour Candy”是一首与韩国流行音乐女子组合BLACKPINK的跨网线合作，这首歌足够活泼和时髦，但在Lady Gaga的专辑中，尤其是在这张专辑中，它显得格格不入。部分原因是因为Gaga在一分多钟内都没开口唱,还因为我们确实有此般听闻：“Sour Candy”至少是第四首采样Maya Jane Coles的“What They Say”的歌了。还有一个不可避免的事实就是，《Chromatica》这张专辑明确是为大型舞池所作的舞曲专辑，在骄傲月前夕发行，人们本该本着狂欢之态来享受这些日子，但在这忐忑不安的一年里，这些念想已经不如从前了。
Chromatica’s two strongest tracks are near-total opposites. Imagine an axis from bizarro transcendence to pure transcendence; “Sine From Above” is all the way at the left. Each individual part of it makes sense, kind of. Lady Gaga and Elton John? Sure; they’re godfamily, after all, and he’s a livelier duet partner than Tony Bennett or Bradley Cooper. Elton John with two-thirds of Swedish House Mafia? That was the idea, back in 2013. An ode to a literal sine wave, dropping decibels from the heavens? If anyone would write that, it’d be Gaga. Attacking that theme with zero-irony gusto that Eurovision would co-sign, going for it and never looking back? Chopping everything up for a drum-and-bass tangent at the end? To borrow the theater-kid saying, it’s big and wrong—yet so big, it’s hard to call it wrong at all.
《Chromatica》两支令人印象最深刻的单曲几乎具有完全不同的风格。想象一条从奇异穿越到纯粹的轴线。“Sine From Above”整首歌都很激进。歌曲的每个细节都有含义，确实像Lady Gaga和Elton John合作曲，毕竟他们是上帝家族。相比Tony Bennett或Bradley Cooper这样的合作对象，Elton John更具活力。他带有浓厚的瑞典浩室黑手党（瑞典电子舞曲乐队）风格。这种想法带我们回到2013年。那是对正弦波的赞歌，分贝从天而降。假如有人能写出这种歌曲，那一定是Gaga。以真切热情抨击主题，这正是欧洲歌唱大赛所追求的，一往直前，永不回头。歌曲结尾切分节奏，伴有鼓打贝司。借用年轻的极端戏剧爱好者的名言，框架很大，错误也有——然而正因如此大的框架，很难全盘否定。
If “Sine From Above” runs on WTF, “Enigma” runs on familiarity: Every musical and emotional beat arrives precisely on cue, as if the club had muscle memory. It’s massive, it has a gravitational pull. Uncoincidentally, the chorus recalls a certain other song about being heroic lovers, just for one night. It slots right into Gaga canon:Enigma is the name of her recent Vegas residency, and the snippets of sax that crest above the choruses recall the late E Street Band member Clarence Clemons on Born This Way. And, crucially, it nails the desire of meeting someone in all its urgency. On planetChromatica, “Enigma” is otherworldly: the atmospheres light up violet, dragon’s eyes and phantoms abounding. It’s the same drive that’s powered dance music, from disco to house to Gaga—turning a moment heightened, more fantastic, and, even at its most strobe-lit and artificial, somehow entirely human.
如果“Sine From Above”让人惊艳闭嘴，那么“Enigma”就感觉更熟悉亲近了些。每个音乐和情感的节奏恰到好处，就好像俱乐部也有肌肉记忆。歌曲强大，具有引力。不巧，副歌令人回想起另一首写的风尘侠侣一夜情的歌曲。这首歌刚达到Gaga的个人标准：Enigma是她此前在维加斯驻唱的演出名，副歌中一小段萨克斯令人回想起已故的E Street Band成员Clarence Clemons在专辑《Born This Way》中的演奏。重要的是，这首歌将遇见某人的愿望深深钉刻在其紧迫性上。在Chromatica这个星球上，“Enigma”是异世界：其氛围照亮了大量的紫罗兰、龙的眼睛和鬼魂。从迪斯科到浩室再到Gaga，这赋予舞曲能量的魄力也使得当下时刻的情感更为充沛，更加奇妙，甚至在搭建的最闪亮的舞台灯光下和满是人海的现场演出中也有此效果。
