【搬运】【译】Spin杂志评Lady Gaga 2011年专辑《Born This Way》（80分）
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）
翻译：Acrees
校正：Cyana Lu
作者：Caryn Ganz
Life is a highway, and Lady Gaga wants to ride it on a unicorn with Jesus strapped to her back all night long. Born This Way is a literal road record — the 25-year-old singer recorded it during her travels promoting 2008 debut The Fame, and follow-up EP The Fame Monster — but it also charts Gaga’s speedy trip from a chick with a disco shtick to our most absurd pop star for our absurd times. Gaga couldn’t have changed course faster if she’d hopped in Marty McFly’s DeLorean, which is essentially what she does on this gloriously weird album. She borrows the grandiose flavor of 1980s radio rock, adds Catholicism, gay pride, and mythical creatures, then stirs it all with a comically gigantic high heel.
如果说人生是一条高速公路，寻常的人们开车上路，Lady Gaga偏要骑在独角兽上，整晚都把耶稣绑在她背上前行。Born This Way这张里程碑式的专辑，是这位25岁的歌手在为2008年首张专辑《The Fame》和后续EP《The Fame Monster》做宣传时录制出来的，它同时也是Gaga成功蜕变的一份佐证。在08年的VMA，面对坐在头排的女王Beyonce，坐在后排小丑似的Lady Gaga还在焦急地等待着她的MTV最佳新人奖。而一年后，她已和Beyonce平起平坐，分庭抗礼，争夺年度女歌手等大奖。在这个荒谬的时代，她成为我们所谓荒谬的流行歌星之一。就算Gaga搭上了Marty McFly的那辆DeLorean，她也不会变化得那样快，而这样迅速的转型正是她隐匿在这张华丽而不可思议的专辑中的本质。
70年代的华丽摇滚、synth pop以及80年代的哥特美学，90年代的house在这张专辑中都得到充分的体现。哥特美学塑造了整张专辑的气氛，华丽摇滚的浮夸在同名曲“Born This Way”中最为突出。同时同志游行、神圣虚构怪物、黑暗教堂等元素相互糅合渗透，使这个踩着有些滑稽的恨天高的女人，站稳了QUEEN的位置。
Like the other dyed-blond Italian-American superstar who blazed this trail, Lady Gaga drags her conflicting obsessions with religion and sex onto the dance floor. Gaga and cowriter Fernando Garibay wedge church organ into the four-on-the-floor banger “Marry the Night” and sedate the beat to a hypnotically sleazy grind for “Bloody Mary.” But despite the title track’s utopian message, Born This Way’s songs are not created equal: Holy dud “Judas” is a frantic puzzle whose pieces never quite fit, and the tracks that compare godliness to self-empowerment are likewise labored. The echoes of Bruce Springsteen on messy “Hair” don’t meld with its cutesy chorus — even E Street sax man Clarence Clemons sounds like he’s not sure why he’s there — and the painfully trite, though well-intentioned lyrics to Madonna rip-off “Born This Way” aren’t helped by a glitter grenade of synthesizers.
和那位另辟蹊径的金发意大利裔美国巨星一样，Lady Gaga将自己对宗教与性的矛盾迷恋拖向舞池。她与Fernando Garibay进行合作，将教堂管风琴放进了快节拍的“Marry The Night”中，并在“Bloody Mary”中放慢节拍，采用Joy Division式的bassline铺下催眠又颓败的基调，背衬唱诗班，让歌曲气氛犹如一座透着邪气的教堂。不过尽管主打曲中宣扬着乌托邦精神，Born This Way专辑中的曲目却收到天差地别的对待：“Judas”是很难恰合专辑的疯狂命题，将对神的虔诚和对自我命运的掌控做类比显得略为牵强。在“Hair”里E Street的Bruce Springsteen的回声里却没有插入那些矫揉造作的副歌，萨克斯大师Clarence Clemons的助阵演奏显得不知所措，甚至十分老套。尽管这极其痛苦却又充满善意的歌词借鉴了麦当娜，“Born This Way”也并没有因其爆炸式合成乐的华丽外壳而更加引人注目。
Excess is Gaga’s riskiest musical gamble, but it’s also her greatest weapon, and Born This Way relentlessly bludgeons listeners’ pleasure centers. “Electric Chapel” pairs divine diva thump with a Van Halen guitar solo and “Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)” rubs clubby keyboards against the hopeful angst of “Thunder Road,” capturing the effect of spinning a radio dial in the ’80s, when frizzy pop and over-the-top rock mingled outrageously on the airwaves. Even when she sticks to a single sonic path — grimy doom disco on “Government Hooker,” “Scheiße,” and “Heavy Metal Lover” — Gaga coos nutty come-ons that range from the ludicrous (“Put your hands on me, John F. Kennedy”) to the hilariously ludicrous (“I don’t speak German, but I can if you like”) to the awesomely ludicrous (“I want your whiskey mouth all over my blond south”).
无节制的创新和引鉴各种元素是Gaga在音乐中最冒险的赌注，但也是她最有力的武器，“Born This Way”给予了听众愉悦中枢无情的一棒。“Electric Chapel”中Van Halen的电吉他独奏与这位名伶如神沐浴后的嗓音相得益彰，“Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)”里摩擦着的俱乐部键盘与充满希望的急速鼓点在“Thunder Road”上并驾齐驱，现代流行乐与火力十足的摇滚在电波中狂暴地融合在一起，完美地演绎了80年代的复古曲风。
即使她在“Government Hooker”、 “Scheiße”和“Heavy Metal Lover”这些污秽中掺杂着末日感的disco舞曲中坚持使用单一的音轨，从荒唐的 “Put your hands on me, John F. Kennedy”到滑稽的“I don’t speak German, but I can if you like”再到荒唐离奇的“I want your whiskey mouth all over my blond south”中Gaga古怪地咯咯笑个不停。
The cult of Gaga has already eclipsed her music, so it’s only fitting that she turn to the decade of bloat for inspiration, nicking bits from Pat Benatar, Whitney Houston, and Journey. Producer Mutt Lange feeds “Yoü and I” through the Def Leppard filter and brings in Queen guitarist Brian May to crank the love song into a stompy lighter-waver (echoing Elton John and Spinal Tap). It’s the perfect lead-in to closer “The Edge of Glory,” which sounds exactly like its title, uniting all of Gaga’s contradictory impulses in an ecstatic, anthemic, five-minute lunge to the finish line — there’s strings and synths, Eurodisco beats and saxophone solos, love and death.Calibrating the crazy in her music is no easy task, but Gaga twists the right knobs on Born This Way, applying her ’80s pastiche to throbby grooves and sentimental tunes that’ll pierce the hearts of both Little Monsters and heartland moms. At times, the journey to “Glory” nearly pushes Gaga over the edge, but while most 21st-century pop stars pulverize their imperfections into an Auto-Tuned slurry, she boldly wears her audacity like a meat dress. Lady Gaga certainly wasn’t born this way, but she’s making a convincing case that she’s evolving into our most surreally brilliant pop star.
音乐在Gaga的Cult面前显得黯然失色，十年间，她引人注目的奇装异服，桀骜不驯的言论等等，都是她寻找音乐灵感的途径，从Pat Benatar,、Whitney Houston到Journey，都是她的灵感来源。Mutt Lange制作的“Yoü and I”这首歌借鉴了Def Leppard乐队并邀请了皇后乐队的吉他手Brian May，将这首爱情歌曲编成轻柔的旋律。 这正是对这张专辑中紧挨着的“The Edge of Glory”这首歌完美的过渡，这首歌听起来和它的名字一样，将Gaga所有矛盾的冲动结合在一起，以一种狂喜而有充满诗意的态度向终点冲刺。
弦乐与现代合成器、Eurodisco节拍与萨克斯管独奏的混合，是爱与死亡的交融。想要跟上她音乐中疯狂的节奏并不是一件容易的事，但Gaga在《Born This Way》中扭转了方向，她将80年代各种曲风的混成曲添加到跳跃的旋律和伤感的曲调中，刺穿了Little Monsters的心脏。通往这条“荣耀”的路几乎将Gaga推到了风口浪尖，当21世纪绝大多数的流行歌星挂上了Auto-Tune，以粉饰自己难以入耳的大走音时，Gaga将肉片裙大胆地穿上身，彰显着她的勇气。她并不Born This Way，但她以让人哑口无言的理由向我们证明她正一步一步成为这个时代最不可思议的天才流行歌星。
