【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Lady Gaga 2016年专辑《Joanne》（乔安娜）
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：Amanda Petrusich
翻译：Alice Song/Ryan-Chopin
校正：Cyana Lu/Ryan-Chopin
Now that her peers have caught up to her visual provocations, Lady Gaga seems less like an audacious pioneer than one among many, and Joanne feels tentative, an affront to the Gaga of yesteryear.
如今，当其他歌手也费尽心思想对观众造成视觉冲击时，Lady Gaga在同时代歌手中大胆的先锋形象似乎已不那么明显。这也使得专辑《Joanne》有些底气不足，彷佛是对Gaga昔日的嘲讽。
At the start of the decade, Lady Gaga worked hard to reposition pop as a high art or vice-versa—both absorbing and extending a lineage that included oddball visionaries like Andy Warhol, Klaus Nomi, Prince, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Elton John, Madonna, and Missy Elliott. Most of her avant-garde gestures were extra-musical, a string of cheeky, absurdist visions realized entirely outside of the studio and only tangentially in conversation with her bloodless dance jams (Gaga herself has referred to that early work as “soulless electronic pop”). It’s not hard, now, to recall these stunts from memory: she was sewn into a dress fashioned from slabs of flank steak for the VMAs. She hatched herself from a semi-translucent egg at the Grammys. She hired a self-described “vomit artist” to puke a steady stream of syrupy green liquid onto her bosom during a SXSW performance. Her repeated and earnest disavowal of anything remotely normative was (and remains) plainly empowering for anyone sitting at home alone in her room, feeling like a true weirdo. The idea was always to fracture and reestablish a hierarchy. Only Gaga could turn “monster” into a term of endearment.
在本世纪初， Lady Gaga为把流行乐变为一项更为高雅的艺术付出了不懈努力，另一方面，她吸收并扩大了一个专属古怪而超前之人的谱系，其中有Andy Warhol，Klaus Nomi，Prince，David Bowie，Grace Jones，Elton John，Madonna和Missy Elliott。音乐范围之外的Gaga似乎更加前卫，只有在录音室外谈及她的舞蹈困境时（Gaga本人称其早年作品为“没有灵魂的电子舞蹈”），她才会收起一连串的放肆、荒诞的幻想。以前她“雷人”的样子历历在目：穿一条缝满了大块牛腩排的裙子参加MTV音乐录影带大奖；她在格莱美颁奖礼上藏身半透明“巨蛋”，在舞台中央被“孵化”出来；在SXSW音乐节的表演上，她雇用了一个自称“呕吐艺术家”的人朝她的胸部吐出糖浆状的绿色液体。她过去习惯于否认所有的主流，这也让任何在屏幕前看她表演的人认为她是个怪胎，并且这种印象一直不变。她的想法总是在打破以往的等级制度，并试图建立一个新的制度。所以对于Gaga来说，“怪物”是一句赞美。
And regardless of whether you find those moves electrifying or tedious, it's hard to overstate the value of that work as a public service—every generation’s freaks elect a champion, and Gaga was tireless, proud, and wholly devoted to the job. Her commercial success also meant that her chart peers were, for better or worse, free to get stranger, artier, and less predictable; Gaga helped usher in an era of pop in which hardly anything is too far-out (or pretentious) to play. Visual provocations of one sort or another are expected now: Sia performed “Chandelier” at the Grammys with her back to the audience, wearing a bobbed, platinum wig, while Kristen Wiig and the then-twelve-year old dancer Maddie Ziegler frolicked around her in nude bodysuits. Miley Cyrus gyrates among furries as a matter of routine.
不管你觉得她的举动是激动人心还是单调乏味，都很难被夸大成为公共服务。每代奇葩都会争个第一第二，而Gaga便是那个骄傲而不知疲倦地抢夺王位的人。她商业上的成功使得她的同行们无论好坏，都能随心所欲地瞬息万变，附庸风雅，也更加难以预料，而Gaga助力开启了一个做任何事都不为过的流行乐时代。任何样式的视觉冲击都有可能出现：Sia在格莱美上不露脸，戴着银白色假发，演唱其大热单曲“Chandelier”，同时还有Kristen Wiig和未满十二岁的舞蹈演员Maddie Ziegler穿着裸色紧身衣在她身边跳来跳去；Miley Cyrus也和平常一样，穿着咣咣当当的皮草。
But now that her peers have caught up, Gaga is starting to feel less like an audacious pioneer and more like one among many. Joanne, which is named after her late aunt—a Sexual assault survivor who died of lupus at nineteen—experiments with rootsier idioms like country and folk, maybe as a kind of goofy gesture toward authenticity, or maybe just to distance herself further from 2013’s overblown and gloppy ARTPOP. Gaga has always sounded most comfortable belting out rich, brawny pop songs while wiggling around a piano bench, and her best tracks, like the deeply irresistible “Yoü and I,” from 2011’s Born This Way, are reminiscent of the more virtuosic fringes of glam-Rock (“You and I” features inimitable Queen guitarist Brian May, a drumbeat that nods directly to “We Will Rock You,” and harmonies that very nearly recall “Bohemian Rhapsody”).
但是现在，大家都在追求新奇，Gaga似乎不再是大胆的先锋，而回归普通了。《Joanne》这张专辑，以她过世的姨母（性侵受害者，在十九岁时因狼疮去世）命名，尝试了像乡村、西部音乐和民谣那样更朴实的语言。《Joanne》也许是Gaga在以滑稽的姿态表达真实，又可能只是想与她2013年浮夸又混乱的《ARTPOP》划清界限。Gaga总是一边大声高唱前卫又动感的流行歌曲，一边在钢琴椅上舞动，而她最好的单曲，比如2011年的专辑《Born This Way》中魅惑十足的“Yoü and I”，更是为处于艺术边缘的迷惑摇滚风，演绎一出怀旧好戏。（“Yoü and I”中的吉他由皇后乐队的吉他手Brian May弹奏，鼓点神似“We Will Rock You”，和声也极易令人联想起“Bohemian Rhapsody（波西米亚狂想曲）”）
Glam—its blatant preoccupation with fame and stardom, its mischievous and inelegant tendencies, its emphasis on the theatrical, the visual, the decadent, the garish—made sense for Gaga, both for her voice (while robust and often lovely, it is not exactly nuanced; the little fissures and breaks that typically animate folk songs aren’t instinctive to her) and for her fantastical, psychedelic-leaning visual taste. A move toward singer-songwriter earnestness now—especially following Cheek to Cheek, the collection of jazz standards she recorded with Tony Bennett, itself a purposeful expression of seriousness, maturity—feels unnecessary.
Glam曾发文称，唱片中调皮又不雅的风格对于名气和地位的执着，以及对于戏剧性、视觉那颓废、艳俗的强调，都是Gaga的代表——这一切都因为她有着独特的嗓音（既强劲又俏皮，并无太大差别；而民谣显然不是她本身的风格）和她空洞迷幻的视觉审美，而变得和谐起来。对于Gaga来说，转型为创作型歌手似乎不那么要紧了，尤其是在她与Tony Bennett合作推出了《Cheek to Cheek》之后——该专辑收录了11首美国经典爵士歌曲，Gaga用成熟的心态，坚定了她对于此次合作的认真态度。
Gaga has repeated Warhol’s claim that “art should be meaningful in the most shallow way,” but Warhol also insisted on a kind of surreal detachment from flesh—“Sex is so abstract,” he once said. Gaga’s disembodiment feels less deliberate. Joanne never reveals much of a narrative or stylistic through-line, and even her brief dips into indie-Rock—her collaborations with Father John Misty on “Sinner’s Prayer” and “Come to Mama” (Misty is also credited as a writer on Beyoncé’s Lemonade), and Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker on “Perfect Illusion” (Rihanna covered Parker’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” on Anti)—feel familiar.
Gaga非常欣赏Warhol的一句话：“艺术应该以最浅显易懂的方式展示其蕴含的意义”，但同时，对于肉体，Warhol又保持着一种奇怪的冷漠，他曾说“性真是个抽象的东西”。Gaga对此信条的偏爱看起来并非是故意为之。无论抒情上还是风格上，《Joanne》从未表现出一个贯穿全专辑的线索，而从她与Father John Misty（也叫Josh Tillman，曾参与创作Beyonce的专辑《Lemonade》广受好评）的合作曲“Sinner’s Prayer” 和 “Come to Mama”，以及与Tame Impala乐队吉他手Kevin Parker（Rihanna曾在专辑《Anti》中翻唱他的“New Person, Same Old Mistakes” ）合作的“Perfect Illusion”中又可以发现，她对独立摇滚的浅尝辄止是那么似曾相识。
Joanne is rife with visitors, though none make themselves especially known: Mark Ronson (who co-produces), Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. “Dancin’ in Circles,” a song she co-wrote with Beck, is a clubby paean to self-love with a grody pre-chorus: “Up all night, tryna’ rub the pain out,” she chants. In 2016, masturbation-as-engine-of-escape isn’t a particularly titillating topic (in the decades since “She Bop,” Hailee Steinfeld, Nicki Minaj, Pink, the Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears, and plenty of others have recorded tracks about getting themselves off), nor the instance of Beck-Gaga collusion anyone was hoping for (imagine, for a moment, if he had brought her “Debra”).
《Joanne》有一些小众合作者：Mark Ronson（联合制作人），英国独立摇滚乐队Florence + the Machine主唱Florence Welch，美国摇滚乐队Queens of the Stone Age（石器时代女王）主唱Josh Homme。她和Beck合作编曲的“Dancin’ in Circles”是首有点自我又自恋的歌，副歌前一遍遍重复的“Up all night, tryna’ rub the pain out（整夜未眠，尝试取乐，摆脱痛苦）”显得有些多余。2016年，“通过自慰来逃避”已不再是一个令人兴奋的话题（十年间，从“She Bop”开始， Hailee Steinfeld, Nicki Minaj, P!nk, the Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears以及许多歌手都曾提及这种放松方式），更非源自Gaga和Beck合作时的摩擦，尽管许多人都有所期待（稍微设想一下，如果他已经发行了“Debra”，又会是什么情况呢）。
Though Gaga addresses a handful of serious concerns here, some topical, some personal—the murder of Trayvon Martin; what happens to a person after she dies—her treatment of them often feels clumsy if not performative (in “Angel Down,” an ode to the Black Lives Matter movement, she sings, “Angel down / Why do people just stand around?” while Ronson sadly plays a Mellotron).
Gaga已经多次在单曲“Angel Down”中表达出担心和忧虑，一些源于她个人，一些源于这个大环境——Trayvon Martin枪击案。“一个人死后会发生什么事？”——她对此的看法和表述方式还欠点考虑（在对“黑命贵”运动表达赞美的单曲《Angel Down》中，伴着Ronson忧伤的电子琴声，她唱到：“Angel down / Why do people just stand around?（天使就此坠落，但为何人们坐视不管？）”）
Elsewhere, there are hints of a smaller, more personal arc: Gaga’s got it for someone she knows is bad news, but she’s not sure if she can walk away just yet. “Perfect Illusion,” the record’s first single, struggled to chart (it debuted at number fifteen on the Hot 100), but has a propulsive, dizzying quality that feels like a pretty good analogue for the pRocess of completely losing your mind over someone, only to realize later you’ve been hoodwinked: “Mistaken for love, it wasn’t love, it was a perfect illusion,” Gaga bellows, her fire-hose voice big, unchecked, wild. She sounds indignant but also vaguely unhinged—like she’s figured out she’s playing a rigged game, but still refuses to fold her hand. Opener “Diamond Heart” has Homme on guitar, but the best moments are Gaga’s: “Young wild American / C’mon, baby, do you have a girlfriend?” she wonders in the chorus.
还有一些对于她自我内心的感情暗示：Gaga和一个她早知是渣男的人相爱了，但她不知自己是否能解脱出来。“Perfect Illusion”作为专辑中的第一支单曲，艰难地登上了排行榜（它仅空降the Hot 100第15名），但是其音质迷离，给人一种“为某人丢了魂儿，直到最后你才反应过来是被蒙了”的感觉：“Mistaken for love, it wasn’t love, it was a perfect illusion（错以为这是爱，但这并不是，这是一种完美的幻觉）”。一丝义愤填膺，一丝精神失常，好似她发现自己被卷入了一场被人暗中操控的比赛，但拒绝袖手旁观。尽管专辑第一首曲目“Diamond Heart”的吉他伴奏是Homme，且十分精彩，但是最出色的部分是当Gaga在副歌中大声发问：“Young wild American / C’mon, baby, do you have a girlfriend?（年轻狂野的美国人啊，你有女友吗？）”
It’s the same story on “Million Reasons,” co-written with Hillary Lindsey (who collaborated with Carrie Underwood on “Jesus, Take the Wheel”), an undeniable power ballad Poison would’ve murdered in 1988: “I bow down to pray,” Gaga sings at her piano. “I try to make the worse seem better.” This kind of semi-desperate negotiating will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has tried to will a doomed situation into something viable. Her man’s already given her a million reasons to split. “But baby, I just need one good one to stay.”
“Million Reasons”也是如此，这首歌由Lady Gaga和Hillary Lindsey （曾与Carrie Underwood一同创作过“Jesus,Take the Wheel”）一同创作，一首能让人上瘾的抒情曲。Gaga在歌中唱到：“I bow down to pray,I try to make the worse seem better.（我虔诚祈祷，试图扭转这糟糕的局面）” 这几近绝望的语气会给那些试图扭转糟糕局面的人带来一种不安的熟悉感。她的爱人有无数分手的理由，但Gaga说：“But baby, I just need one good one to stay.（但是宝贝，我需要一个让你留下的理由）”
Sartorially, Gaga has recently come to favor civilian get-ups; just last week, she returned to the Bitter End, the tiny, Greenwich Village venue where she got her start, wearing short-shorts and a sheer, Bud Light-branded tank top (Bud Light sponsored her Dive Bar tour). In the video for "Perfect Illusion," she wears denim cutoffs, black combat boots, a black t-shirt, and a blonde ponytail. I sported a similar look—though with far less success—nearly every school day between 1995 and 1997. But nobody wants to immediately recognize herself in Gaga’s aesthetic; we want her to suggest a path we hadn’t thought of before, to nurture and clarify a beauty we didn’t even realize was there. Joanne feels too self-conscious, an affront to the Gaga of yesteryear—the truest self, after all, isn’t always the quietest.
在服装设计方面，Gaga最近开始青睐普通装扮。就在上周，她回到了Greenwich Village的一个小酒吧“Bitter End”。她的生涯就始于此地。在“Perfect Illusion”的mv中，她穿着牛仔短裤、黑色战斗靴、黑色t恤，扎着金色马尾辫。从1995年到1997年，我几乎每天都在学校上课，但没人想在Gaga的美学中立刻认出过去的自己，我们希望她能开拓一条我们从未涉足的道路，缔造一种我们甚至从未意识到的美。《Joanne》给人一种不太真实的感觉，这是对Lady Gaga的一种侮辱——毕竟，最真实的自己不一定安心恬荡。
