Music

Every single leak, rumour, theory and divine prophecy we have on Lady Gaga’s Chromatica

Lady Gaga Chromatica cover

Lady Gaga’s Chromatica cover. (Lady Gaga)

The Lady Gaga Chromatica release date remains, sadly, up in the air. But what do we know for certain? Allow us to take a deep-dive.

Chromatica is a word which, until just weeks ago, was unheard of.  But all that changed the fateful day a billboard appeared on a Los Angeles street corner, ending what felt like years of silence from Mother Monster.

“Lady Gaga is back!” was the message, with the billboard teasing a new era for the star, one aggressively pink-hued and styled straight out of the Y2K Aesthetic Institute Tumblr.

While it might have been a bigger resurrection than Jesus Christ himself, the singer’s full return to the spotlight has been roiled by rumours, leaked song clips and a dreaded delay spurred by the paralysing impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Taking stock, here’s everything we know so far about Lady Gaga’s Chromatica

1. The Chromatica release date remains uncertain, but we do have a tracklist.

The Lady Gaga Chromatica tracklist – a sacred text for starved Little Monsters – was leaked by American retailer Target on Wednesday (April 22).

The singer herself later confirmed the leak when she officially announced the listing that same day.

It confirmed many months-long fan theories about songs titled “Babylon” as well as “Free Woman”.

The full tracklist is:

  1. “Chromatica I”.
  2. “Alice”.
  3. “Stupid Love”.
  4. “Rain On Me” (ft. Ariana Grande).
  5. “Free Woman”.
  6. “Fun Tonight”.
  7. “Chromatica II”.
  8. “911”.
  9. “Plastic Doll”.
  10. “Sour Candy” (ft. BLACKPINK).
  11. “Enigma”.
  12. ‘Replay”.
  13. “Chromatica III”.
  14. “Sine From Above” (ft. Elton John).
  15. “1,000 Doves”.
  16. ‘Babylon”.

Alongside the bonus songs, “Love Me Right”, a piano version of “1,000 Doves” and a Vitaclub Warehouse Mix of “Stupid Love”, all of which will be available when ordered through Target.

The Chromatica release date however – originally scheduled for April 10, but delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic – remains a mystery.

2. Lady Gaga will duet with Ariana Grande, BLACKPINK and Elton John. 

Grande herself shared the official tracklisting minutes after Gaga did, plunging the internet into a frenzy as fanbases collided with one another.

Ariana Grande wished Lady Gaga a happy birthday in a since-deleted Instagram post. (Instagram)

Ariana Grande wished Lady Gaga a happy birthday in a since-deleted Instagram post. (Instagram)

It also finally confirmed fan theories about a collaboration between Grande and Lady Gaga on Chromatica, one intensified after the Sweetener singer wished Gaga a happy birthday in a since-deleted Instagram post, and spoke at length about their bond.

It was also implied by the “Bad Romance” hitmaker as well, when she told Paper Magazine that one Chromatica collab involves a female artist who has “similarly experienced immense trauma while in the public eye”.

What is the song about, though? Gaga alluded: “[It’s a] celebration of all the tears.

“I sat with her and we talked about our lives. It’s two women having a conversation about how to keep going and how to be grateful for what you do.”

When it comes to BLACPINK’s involvement, no fans were that surprised either after K-pop band didn’t quite deny their involvement in March.

Arianators, Little Monsters, Blinks and Elton Jon stans stand together in solidarity for one thing and one thing only: Stop eating pasta, Stefani, and release Chromatica.

3. That ‘Babylon’ leak might be real. 

An alleged snippet of “Babylon” has begun to make the rounds on Gaga fanpages and Twitter, but many of them have been stripped from social media due to copyright, likely by Interscope staffers snooping around.

This at least flimsily implies that the song might be real, considering that the exact same thing happened during the “Stupid Love” leak.

4. We kinda know what Chromatica will sound and look like. 

“Stupid Love” definitely gave fans a taster of the album to come, catapulting them into the Croayla crayon-coloured world of the planet Chromatica.

When the bright promotional billboard for “Stupid Love” came out, Twitter investigators and reddit detectives joined forces to decode it.

In short (there’s a strenuous amount of detail involved) but they theorised that the font of the album references the Bayonetta video game series that Gaga enjoys and will, semiotically and visually, revolve around sound and colour.

This was corroborated when Gaga formally announced the album.

“Chromatica was essentially on its own when you first look at it, it seems to be about colours and all the different colours and also music is made of a chromatic scale, you know?” she said.

“So, it’s all the colours, all the sounds, you know, so we, we’re talking about inclusivity and life and also a lot of what we see around us and what we’re experiencing is math, which is very much like music and sound is math as well. ”

5. And we have an idea of what the lyrics to songs might involve.

First, there’s BloodPop.

BloodPop – who helped produce Gaga’s entire Joanne album alongside Mark Ronson – has been confirmed as a producer.

The American songwriter both uploaded a picture of the infamous “Stupid Love” billboard saying he and Tchami produced it and was later tagged by Gaga in the tracklist post.

However, it was his own post that confirmed the roster of fellow producers, which include: Tchami, Skrillex, Madeon, Rami Yacob, Axwell, Ryan Tedder and BURNS.

But there were a few others that were alluded to in the past that BloodPop verified.

Like SOPHIE. 

SOPHIE, who wrote “B***h, I’m Madonna” by Madonna, was quizzed by a fan about whether she’s worked with or is working with Gaga.

He response? Yes.

And Boys Noize. 

German electronic producer Boys Noize is also purposedly involved in the project, and that rumour sparked after the pair had a rather interesting exchange.

Despite an insurmountable number of tweets demanding for them to explain what is going on pilling up in their mentions, no explanation was ever provided by the two.

But it was around this time that Bloodpop revealed that he, Gaga and Boys Noise were all at the singer’s Malibu estate.

Here’s what we don’t know.

1. The Chromatica release date is very much unknown.

With each rising of the sun, a new rumoured release date for a new Lady Gaga Chromatica single or the album itself scatters across fanpage forums and Twitter timelines.

But if one thing is clear, when Gaga pushed the April 10 release further back into 2020, she meant it.

More and more details are being confirmed each day, but rumours continue to heave and continue to be proved wrong about alleged release dates.

Only recently, Gaga sleuths were convinced that “Free Woman” would drop on April 10. But they were met only with stoic silence from the star herself, likely too busy, you know, raising millions for coronavirus response efforts.

2. Whether Frank Tranter is involved. 

From “Sorry” by Justin Bieber to “Fake Smile” by Grande, “Bad at Love” by Halsey to “Lose You to Love Me” by Selena Gomez – Justin Tranter is the song-writer behind an incredible amount of bangers.

He’s also involved in Chromatica and the pair have worked together for “Heal Me”.

We know Gaga has been “writing” new material since 2017, according to a slip-up she made to Entertainment Weekly.

Between then and now, Tranter did upload footage of he and Gaga working in the studio together in 2018, alluding to him potentially penning her a song(s), especially as that year was when the singer was spotted several times leapfrogging between studios around New York City and Los Angeles.

https://twitter.com/rosslohan/status/996689093735145473

3. Whether those ‘F’ tweets actually meant anything.

Ready for the most tenuous link in existence?

Gaga’s troll phase on Twitter is infamous, which saw the star successively tweet cryptic messages. She later revealed that they were part of a “social experiment”, and even mentioned one of them being when she simply tweeted: “F.”

The producer and DJ known as Zedd tweeted that very same letter in earlier April, convincing fans that the pair are collaborating together.

But considering neither appeared to be tagged in BloodPop’s post, there’s a possibility that the work or works Zedd and Trenter developed on didn’t make the final cut.

Anyway, that’s all we know so far.

Now it’s that time of the day again when we listen to “Stupid Love” for the 209,432,283th time and offer a sacrifice to the God of Music that is Apollo and hope, nay, pray that Chromatica drops tomorrow.

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