Lady Gaga: Dawn of Chromatica – Review

Legendary pop artist Lady Gaga has released a remix album for her latest record Chromatica… and it’s remarkable. 

There’s a good reason why Lady Gaga has been dominating the charts and earning new “little monsters” ever since her 2008 album, The Fame. Not only does she have one of the most distinct and powerful voices in pop music, but her songs are almost all memorable, catchy, and contain some seriously impressive lyrical content. 

Plus, she manages to do something that few artists can only dream of being able to accomplish – finding a new sound in every new album and have it work each and every time. For example, Artpop was a bubblegum pop album with tons of radio-friendly hits that absolutely owned radio spots, but then her next album Joanne was a complete 360 – a country album with slow, sensual ballads. 

And then her most recent studio album Chromatica feels like a disco and electro-inspired record and contains some of Gaga’s most catchy tunes such as Rain On Me. Now, in traditional unpredictable Gaga form, the singer has released a remix album for that record titled Dawn of Chromatica which features big names such as Charli XCX and Blackpink. While it’s not as great as the original Chromatica record, it’s still genuinely amazing and an absolute blast to listen to. 

Alice, remixed by LSDXOXO, opens the album and gives us all a taste of what’s to come for the next forty-five minutes. It’s a relatively smooth and easygoing track while also managing to bring the goods with the disco elements. Stupid Love also gets a fresh coat of paint here. While it’s not as catchy and exciting as the original song with Ariana Grande coming in with her strong vocals, Coucou Chloe does some great things with it nonetheless. 

But without a doubt the most breathtaking song on display here is Plastic Doll, remixed by Ashnikko. It’s genuinely the only song on Dawn of Chromatica that I prefer to the original – but don’t worry, that doesn’t mean these new takes on Chromatica’s track listing are bad – far from it. I sort of just view them as fun takes on them by big-name artists, and that’s the beauty of them. They don’t ruin the original songs but instead provide a fresh take on them, many of which are to be appreciated. 

Charli XCX and A.G. Cook’s version of 911 is also one of the biggest standouts here with the former providing some truly incredible vocals along the way. Gaga’s fans have been wanting her and Charli to collaborate for quite some time now and they have finally gotten their wish in all its glory. 

Pabllo Vittar’s Fun Tonight is perhaps the most dance-able song on this record, whose instrumental is the stuff of 80s disco perfection. It’s one of those songs that you simply can’t resist getting up and dancing to no matter what.

The album isn’t all great, however, with a few of the remixes being quite unmemorable in the long run including Doss’s Enigma, and sadly, Sine From Above which was remixed by Chester Lockhart, Mood Killer, and Lil Texas. While none of these songs are unlistenable, I just simply can’t see myself going back and revisiting them. 

Nevertheless, Lady Gaga managed to compile a bunch of great artists to remix Chromatica to excellent results. It’s not as good as the original record, but it does put a unique and extremely entertaining fresh coat of paint on the album and will surely put a smile on your face, as it did mine. 

Score: 4/5