【Haus of GaGa】滚石4星 Chromatica乐评全文+翻译

If anyone was going to send a love letter to disco and house music at a time when going to the club feels about as alien as wearing a dress made of cleaved meat, it’d be Lady Gaga. Although she initially had reservations about putting out Chromatica at the start of pandemic shutdowns, there’s something comforting about the way the album captures the feeling of banging your feet on a sweaty dance floor and bumping into strangers during the loneliest, most isolated moment in history. It might not have been her intention when she recorded the album, which signals a return to her electro-pop roots, but between her hopeful choruses and floorboard-thumping beats, she has captured the longing for togetherness that people are now feeling while wearing headphones, squinting into their webcams, and dancing alone in their basements.
在这个去俱乐部就如同穿上生肉装那样显得令人诧异的时刻，如果有人会向迪斯科和house音乐送出一封情信，那这个人一定是Lady Gaga。虽然她在因疫情大停工之初就预定推出Chromatica，但这张专辑也有着令人欣慰之处，它抓住了当下大家想在大汗淋漓的舞池里与陌生人尽情欢跳的情绪；尤其是在这个历史上最孤独寂寞的时期。或许Gaga录制这张专辑的时候也没有预料到。这张专辑也标志着Gaga“返元归根”，重回电子流行乐。当人们只能带着耳机，朝着着摄像头，独自一人在地下室里跳舞时候，Gaga用她充满希望的合唱和震穿地板的鼓点准确地捕捉到目前人们对团聚的渴望。

In the decade or so since Gaga introduced herself with “Just Dance,” she’s drifted from big-haired pop ingenue to jazz chanteuse to lite-rock balladeer to Hollywood belter, but with few exceptions, she’s best when she drops the guises and gets personal. On Chromatica, her sixth album, she shows off all the sides of herself that made people fall in love with her in the first place: She’s a romantic, a ham, a truth teller, a gossip, a flirt, and, most often, a woman who needs healing after being hurt too many times. Her goal may still be to just dance, but she seems more three-dimensional this time, more human than the “Fame Monster” title she gave herself all those years ago.
自Gaga以Just Dance被人认识的这10年来，她经历了从戴着夸张假发的流行少女到爵士名伶，到lite-rock民谣歌手再到好莱坞奇迹的转变。但毫无例外，每当她卸下伪装，重溯本源的时候她总能做到最好。在她第6张专辑Chromatica里，她展示了全方位的自己，令人从一开始就为她折服。她既浪漫也夸张，她诉说真相同时也被流言缠身，她妖娆性感，但更多时候她是一位累累受伤需要治愈的女性。她的目标可能仍仅是跳舞，但相对几年前她赋予自身“名利怪物”的头衔，这次她的形象更三维立体了，也更人性化了

When the lyrics “All I ever wanted was love” bubble up on lead single “Stupid Love,” it sounds like a fresh revelation. When she declares “I’m still something if I don’t got a man,” on the single-ladies anthem “Free Woman,” it’s bold. And when she serenely tells herself “I’m not perfect yet, but I’ll keep trying” on “1000 Doves,” it’s like a breakthrough. You wouldn’t guess it from the cover art, which looks like an illustration torn from an old issue of Heavy Metal magazine, but Chromatica generally feels like therapy pop made by someone in search of an emotional breakthrough, and it rarely feels disingenuous, since dance music is the only vehicle that could deliver her over the edge of glory.
在首波主打单曲“Stupid Love”中她唱到：“All I ever wanted was love”（一直以来我所需要的只不过是爱），这听起来像一个全心的启示。而在单身女性圣歌里，她又宣言到：“I'm still somthing If I don't got a man”（即使没有男人，我仍有话语权），这是大胆的。而当她在“1000 Doves”l里沉着地对自己说：“I‘m not perfect yet, but I'll keep trying"（我仍未完美，但我会一直努力），这听起来像是一次突破。该专辑的封面就像是从一期旧的《重金属》杂志剪下来的插图。你可能不会通过封面猜到，Chromatica总体来说更像是一位正寻找着情感突破的人所创作的疗愈流行乐。你不会觉得它是虚伪的，因为舞曲是能够把Gaga送至荣誉边缘（the edge of glory）的唯一载具。

Two years after the TV series Pose pushed the world of late-Eighties/early-Nineties ballroom culture back into the mainstream, the record finds Lady Gaga reveling in the worlds of club music and voguing. Chromatica isn’t the only album to come out this year with a straight through-line back to the hypercolor Nineties — Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia leans beautifully on disco and synth-pop — but Gaga’s feels more deferential, more well-rounded as she reclaims the whooshing strings, horn spikes, and jump-roping beats and recasts them in her image.
电视剧Pose（姿态）把80年代末、90年代初的舞厅文化（ballroom culture）重新推回到主流视野的两年后，Lady Gaga 在这张专辑里也依旧沉醉在俱乐部音乐（club music）和vouguing之中。Chromatica不是今年推出的唯一一张重返90年代的超浓郁色彩（hypercolor）的专辑——Dua Lipa 的 Future Nostalgia 美妙地融合了迪斯科（disco）和合成器流行乐（synth-pop）——但Gaga的这张专辑则更符合规矩（deferential），也更面面俱到。她回收了能发出嗖嗖声的细弦、尖锐的喇叭和跳绳般的鼓点，并将其重铸到她的创作中。

She’s at her best, though, when taking musical risks, like on the New Wave-y “911,” which splits the difference between the Buggles and Kraftwerk, filtered through Gaga’s kaleidoscope, and on her duet with Elton John, “Sine From Above,” which has enough drama and funky synths to make it prog-pop. The two singers’ voices blend so beautifully, as they sing about acoustical physics (punning sine waves with “sign”), that it could prompt a spike in sales of oscilloscopes.
即时Gaga在音乐上冒险，她还是做到了她的最好。比如她的new wave-y 单曲“911”则综合了Buggles和Kraftwerk的风格，并给其加上了Gaga式万花筒滤镜。与Elton John合作的“ Sine From Above” ，它具有足够的戏剧性和时髦的合成器，而这些均可使其成为前卫流行音乐（prog-pop）。两位歌手的声音美妙地融合，他们唱着声乐物理现象（夯实的带着指标的正弦波“原文：punning sine waves with “sign”），想必这会带动示波器的销量。

But on the other hand, as is often the case with Gaga, she stumbles when she gets too conceptual. “Plastic Doll,” a fantasy in which she uses a Barbie as a metaphor for her fragility in love (“I’m no toy for a real boy”), feels like too much of a stretch compared with the rest of the record’s more real-life personal epiphanies, and the closing track, “Babylon,” with its regrettable lyrics about spilling the tea with your friends, and the near-plagiaristic “Vogue” rap (seriously, just sing “Bette Davis, we love you” along with any of Gaga-donna’s lyrics and it syncs perfectly), deserves an Old Testament fate. It’s as if all the drama around “Born This Way” never happened. But those are just the shallows.
但另一方面，当过于概念化时，Gaga则会犯迷糊。比如“Plastic Doll”则是她的一个幻梦。她把芭比比喻成自己面对爱情时的脆弱（I‘m no toy for real boy 我不是男孩的玩具），相比专辑其他更符合现实和更私人化的歌曲来说则显得有些过于延伸了。而结束曲“Babylon”只能听天由命了（Deserves a Old Testament fate）,歌词令人遗憾，它提到跟朋友一起说别人闲话。它还有几近抄袭的“Vough”式Rap（认真地说，只要唱着“Bette Davis, we love you” 再加上嘎当娜“Gaga-donna”式的歌词，它们就能完美合成）。就好像“Born This Way”的抓马从未发生过似的。不过这些都是表象而已。

Mostly, Gaga has focused Chromatica’s spectrum on the kind of body-moving music that comes naturally to her. Dance music will always be her salvation, and her pop renaissance couldn’t come at a better time.
大多时候，Gaga把Chromatica的音乐频谱集中到了令人舞动的这类音乐，而这对Gaga来说也是十分自然的。舞曲永远是她的救赎而她的流行复兴来的正是时候。