It was a tragedy that Lady Gaga’s Chromatica—an album made not just for dancing in the middle of a sweaty, crowded room, but for engaging in communal healing—was released at a moment when it could only be enjoyed in isolation. The timing of Dawn of Chromatica, then, feels less like a tragedy than a cruel joke: a full-throttle remix album with contributions from an all-star roster of pop freaks, unleashed in the world just as a brief and blissful reprieve from pandemic anxiety is replaced by a renewed sense of uncertainty.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Dawn of Chromatica is less a wall-to-wall collection of club bangers than an expansion of the Chromatica cinematic universe: new characters, new sounds, new memes approved and distributed by the Supreme Leader. It’s a welcome excuse to revisit an album that’s galvanized and brought together so many queer people in the year since its release. And thanks to its unusual degree of coherence and flow, it’s a project you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home without feeling a crippling sense of FOMO.
Part of what made the original Chromatica so satisfying was its excavation of ’90s house music. It was consistent and relentless in a way that other Gaga albums—even Joanne, with its pink cowboy hat and committed country drag—never quite managed. The most memorable revisions on Dawn of Chromatica create new links to other standout moments in the Gaga discography. The wailing riffs and drum fills plugged into Rina Sawayama and Clarence Clarity’s take on “Free Woman” place it squarely in the Born This Way ecosystem, and Dorian Electra’s trashy remix of “Replay” pushes the leather-and-metal energy even further into the red.
Pabllo Vittar’s breezy rendition of “Fun Tonight” summons Gaga’s early flirtations with Latin music along with a sax line worthy of Clarence Clemons; it also makes one of the saddest songs in recent memory sound like a sun-kissed Brazilian street fair, an appealing dissonance. And while the Dawn of Chromatica version of “Sine From Above” isn’t a song I can see myself revisiting on a regular basis, there’s a bit of ARTPOP in its flatulent digital provocation.
A few other highlights tilt in the other direction, teleporting Gaga into established worlds of sound with satisfying results. Doss transforms “Enigma” from a chaotic anthem into an expression of her signature featherlight dance music, equal parts gauze and rubber. The Planningtorock remix of “1000 Doves” completely changes the tone of the original, turning a bruised hidden gem—perhaps Chromatica’s closest thing to a ballad, barely skirting their illegal status—into strobe-lit New Wave. (It’s the kind of pop song that would’ve crept onto music critics’ best-of lists in the mid-’00s alongside Annie and the Knife.) It’s no surprise that Dawn of Chromatica’s most radical cut is Arca’s subversion of “Rain on Me,” on which Alejandra Ghersi samples her own “Time” and “Mequetrefe” to situate Gaga and Ariana Grande within KiCk i’s gossamer avant-pop.
The two guests closest to pop stardom in their own right bring their A-game on Dawn of Chromatica, elaborating on the original album’s themes of trauma and recovery with contributions that feel more like full-fledged duets than reworks. Sawayama brings a sense of comradery—I love the way she starts the song with a tossed-off “Let’s go, Gaga!”—and an ecstatic defiance to “Free Woman,” capping it off with a glorious celebration of independence. She’s one-upped just a few songs later when Charli XCX and A.G. Cook blow the doors off “911,” Gaga’s harrowing tribute to antipsychotic medication. Its ultimate form is a crystalline hyperpop epic, one that climaxes with a stunning final verse and outro. It’s some of Charli’s finest work since Pop 2.
Dawn of Chromatica’s provisions feel secondary to its function as a document of influence and stamp of approval for a generation of left-field pop misfits. Maybe it’s an odd thing to say about an album that debuted at No. 1 and yielded multiple Top-10 singles, but Chromatica feels distant from the center of the genre; its position within a pop landscape defined by rap’s continued dominance, pop-punk and alt-rock’s twinned resurgence, and the increasing global popularity of urbano and Afrobeats is unclear. Becoming a true multi-hyphenate force—note the album of Cole Porter standards alongside Tony Bennett, the makeup empire, and the impending House of Gucci Oscar campaign—has also meant Gaga entering the “playing the hits” phase of her career. It’s noteworthy that her biggest non-“Shallow” musical moments of the last half-decade are career-spanning sequences at the Super Bowl and the VMAs.
It’s this context that makes Dawn of Chromatica feel less like a celebration of a world-beating record and more like passing the torch. Bringing together this widely varied group of artists from around the world and calling attention to the qualities they share—their playfulness, their courage, their willingness to push the boundaries of taste—is an elegant way for Gaga to reinforce those same qualities as fundamental parts of a legacy that’s still taking shape.
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