“1000 Doves” by Lady Gaga, Monday, October 2, 2023

Ten years ago, Lady Gaga released her most avant-garde record, Artpop, an album that polarized both fans and critics alike. To be fair, the album was a statement of a pop star’s artistic vision. To illustrate that vision, Lady Gaga channels ‘60s pastiche in the way that Andy Warhol blended the popular and the artistic. But with the critical pushback of Artpop, Lady Gaga took note and didn’t make another dance-pop record until Chromatica in 2020, instead venturing into acting, singing standards with Tony Bennett, a folk-rock album Joanne, and the Oscar-winning soundtrack to the film she starred in A Star Is Born. In 2020, the Lady Gaga persona could have done anything, and yet she graced fans with a return trip to the dance floor. 

LIFT ME UP, GIVE ME A START. I’ve been thinking a lot about pop music lately. When I was a  hipster high school and college student, I thought of pop music as a kind of opioid. It puts you into a trance, makes you dance, and makes you not think about the lyrics because they are trivial and don’t matter. But then Lady Gaga released The Fame. I didn’t listen to it right away, but something about the “opioid” of Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga made me start listening to pop, and I realized I wasn’t turning off my brain to lyrics. Of course, as a devout Christian at the time, I had a moralistic take on songs, but I couldn’t help but look at these four singers as artists, and I felt that The Fame and The Fame Monster were a codex on pop stars as personas rather than who the actual singer is. Excluding Taylor Swift from this conversation, as she was the primary songwriter on her albums and she wasn’t making club anthems at the time, Lady Gaga was an artist who seemed in control of her artistic direction. At first, it looked like her message was all about sexual liberation and hedonism. But looking at her early songs as brushstrokes, it seemed that she was making a statement about what fame does to an individual and possibly how to divorce oneself from the fame monster.


I’VE BEEN FLYING WITH SOME BROKEN ARMS. Most critics and listeners alike wouldn’t consider Lady Gaga's first three records to be personal. Sure, “Born This Way” is an anthem of self-acceptance just as much for Gaga as it is for her listeners. The same album deals with culturally and family-held religious ideas and pushback on those ideas. There are some personal songs on The Fame that no one listens to. But we really didn’t get to know Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta until Joanne. So wouldn’t return to dance-pop make Lady Gaga less lyrically authentic? Chromatica is surprisingly introspective for a dance record. The mirror that Gaga once held to her audience now examines the artist from the first track “Alice” to the penultimate song “1000 Doves.” There are certainly some “turn off my anxiety and just dance” tracks. Today’s song, “1000 Doves” isn’t loved by diehard Lady Gaga fans, and is even considered one of the weakest tracks on the album. I always thought that the criticism wasn’t fair.  It’s a slow night musically at the discotheque on a rainy Monday night in October. Lyrically, it’s a clear day with Broadway theatrics.  It’s a personal track that would have been impossible before Lady Gaga became a person carved out of the persona. Today’s song may not be the track that you remember from a dynamic album, but it’s worth separating it from the record and reflecting on it by itself.


Chromatica ball live:
Remix:



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