Lady Gaga - Stupid Love - Single [Review]

"Stupid Love" is the lead single from Lady Gaga's upcoming studio album Chromatica, the highly anticipated follow-up to her 2016 album Joanne (which I reviewed here), notwithstanding, of course, the soundtrack to the 2018 film A Star Is Born (which I also reviewed). I have to admit that when I first heard "Stupid Love," I wasn't immediately impressed. I didn't hate it, but nor did I love it. Well, that was a song, I thought. It quickly grew on me, however, as quickly as the next day, and I now consider it her strongest lead single since 2009's "Bad Romance" from The Fame Monster (check out my review of that here). The song is one of the most insidious earworms that I have heard in a long time; as I said, it didn't register as anything special to me at first but quickly wormed its way into my head there, and it has pretty much been stuck there since. Not only is the song ridiculously catchy, but it is - in my humble opinion - daring. I say daring because it really isn't following trends (something that I don't believe that Gaga has ever been all that interested in anyway, having captured, as some examples, a dark European industrial sound on The Fame Monster and Born This Way and a country rock vibe on Joanne, both during eras when those sounds weren't necessarily the trend). Gaga has proven time and again the past on songs such as "Dance in the Dark," "Hair," "Bloody Mary," "Electric Chapel," etc. that she is far more interested in paying tribute to the music and the artists with which she grew up and was influenced by than she is in making music that fits into a puzzle of what's currently popular, and that loyalty to doing what she truly wants to do creatively somehow pays off anyway, as she remains popular. "Stupid Love" is no exception to this. Is it upbeat and catchy? It's very upbeat and, as I said, ridiculously catchy, but it is also far more reminiscent of early to mid '90s dance than it is current. Its high energy and big beat combined with the scatting female vocals in the instrumental seem to dramatically cry out for love, as is the theme of the song's lyrics. Seeming to act as a bit of a sequel to "Bad Romance" (it could even be argued that "Stupid Love" is a synonym of "Bad Romance"), the lyrics ask for the lover to love her, even if the love is, well, stupid. She acknowledges that the relationship might not work out ("I would battle for you, even if we break in two") but also acknowledges that she can't know for sure unless she gives it a chance ("...nobody's gonna heal me if I don't open the door"). There is therefore definitely a lesson to be learned from this song, one that I can't explain better than by providing this quote from the television series Once Upon a Time: "...That wall of yours - it may keep out pain, but it also might keep out love." (Chromatica will hopefully be dropping relatively soon, as I am looking forward to hearing the rest of it. It was originally slated for release on April 10, 2020 but has been indefinitely delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)