Popular Music/Lady Gaga/Bad Romance
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"Bad Romance" is a song by American singer Lady Gaga. It was released on October 19, 2009, as the lead single from The Fame Monster, the 2009 reissue of her 2008 album The Fame.
Background and compositionEdit
"Bad Romance" was written, produced, and arranged by Lady Gaga and RedOne, both of whom were also responsible for its backing vocals. RedOne solely handled instrumentation, programming and recording. He worked with Johny Severin on vocal editing, and Dave Russell and Eelco Bakker on audio engineering. A demo version leaked online on October 2, 2009. Lady Gaga was not responsible for the leak, so she took to Twitter to report that the leaked version made her "ears bleed", going on to assure her fans that they should "wait till [they] hear the real version." [1]
Lady Gaga wrote "Bad Romance" in 2009, while touring. The word "monster", as used in the album title, serves as a metaphor for the paranoias she faced while touring. Gaga explained that she felt lonely in her relationships and was attracted to unhealthy romances, hence the inspiration for "Bad Romance." This song is an electropop and dance-pop song with house, new wave, and techno influences. She references several Alfred Hitchcock films. In the line, "I want your psycho, your vertigo shtick / Want you in my Rear Window / Baby you're sick / I want your love", the expressions "psycho", "vertigo", and "rear window", are references to Alfred Hitchcock films by those names. The song's lyrics address an unhealthy relationship. The Boston Public Health Commission included the track in its list of top 10 songs with "unhealthy relationship ingredients."
Critical and audience receptionEdit
"Bad Romance" received widespread critical acclaim. It was named the best song on The Fame Monster by Maureen Lee Lanker of Entertainment Weekly. It was included in lists of best songs of 2009 by Pitchfork—which called it "epic in construction"—MTV News and Rolling Stone. Calling it one of the "most memorable pop singles" of the late 2000s, NME credits the song with establishing Gaga as an icon. In his review of the album, Scott Plagenhoef of Pitchfork found it "arguably the best pop single" of 2009.
Many critics and fans praised "Bad Romance" for its chorus and hook. Writing for NME, reviewer Emily Mackay praised the chorus as being "so wonderfully big it dwarfs the industry of a million angry dudes with guitars." [2]
"Bad Romance" also received universal acclaim from its general audience. As of December 2022, it has a score of 90/100 on Album of the Year based on 201 user ratings. [3] User Pedroinhawaii (read as "Pedro in Hawaii"), wrote, "Another iconic track that I unjustly downplay before replaying. The chord progression really pushes the song forward and even Gaga's intensity in her vocals. She did a great job as an interpreter here and the production is just stellar."
Music videoEdit
The official music video premiered on November 10, 2009. Lady Gaga stated in an interview that she wanted someone with a "tremendous understanding" when creating the video. Lady Gaga herself was the director, and she called this the biggest challenge she faced while working with directors in the video's production. Originally planned to be filmed in New York City, plans were changed due to low budget and lack of product placement, so the video was filmed in Los Angeles instead.
The video's main idea is that Gaga gets kidnapped by supermodels who drug her and sell her to the Russian mafia for a million rubles. It takes place in a fluorescent white bathhouse.
ViewershipEdit
Two weeks after the premiere of the music video, the video was uploaded to Lady Gaga's Vevo account on November 24, 2009, at 3:15 a.m. EST (8:15 UTC). As part of the early preparations for the launch of Vevo, all views of the original premiere were added to the video over the remaining two weeks before Vevo's official launch on December 8, 2009. The video had over 20 million views during those two weeks. On April 14, 2010, the video surpassed the comedy video Charlie Bit My Finger to become YouTube's most viewed video. The videos had 180 million views each at their moment of intersection that day. On May 9, 2010, "Bad Romance" became the first video to reach 200 million views. "Bad Romance" held the title for three months, before being surpassed by Justin Bieber's "Baby" on July 16, 2010, when both videos had 245 million views.
The following is a timeline of selected view count milestones.
As of December 2022, the video has over 1.63 billion views on YouTube.
| Views | Date Achieved | |
|---|---|---|
| 20,000,000 | December 6, 2009 | |
| 50,000,000 | December 25, 2009 | |
| 100,000,000 | January 31, 2010 | |
| 150,000,000 | March 16, 2010 | |
| 200,000,000 | May 9, 2010 | |
| 250,000,000 | July 23, 2010 | |
| 300,000,000 | October 31, 2010 | |
| 350,000,000 | February 26, 2011 | |
| 400,000,000 | July 25, 2011 | |
| 500,000,000 | December 13, 2012 | |
| 600,000,000 | August 24, 2014 | |
| 700,000,000 | June 15, 2016 | |
| 800,000,000 | March 21, 2017 | |
| 900,000,000 | February 3, 2018 | |
| 1,000,000,000 | December 31, 2018 | |
| 1,500,000,000 | January 10, 2022 |
In popular cultureEdit
"Bad Romance" is a playable song in Dance Central 2.
ReferencesEdit
- ↑ "New Lady Gaga Track 'Bad Romance' Leaks". October 2, 2009.
- ↑ "Album review: Lady Gaga – 'The Fame Monster' (Polydor)". December 3, 2009.
- ↑ "Lady Gaga - Bad Romance - Reviews".