The Simpsons saw it coming. In the episode titled As we were Marge recounts her first meeting with Homer at school. They were both grounded, he for “being myself”, she for burning her bra during a demonstration. It's not the Gotham City criminal asylum where Arthur Fleck and Harleen “Lee” Quinzel meet, but let's not quibble. The fact is that the moment Marge enters the detention room where Homer is playing in the background Close to You. It's a romantic and ridiculous moment at the same time.
Close to Me is one of the songs contained in HarlequinLady Gaga's album linked to Joker: Folie à deuxthe film by Todd Phillips in which the pop star stars with Joaquin Phoenix. It's a very lovely ballad composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The Carpenters then revived it, introducing a small variation that made it more interesting than the original version sung by Richard Chamberlain, the Blackbirds. It's a love song that has something candid, with lyrics that today we would consider bordering on kitsch, but it can also sound vaguely sad and I don't think that's a coincidence. Taken largely from the twentieth-century Great American Songbook, the pieces of Harlequin they represent the inner world of Lady Gaga and her character. It is an anarchic and maniacal chaos at the center of which, however, there is an unexpected, strange, satisfying sense of peace.
This is a bit the mood of Harlequinwhich is not Lady Gaga's new ultrapop album, the famous one LG7 which should be released in February, and not even the soundtrack to Joker: Folie à deux which will be published in a week. That's what she calls ironically LG6.5an album produced mostly with Ben Rice clearly linked and inspired by the film and the character played by the singer, but with its own identity, its own arrangements, songs in common and others not. It's not a memorable work, it lacks a bit of audacity, but it's not one of those albums you only listen to once either. The list of pieces included might suggest an operation like those with Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek And Love for Sale. There are indeed orchestral arrangements, a lot of wind instruments and there is something retro, the repertoire is mostly vintage, but it is reinterpreted in a pop-rock and shamelessly theatrical key. It's a record of those that were made once upon a time. As Joanne And A Star Is Bornwas recorded in Rick Rubin's studios in Malibu where an important piece of rock history passed, the place where an old Bob Dylan tour bus is parked in the garden.
It's a journey into the identity of Lady Gaga/Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn/Harlequin/Harlequin: yes, it's a very crowded place. It is mostly shaped by old songs remade in various styles, this too a reference to the complexity of the character played by the pop star. The pace is almost always high, as is the mood. We start with Good Morninga 1930s piece made famous by its performance in Singin' in the Rain to which Gaga adds a part of the text signed with her boyfriend Michael Polansky, who is also co-executive producer of the project. Get Happy by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler is a hallelujah to all the sinners of this world which starts out as a kind of gospel and then takes on the liveliness of a slightly crazy party. The gospel side should not be underestimated, which is found here and there as a subtext of the album, a secret appeal to salvation which is found in the carnality of the funk of Oh, When the Saints and in the shamelessness of Build a Mountain Skirt.
“How lucky, can't you see that I'm in love?”, sings Gaga in World on a String by Harold Arlen. It's as if these songs were sung by both Gaga and Lee, the character she plays in Folie à deux. She is the “million dollar chick” of If My Friends Could See Me Now that screams to look at her. She is the consummate entertainer who knows that “everything that happens in life can happen in a show, you can make them laugh, you can make them cry.” She is the woman convinced that she can build a mountain on her faith. It's many things. Sing Smile by Charlie Chaplin, an unfortunate choice given how overused the song is, and he redeems himself by launching into a spectacularized version of The Joker by Anthony Newley, from the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd (it's not there The Joker by Steve Miller that Homer sings in that Simpsons episode). It was also brought to success by Sammy Davis Jr, but sung by Gaga it has the power of a theme for James Bond and recalls the version that Shirley Bassey did, with the load of Tim Stewart's guitars. “There's always a joker in the group, there's always a lonely clown, the poor fool who falls and everyone laughs when he hits the floor,” says the song performed in a wonderfully exaggerated way. In That's Entertainment there's a clown with his pants down. It all comes back.
Before the final track, which is the cover of That's Life of which you may have heard the Frank Sinatra version present at the end of the first Jokerthe second of the two autograph pieces arrives. The first is Folie à deuxa waltz-time orchestral fantasy with a wonderful, otherworldly choir. The second is Happy Mistake. Written and produced with BloodPop, it is almost the summary of a career, the portrait of all the interrupted girls played by Gaga in her life, strung-out girls with something broken inside, a celebration of the hardship that so much luck has brought her, a comedy acted using the register of tragedy. Gaga knows that the world is a stage and that she brings the world to the stage.
And so Harlequin it is the album in which Lady Gaga immerses herself once again in the great American songbook, but not with the adult charm of the great performers. She does it with the candor and sense of discovery of a slightly dazed and often euphoric little girl, with an often magnificent vocal presence and a decidedly pop sense of rhythm. And therefore no long evening dresses or cocktails in hand, no serenades languidly leaning on the piano, no old-fashioned charm. They are songs to scream late at night with smeared makeup and the worn expression of an adorable crazy girl who on the cover takes a shower wearing a life jacket.
Even these classics, duly reinvigorated, sometimes changed but never disfigured, are little life-saving devices, a center of peace and joy in the midst of the madness. Often considered antique sound objects of which one cannot speak badly but decidedly outdated, of little use in our present, the songs of the Great American Songbook are instead useful with their musical intelligence and their nuances in the lyrics to represent a world in we live in which is both tragic and comical. There is everything in the songbook chosen by Lady Gaga, unbridled joy and melancholy, sex and prayer, love and violence, the romantic and the ridiculous. And besides, as that song says, that's life.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
