By Emily Zemler
During an appearance at the Los Angeles premiere of Lady Gaga‘s concert film Gaga Chromatica Ball, the singer confirmed she has been “in the studio every single day.” She also teased that the songs are a big departure from her previous work.
“I have written so many songs, I’ve been producing so many songs, and it’s nothing like anything that I’ve ever made before,” she said during a Q&A with Access Hollywood‘s Scott Evans ahead of the film’s screening. “I love to break genre and I love to explore music. There’s something really beautiful about knowing that you will be loved no matter what you do.”
Lady Gaga spoke about her upcoming album at the #ChromaticaBallPremiere:
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before”. pic.twitter.com/G6OIDtEKoD
She explained that her current creative process originated during the Chromatica Ball Tour in 2022. “Something I’m definitely exploring right now is sort of the art of intensity and I think that the art of intensity actually began during this tour,” she explained. “But I’m not done with it yet.”
The film centers on Gaga during the Los Angeles stop of her 2022 Chromatica Ball Tour at Dodger Stadium. She reflected on the 20-date trek during the Q&A, noting that it was “such a special time.”
“This tour went on during a time that people didn’t think that you could tour [amid the pandemic] and stadiums were packed all over the world and they were sold out, all dressed up and dancing and singing,” she said. “I’m just so excited for you all to see what we made up close.”
She also revealed that during the tour she did five shows with Covid. “I shared it with everyone on my team,” she recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable at work and you don’t have to perform and you don’t have to work that day, but I’m going to do the show’ because I just didn’t want to let all the fans down. And the way that I saw it also is like the fans were all putting themselves in harm’s way every day coming to the show.”
She added that the tour and the album were “in a lot of ways was the end of a time of my life and the beginning of a totally new one.”
“I feel like that time is actually maybe a few albums of time that I was sort of saying goodbye to old wounds or scars or challenges and with this tour, I felt really renewed to do something entirely different,” Gaga said. “I think I felt brave enough to embrace this brutalist aesthetic in a way that I wasn’t brave enough to do when I first put the album out.”
The Chromatica Ball Tour fought against numerous obstacles before it was able to fully bloom in 2022. The run was postponed twice — first when the world shut down during the pandemic in 2020, then again when only certain stops on the international run were prepared for the return of live music in 2021. When the Ball finally commenced, Gaga leaned into her biggest and weirdest musical modes.
In March, Lady Gaga shared on Instagram that she has been “writing some of my best music in as long as I can remember.” Gaga has been occasionally sharing photos of herself in the studio, and recently announced the revival of her Jazz and Piano show in Las Vegas, where she performs jazz standards and tracks from the Great American songbook.
Gaga Chromatica Ball will premiere on HBO and Max on May 25 at 8 p.m. EST.
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