Lady Gaga's New Album 'Chromatica' Is Out

Lady Gaga isn’t built to go halfway. She plays sweeping statements as virtuosically as her grand piano, and shameless statements as shamelessly as her keytar. This passion has brought her one of the most fervent fandoms in pop. It’s also set up tensions between Lady Gaga the performer and Stefani Germanotta the person, which Gaga has said grew to the point that they emotionally and physically sickened her over the last decade. Her sixth album, “Chromatica,” she told Zane Lowe, is an attempt to reclaim a sound she loved from her past while retaining the humanity that was stripped from her as she was objectified and jettisoned to the realm of the hyperfamous.

“Chromatica” is the promised “return to form,” Gaga’s first dance-pop LP in seven years after an album of duets with Tony Bennett in 2014, the stripped-down authenticity play “Joanne” in 2016 and her detour into the world of “A Star Is Born” in 2018. It has some sparkling vocal moments. It reminds us how easily Lady Gaga, 34, can coax the world onto the dance floor. But it feels overwhelmingly safe — a low bar to clear when you’ve released two of the greatest pop albums of the century (“The Fame Monster” and “Born This Way”) and one of the most audacious, enjoyable hot messes ever (“Artpop”). We were promised jetpacks; we got parachutes.