The Problem With... Lady Gaga's "Judas"

By Shahryar Rizvi Thu., Apr. 21 2011 at 12:26 PM

Categories: The Problem With...

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Last week, a new Lady Gaga track called "Judas" premiered. And, with it, she released a new, tacky cover image for her upcoming album (see it after the jump).

This week, Lady also pulled a "faux ga" of sorts with Weird Al. The story goes like this: Gaga's manager snubbed his parody of her last single "Born this Way," but Al leaked the track "Perform This Way" yesterday anyway. A few hours later, Gaga broke through her entourage egg and approved Al's satirical play on her track.

So, OK, that's all settled, Gaga replied pretty quickly on the matter, and a better pop culture pundit than I got a chance to shine one more. Good stuff all around.

Enough, even, to make me think that I should lay off getting all Jeremiah on "Judas."

But, c'mon: How could I miss out of an opportunity like this? I can't. For better or worse, I was born this way.

MS Word's paperclip wasn't around the one time we actually needed it.

So, on to "Judas."

Lets start with the good. "Judas" is an industrial-influenced affair, similar to one of Gaga's better tracks, "Bad Romance." And it's a great beat -- you could probably sample in an angry man counting to four in German or a perpetually bored woman counting to four in French and throw it on here and it'd work fine.

But Gaga doesn't do that here. And, instead, the track's saving grace is also its curse: This sounds too much like "Bad Romance."

It's at its worst in the chorus. Seriously, listen to the way she extends Judas' name out. If you're like me, you probably just went ahead and mentally followed her line " Ohhh, I fell in love with / Juda-ah-ah-ahs, Juda-ah-ah-ahs" with her "Bad Romance" line, "caught in a bad romance."

A step backward? No doubt. As if her crude homages to Madonna weren't bad enough, she's now fallen all the way down to stealing from herself.

And she's getting even more batshit crazy: In an interview with NME, Gaga says that communication with God inspired this track. Um, OK! Was the conversation brief or long? I'm thinking brief. Because, honestly, what's with that fake Caribbean accent she uses in the verses here? Did God gather up all the pop divas and get them to agree that pilfering Rihanna's accent would make themselves sound exotic?

Gaga's just stabbing herself in the back with this one.

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