Lady Gaga – Yoü and I
Picking a screen-grab for this was the most fun I’ve had in a while.
[Video][Website]
[6.00]
Brad Shoup: You can’t get much more dinosaur than this song. You’ve got the Mutt Lange production work (most notably his robot BGVs and that Leppard squelch), a pointless Queen quote, an (admittedly welcome) Brian May cameo, the Neil Young reference, the nod to muscle cars that screams Springsteen – hell, even the possibly-biographical Nebraska ref could be a sop to Mellencamp’s Midwest. There’s an exhortation to “put your drinks up” and the “six whole years” aside that gives the track the illusion of live performance, that great proving ground of manly rockist craft. Oh, and the whole thing sounds like steroidal Elton John circa Madman Across the Water. Did she think a less manically-ornamented ballad couldn’t hold our interest? As it stands, the pieces are stacked precariously, with too much attention paid to how perfectly recorded and loudly presented the drums are, and not enough to how gratifying a three-minute singalong coda would have been. But maybe shades of “Hey Jude” would have packed on too much dinosaur meat, even for Gaga’s tastes.
[6]
Anthony Easton: The safety of Gaga’s new album is betrayed by her avant-garde tendencies, but at least when that happened to Elton John, he had Bernie Taupin to make everything better.
[6]
Dan Weiss: Gaga’s love letter to the works of “Mutt” Lange, complete with umlaut, monster-truck chorus and the big voice we always knew she was hiding behind that spiky ol’ wannabe fembot exterior.
[9]
Jonathan Bradley: The strange spectacle of Gaga as human. It never seemed like the flyover states would figure in her set-pieces of paparazzo and bad romances, let alone offer up a leading man in the shape of a cool Nebraska guy. Stefani Germanotta huddled in the corner of a pub with Mutt Lange-shined stomp has all the modern iconicism of that moment the whole bar stops and sings along to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” (Yes, this happens in real life). Perhaps the gender inversion of that tune’s cast is intentional — a city girl and a small town boy — but its widescreen ambition is perfectly in sync.
[8]
Alfred Soto: For once Gaga boasts a monster truck voice to match the monster truck lyric, monster truck Brian May riff, monster truck drums. Luckily she’s shrewd enough a record maker at this point to hold these elements together; despite how terrific this sounds in the car, I’m not sure what she’s signifying other than a desire to connect with the arena audience she sees in her head.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: When did Mutt Lange become a legend and not a loud, stomping punchline? I don’t care how hunka-drunka-gorgeous Nebraskan beauspiration Lüc Carl is and how much Gaga wants to writhe in his dirt-dappled cornfields; this isn’t “Marry the Night” (Born This Way‘s heart and best song), nor is it “Government Hooker” (second-best song, completely batshit.) “Yoü and I” is a vanity single, and Gaga’s about three “Bad Romance”s away from earning that.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Lady Gaga lives in such rarefied air that not only can she dizzily fantasise about a huge lump of Mutt Lange sugar with Brian May on it, she also can forget to write a decent song on top of it and get away with releasing it anyway. I liked those vocal processing effects on Shania Twain’s voice, less so on Gaga’s, and let’s face it — the ending to this? Three words for you: Four. Non. Blondes.
[3]
Ian Mathers: While I am glad that Gaga is out there in a pop cultural sense, when it comes to the song I’m most just interested in the songs as music (not as political/aesthetic statements or whatever). And this one is boring. The “six years” in the video is a nicely lived-in moment, and if this is autobiographical if it sounds then I’m glad she’s happy, but a generic sorta-country ballad is not anything that I need to hear more than once.
[5]
Michaela Drapes: Outside of the context of the endless flailing of the Born this Way track list, “Yoü and I” is actually a pretty solid single, only problem is, it’s just a pantomime of the greats. Stefani, honey, you’re not Elton John or Freddie Mercury — even if you can get Brian May to provide a killer licks on the bridge. Plus, I’ve spent enough time in Lower East Side dive bars to find the line about “making love” on the sofa at St. Jerome’s to be a real turn-off. Yuck.
[5]
Alex Ostroff: Don’t misunderstand me – I love the costumes and dance beats and utter insanity as much as the next guy – but I look forward to ten or twenty years from now, when Gaga goes full-on Elton and releases an album of classic rock balladry. “Speechless” was the first time she hit my heart and not just my ass, and “Yoü and I” takes that template and stadium-sizes it. No bells and whistles, just a voice so rarely highlighted that its power still catches me by surprise, a song that works as well live on piano as it does with a country rock backing band, and passion to spare. The backing harmonies are gloriously corny, the guitar solo is over the top, and the shout of “Put your drinks up!” should, by all rights, be completely ridiculous; “Yoü and I” wouldn’t work if she weren’t utterly committed the material. By the time we hit the unaccompanied holler of “my daddy, and Nebraska, and Jesus Christ!” I’m putty in her hands. Over the course of Born This Way, Gaga has declared, “I’m on the right track”, “I am my hair”, “I’m a bad kid”, and a hundred other roles and personalities. When she proclaims herself “born to run you down,” it’s not only a confusingly literal rejoinder to those who asked of the album cover, “So, she’s born to be a motorcycle, then?” – it’s an identity claim far more personal and honest than any of the platitudes Born This Way offers.
[10]
Jer Fairall: Gaga’s inability to recognize the difference between good bad taste and bad bad taste made Born This Way a rocky listen for me, but actually releasing this atrocity as a single reveals much more troubling levels of dysfunction. Problem is, I’m no longer sure whether the dysfunction is hers or mine. By now, I’ve heard enough people claim “Yoü and I” as one of their personal album highlights that it may not actually represent the greatest lapse in judgment thus far in her career (though that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) so much as it is just something I have a strong allergy towards. “Mutt” Lange’s cringe-worthy production work somehow manages to appropriate the very worst of 70s, 80s and 90s pop and rock, itself possibly some perverse accomplishment, but, truthfully, it is the Shania-isms that are making me itch: this song immediately returns me, with screeching horror, to the summer I spent taking admissions at a public swimming pool whose loud speaker was tuned (at a volume far too high to ever make reading a plausible distraction) to a local radio station whose playlist at that time consisted, at least in my befogged sixteen-year-old memory of it, of “Any Man of Mine” and “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under” injected at frequent and maddening intervals. So maybe my cause for now hating “Yoü and I” even more than I already did is empathetic; I’m imagining some kid stuck outdoors at some shit-paying job during this most sticky and miserable of summers, subjected to Lady Gaga’s pathetic (and, come to think of it, ironically non-yourself-being) attempt to suddenly be all things to all people, cruelly unleashed upon the world rather than remaining tucked away on the album where it would hurt no one unwilling, and then I’m launched back into my own present, where I spend probably too much of my time trying to be some kind of ambassador for pop, and I’m reminded of how coldly I am repaid sometimes by this wonderful, horrible thing that I love so much.
[1]
Jonathan Bogart: On Bette Midler’s debut album in 1972, she covered Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn.” Just saying.
[7]
Somehow I agree with pieces of all of these reviews. That Gaga album still has me so confused.
Beautiful sequencing of the last three blurbs here.
Jer, I think you hit on something about this that’s been bothering about this song that I couldn’t put my finger on. For all Gaga’s queer posturing (yes, I said posturing; no, I don’t want to argue about that either), it’s interesting this is her most squarely heteronormative work. Which begs the question: is this the real Stefani speaking, screaming out from under the layers of Gaga fakery? If so, I, as Tim Gunn might say, seriously question the taste level of everything she’s done to date.
How is this any more squarely heteronormative than, say, “LoveGame”?
I’ve always thought of “LoveGame”‘s disco stick in the abstract, applicable to straight women or gay men. Especially as when that song came out, she was totally being marketed specifically as a queer-friendly club artist.
I would add that “LoveGame” was probably the first moment that I was vaguely worried about Gaga’s long-term potential, the clumsy naivety of “I’m educated in sex, yes” line always makes me cringe.
BTW, I will concede that “Brown Eyes” was probably this song’s real precursor, though.
Out of interest, have you seen the video, Michaela? I kind of think that any track-only readings of Gaga songs are … inappropriate?
(but then I also think taste should be destroyed whenever it is found, so …)
If so, I, as Tim Gunn might say, seriously question the taste level of everything she’s done to date.
Holy crap, I had this very same statement (complete with Tim Gunn!) in my unfinished blurb for this song – unfinished because I still haven’t made up my mind about Born This Way. Sometimes I think it’s a summation of rock’s worst impulses; other times I think the songs are good enough to carry the day. At any rate, I don’t think I’ll ever develop nostalgia for Journey.
@Brad – Nebraska could also refer to Springsteen’s 1982 album, although it’s questionable whether Gaga’s ever listened to a Springsteen album without the word “born” in the title.
Sally –
Yeah, I was thinking about that, but I really really wanted to complete my classic-rock bingo card. And Mellencamp’s Midwest is a little brighter than Springsteen’s Nebraska, so I figured it fit the tenor of the song better. Either way I’m probably off-base, as it seems to be biographical.
I’ve seen the videos for both “LoveGame” and “You and I” — if you’re speaking (which I assume you are, correct me if I’m wrong) of the Gaga-making-out-with-Gaga-in-Drag moments, that’s not queer, it’s just masturbatory! And, the bulk of the video seems to be the horror Splash setup of Mermaid!Gaga fake-banging that guy in the barn.
I realize I spent a lot of time recently, in these pages, declaiming the idea that an artist’s personal life shouldn’t be taken into account when reading a song, but obviously, that point is moot when it’s pretty clear that the artist’s intent is that everyone know a song is about a certain person or subject, as here.
However, given that she’s been very adamant about telling everyone that this song is about Luc Carl, I think it’s perfectly fair to then say, “This is her most heteronormative song”, seeing as it’s about her on/off/on boyfriend.
I think it seems, “odd” to put it nicely, that an openly bisexual person loses”‘queer points” so to speak for being enthusiastic about her currently non-same-sex relationship.
I haven’t seen the video. I’ll still insist on keeping biographical interpretations as far away as possible, especially on a track whose lyrics are muddled enough (both in interesting and flawed ways, as I point out in my blurb) to work best as audience outreach — she’s singing to the girls and boys in Section 109; the song, insofar as it’s “about” anything, is “about” its own aural affinities to arena rock. She has it in her to make convincing arena rock, and she’s almost there; I’d rather cede the territory of sexually ambivalent — even if she’s just playing around — to her than let the Scissor Sisters claim it, for crissakes.
By the way, arena rock need not be “heteronormative.”
Correction: “I’d rather cede the territory of sexually ambivalent ARENA ROCK to her than…”
Please don’t put words in my mouth, Knightgee. Thanks.
Oh, okay. I was writing a really incensed response — thanks for clarifying. Though, to be fair, I don’t think the Scissor Sisters really want the sexually ambivalent arena rock title anymore, you know?
Oh, and considering that a surprisingly large proportion of standard-bearing arena rock bands had/have least one queer member, I think your last statement goes without saying!
There is about 0:37 of a remix to this out. It sounds exactly like Shania Twain’s Up! and I really hope this tangent is short-lived.
I don’t know what y’all are talking about; I miss Shania.
Agreed, and Mutt Lange is responsible for several of my favorite albums.
Clarifying: I really love Up!; it’s just not what I want Lady Gaga to be emulating.
Agreed. I love Up! too but there is, I think, a huge qualitative gulf between Shania (and Lange’s 80s roster) and what Gaga does. I mean, Gaga’s songs are personal/meaningful, or at least try to be (well, this one is definitely a legitimate personal story) — Shania, as pinpointed by Glenn McDonald years ago — froze her performing persona at a point before she was actually SHANIA TWAIN!!! — and nearly all her songs are about someone else, she’s explicitly disclaimed any personal connection to the vast majority of them. The levels of plastic and gauze on top of it makes her best songs seem at once joyous and parodies of joy at the same time — see “Nah!” as a really good example of this (and a sonic cousin of “You and I”).
I’m not sure that this sort of hammering production has ever really worked with something this earnest. The way I feel about Born This Way is that there are some good songs on it but generally it’s sabotaged by some of the most awful arrangement and production choices imaginable. This escapes about half-unscathed (cf “Judas” which to me just sounds unlistenable) but there are songs on there where she DOES in fact get it so right – “The Edge Of Glory”, “Marry The Night”, “Bad Kids” for instance.
We’re discussing intentions again. Performance is the creation of a character. Gaga, who relies on outlandish costumes and makeup more than any performer since Gene Simmons, is a construct. How do we judge “personal connections” in music — the artist telling us so? Why should we believe her, and who cares anyway? What matters to me is how Twain and Gaga force me to react.
As a performer, Gaga is certainly more flamboyant and constructed than Shania. But Shania’s the one with the massive, outrageous songs. Gaga has yet to even come close to the absurd heights of “Waiter! Bring Me Water!” or “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”… both of those make anything Gaga’s done sound downright tiny. Her songs just aren’t big enough for the clothes.
And that’s where Shania (and Mutt) is so smart: her songs sound fantastic. And as a (nominally) country artist, it makes sense that she’s inhabiting other skin. I admit, I don’t really know where Gaga’s personal bio fits into her singles, other than a general osmosis of person worldview and artistic statement. “You and I” sounds, to a more general supporter/observer like me, like the first single that’s more personal than personal politics, so maybe a closer watcher can fill me in.
But two albums in, it appears to me that Gaga’s religious/sexual/political outlook and her obvious chops are straining to break out of their RedOne containers. I probably should have rated this one higher for the fact that someone else is manning the controls. Gaga may be the more fascinating subject, but until she consistently welds her lyrical sensibilities to a worthy musical framework, I can’t agree that there’s a huge quality gap twixt Twain and Gaga.
Well, I was responding to Edward’s first comment, but then he beat me with a better summary of mine.
So my love of You and I and the comment thread here has sent me back to Shania and Up! for the first time since it was on the radio when I was in high school or whatever, and this is…kind of awesome and I’m not sure why I had dismissed it.
Honest question viz. Up! @ Edward, Katherine, etc. – should I be listening to the Red Pop Mix, the Green Country Mix or the Blue International Bhangra Mix? This seems like the most confusing album campaign ever conceived.
Red. The green isn’t “country” so much as “REAL INSTRUMENTS, SUCKERS,” and the blue is — well, let’s quote that glenn mcdonald review some more: “The blue versions strip off just about everything from the red/green versions except Shania’s voice (left surreally untreated), replacing them with a ghastly quasi-polyrhythmic clatter something like a troop of OCD lemurs trying to imagine how a tense coalition of former minor Men at Work and UB40 members would rewrite Atari Teenage Riot songs as Eurovision entries.”
But then, I haven’t listened to the blue mix in years; maybe I’ll actually like it?
I’m not sure at this point, given the variety of producers on Born this Way that we can still say she’s stuck in the RedOne box. To whit, I was horrified today to find out (and I’m not sure why I didn’t already know this) that Jeppe Laursen produced “Born This Way” — only 3 (and a half?) songs on the album were produced by RedOne, the bulk were with Fernando Garibay. Granted, two of them have been singles (“Hair”, “Judas”) and are some of the the most “accessible” work on the album. To me, it’s more interesting that her work with other producers is even worse than anything she’s done with RedOne.
She used to be a weird little bubble gum pop star who wore amusingly stupid clothes and was cutely pretentious, then she got a crusade and got boring. I want her to make good music, and she hasn’t been. I hope maybe she’ll get it together someday, but what Born this Way revealed is that her songwriting range is pretty shallow and she’s very good at copying other other people’s styles. I’m still waiting for her to match the heights of “Paparazzi” again.
re: Alex’s question about Up!, generally I cosign what Katherine said. Overall, if you had to have one disc, I’d recommend the red. Some songs are better in other versions but the red guarantees satisfaction throughout – some songs that are great in red sound really stupid in green, whereas the songs that are better in the green mix still sound good in red.. I SHALL SUMMARISE.
“Juanita” is the only song I’d take the blue mix.
“What A Way To Wanna Be”, “C’est La Vie”, “Thank You Baby!”, “Ka-Ching!” and “Waiter! Bring Me Water!” have to be heard in the red.
“I’m Jealous” and “Nah!” are the two songs where I think the green mix is substantially better, but the red versions are not bad by any means. I have a slight preference for the green mix of “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!” too, and the rest I’d probably take the red mixes on balance.
See, as a listener who downloaded this album without knowing songwriter and producer credits, there’s no way I would have said “You and I” was a Mutt Lange production. This track had as much verve as the other strong tracks on this record.
Surely the backing vox are a dead giveaway, though? They sound exactly like the backing vox that are all over Come On Over especially.
The innovations of Come on Over (which I own) have been so thoroughly absorbed that it’s impossible to distinguish learner from master.
“I want her to make good music, and she hasn’t been. I hope maybe she’ll get it together someday, but what Born this Way revealed is that her songwriting range is pretty shallow and she’s very good at copying other other people’s styles. I’m still waiting for her to match the heights of “Paparazzi” again.”
This probably could/should have been the entirety of my blurb. I definitely find something like “Paparazzi” more personally affecting than this one.
Even though my Gaga love has waned, “Paparazzi” will always be a 10.
Huh. I always found “Paparazzi” wildly, wildly overrated. The chorus ruins it, and not even in a unique way; it’s another useless, boring major-key chorus where it doesn’t belong.
Oh, but the steampunk clanking whizbang production! The pathos! The fairytale-gone-wrong video! The Alexander Skaarsgard! The ridiculous, but not annoying outfits!
I like the chorus in “Paparazzi” a whole lot. It has an uncharacteristic prettiness.
I love the chorus to “Paparazzi.”
“Paparazzi” is my third favourite single of hers (behind, natch, “Bad Romance” and “Telephone”) mostly BECAUSE of the chorus, becaas I love how it’s so sweetly demented, as if the tone of her voice is how a stalker feels about their love, and the words are the creepy reality
Just heard the Shaniafied remix of “You and I” and dear god, it is one of the most appalling things I have ever heard in my life. On the plus side, it enables anyone to put it next to “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” in a fair fight and clearly see that the latter is by far the stronger composition.
It was the odd yelping juxtaposed with the prettiness on the chorus that sold me on “Paparazzi”. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of the bridge on that one, though, but I forgive it because the rest of the song is so strong.
I just heard the Texas version of this on the local pop station. Anyone else get their regional edit yet?
I spent the first sentence there thinking that it seemed like a really weird way for Spiteri and co to make a comeback.
[featuring Masta Ace]
They’ve been playing an Arizona one here for a while now.