The Singles Jukebox

She does not take our breath away…

[Video]
[4.00]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Gaga dawning her best military drag while belting a stadium rock anthem will never not be a masterpiece of camp–but that doesn’t detract from the sinking feeling in my gut that “Top Gun: Maverick” is imperial propaganda about a superpower whose annual military spending is more than the next 11 countries combined. 
[6]

Jeffrey Brister: “Melodramatic ballad performed by Lady Gaga for the sequel to a beloved 80’s film” is the most logical fill-in-the-blanks thing I could imagine. It mostly delivers. There’s a swing, there’s vocal acrobatics, there’s a smeary, monochromatic arrangement that bursts into color at just the right moments. It plays to expectations, for better or worse. It is exactly what it is, but since it’s Gaga, that’s high above average.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Pro: Sure, Gaga’s a better singer than Terri Nunn. Con: But “Take My Breath Away” was cowritten by Giorgio Moroder. 
[3]

Andrew Karpan: Mimicry is central to camp, which is what makes it uncool in a literal sense; if there was a way to say “fake” without the unfortunate pejorative subtext, it would be the through-line of Gaga’s various eras. Electrodance, as camp. Glam rock, as camp. Bar piano jazz, as camp. Even her authentic era was approached as a full-body performance that was largely abandoned after the curtains has closed. Critics say this latest move is mellowed-out Gaga, as if her choice to now commit to this scale-reenacting of ’80s radio cheese is somehow less transgressive than any of these previous fronts. This is simply untrue, at least if there was anything to really learn from the era’s most self-aware chronicle (American Psycho.) This is a song whose mile-long piano chords feel meant be performed on an empty air base as a kind of Verhoeven-style metaphor for the endless junk of a dying empire. 
[4]

Danilo Bortoli: I’ve been trying to understand why “Hold My Hand” seems so soulless for a few days now. Maybe it is because Gaga herself is a better iconoclast than a storyteller. Maybe because, all the military propaganda put aside, she strives here for the kitsch and glam she perfected in Born This Way, only to come up with her corniest music since A Star Is Born or even “Million Reasons”. This is an exercise in gratuitous grandiosity, where vagueness seems to be starting and precise point. I’d even say this is reactionary, sexless and bordering on self-parody. So much for someone who once wished to turn Warhol upside down.
[2]

Kayla Beardslee: Bland and hollow power ballad gets a bland and hollow blurb.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: The pre-publicity for this song suggested it would rival the likes of its breathtaking forebear in the power ballad stakes, but while it is appropriately overblown, a lead balloon will never fly. Where Berlin’s effort had poise, atmosphere and drama, this is just a woman shouting. There’s no memorable melody, let alone any kind of dynamic progression. From the writer of “The Edge of Glory”, it’s a missed opportunity.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The last time this unironic full-throated balladry scraped the charts? Gaga’s own A Star is Born singles. Its revival doesn’t mean it’s worth reviving.
[5]