Lady Gaga: Chromatica review – colour, kindness and connection

What a relief: the “real” Lady Gaga is gone. For a while, it looked like pop’s high priestess of serious silliness was being sucked into the Slough of Authenticity – first with her supposedly stripped-back, country-inspired 2016 album Joanne (in truth, about as stripped back as Universal Studios is when compared with Disney World), then with her garlanded turn in A Star Is Born and its painfully earnest soundtrack album. Being real is a look every artist has to try on at least once, but it was never going to become Gaga’s signature style. Chromatica, her sixth album, brings back the spectacle, manifesting a parallel reality she’s had one foot in since childhood, centred on colour,...