Written by the then 23-year-old Gaga on her tour bus in Norway and produced by long-term collaborator, Morocco-born, Sweden-raised RedOne, Bad Romance is a song about being in love with your best friend, as well as being perpetually drawn to the wrong people in general. If its message lacks the self-conscious aspirations of some of Gaga's current work such as Born This Way, the song's importance – as with most truly significant pop songs – is less about educating the world, more about brutal effectiveness as a piece of music. Also in the mix were fearsome beats, a clever second verse that references the work of Alfred Hitchcock (Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho are all mentioned), a decadent, preposterous middle eight in which Gaga starts singing in French, some almost subliminal growls of "I want your bad romance", and a moment when the song collapses under its own weight, the silence pierced by an earsplitting howl of "WHHARRGHYOUBARROWMANCE!".
It sounds like something Shania Twain rejected.
