Member Since: 4/20/2011
Posts: 26,993
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Quote:
The distinguishing compositional features of “Bad Romance” are mutations, odd alterations to her business as usual. Chiefly, the chorus (and song) begin on a VI chord instead of her favorite i chord. Structurally, the song is an epic, packing many parts into itself, reordering the structure and modifying the breakdown, a mutation on a mutation.
The chorus itself shifts and changes. It appears right off the top as the wordless “oh-oh-oh-oh-ohhh”—a melisma, a normal enough occurrence in pop, but Gaga hasn’t done melisma before or since. This melisma is just foreshadowing for the chorus proper, where it is replaced with the hook “I want your love and I want your revenge / you and me could write a bad romance.”
About that hook: Gaga has till now never used a “raised seventh,” which is unusual for someone who writes exclusively in minor keys. Now she does. In this chorus there is a changing accidental—the seventh note of the a-minor scale appears both as a G-natural and as a G-sharp.
Now, this raised seventh does something that would make Tchaikovsky proud. The melody appears twice per chorus, but over two distinctly different chord progressions (VI-VII-i-III the first time, VI-VII-V-i the second). The first time, “bad” appears as G-natural, leaping down a fourth to “romance.” The second time, “bad” appears as a G-sharp, leaping down a tritone.
That G-sharp wants to go upward. It wants to rise to the A, resolving the cadence as a music school freshman would have done. But Gaga goes down, leaving that “bad” leading note hanging. Why? Because she herself is bad. Further accentuating the badness of that “bad”: That interval, the tritone, is historically linked to sexual desire and the devil. Whether or not Lady Gaga is familiar with the specifics of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony is irrelevant; she has scored a textbook-worthy usage of Western music theory’s favorite signifier for EVILDOING.
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I don't know any music theory but it seems so interesting.
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