Stupid Love (Lady Gaga song)


"Stupid Love" is a song recorded by American singer Lady Gaga. It was officially released on February 28, 2020, as the lead single from Gaga's sixth studio album, Chromatica, after it was leaked in January 2020. It was written by Gaga, BloodPop, Tchami, Max Martin, and Ely Rise, with BloodPop explaining that it was the song that started his work on Chromatica with the singer. It is a dance-pop and electropop song that talks about gathering the courage to fall in love again after a heartbreak.
The single's release was preceded by billboards with stills from the accompanying music video, and promotional photos posted on social media. The song garnered positive response from music critics, and it was favorably compared to the singer's earlier works. Commercially, the song reached number one in Scotland, Hungary and El Salvador, as well as the top five of the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart, and achieved a top 10 placement on music charts in over 15 territories.
The music video for the song was directed by Daniel Askill and was released on the same day as the single. It takes place on the fictional planet Chromatica, and shows Gaga leading the "Kindness Punks", and performing choreography with groups of dance warriors, each group with a corresponding color. The track was also featured in a 'lip sync' video, promoting Gaga’s Haus Laboratories eyeshadow palette named after "Stupid Love".

Recording and composition

"Stupid Love" was written by Gaga with the help of BloodPop, Tchami, Max Martin, and Ely Rise. According to BloodPop, he first played the instrumental of the song to Gaga at the Kansas City stop of her Joanne World Tour while they were working on songs for the soundtrack to her movie, A Star Is Born. While none of those songs made the soundtrack, working together on "Stupid Love" was fruitful and it convinced BloodPop into commiting to co-produce the singer's whole album.
BloodPop felt that the demo of the song "was missing something", and he credits Max Martin with having "some fantastic ideas that really elevated it". The track marks the first time Gaga worked with Martin, who contributed to hit-songs with artists such as Katy Perry, Britney Spears and Taylor Swift. Gaga admitted that she was at first hesitant to work with him as she likes to write and produce on her own terms, but "decided to stop being an asshole" and meet him. She explained: "Basically, I sang over a track that BloodPop made. We sent over what I sang to Max, Max picked some parts out, sent it back to me, and then I wrote lyrics. I warmed up my voice, got in the booth, I sang it, and what you're hearing on 'Stupid Love' is what we did that day."
"Stupid Love" has been described as a return to the dance-pop and electropop sound of Gaga's earlier career, with influences of dance, disco, and electronic. Dan Adler of Vanity Fair noted "Lady Gaga's new single 'Stupid Love' arrives in declarations: 'All I ever wanted was love'; 'I want your stupid love.' She issues them over glittering dance pop, and they're less plaintive than euphoric—the act of expression is the triumph." The song is composed in the key of B major and is played at a tempo of 118 beats per minute. Gaga's vocals span from A3 to F5 in the song. The song's lyrics talk about the "joyful foolishness of loving someone", and gathering the courage to fall in love again after a heartbreak. Talking about the song, Gaga further elaborated: "...When we all decide to be vulnerable it’s very scary for a lot of people and there’s all kinds of laws and constructs and things that have built all around us... I’d love for it to collapse as many of those walls as possible and people to be saying, ‘I want your Stupid Love. I love you.'"

Release and promotion

Clips of the song first leaked online in January 2020, shortly followed by the entire track leaking. The song went viral on Twitter. Gaga responded to the leak by tweeting "can y'all stop" with a stock photo of a young girl wearing a balaclava while listening to music on a cassette player. Gaga did not perform "Stupid Love" during her AT&T TV Super Saturday Night pre-Super Bowl LIV show in Miami, despite requests from audience members. Instead, Gaga performed her Enigma set from her Las Vegas residency and did not address the leaked track. Online chatter of the song began as early as October 30, 2019, when Gaga posted a picture to her Twitter of a Halloween pumpkin she painted. In the corner of the photo was an iPod Touch; when zoomed in it appeared to show "Stupid Love" being played on the device.
Gaga announced the song's release via social media on February 25, 2020. After the song leaked, she and her manager had a discussion if they should choose another song for the lead single, even though they spent months developing the music video and its choreography, but they decided to go with the original plan. She explained: "...The song, when it's mixed, mastered and finished with the visuals, and everything I have to say about it — when all those things come together at once, that will be the art piece I'm making. Not a leak."
The announcement of the single was accompanied with a photograph of a billboard in Los Angeles that had "an image of the song’s title splashed across an image of bright pink lips." The billboard also features stills from the music video embedded to the right of the center text, as well as a silhouette of characters in the video ingrained in the text. The word "Chromatica" is written twice on the billboard: one vertically adjacent to the music video stills, and again as the last line of the copyright message in the lower left corner. The prominence of this word led news outlets to speculate the title of Gaga's sixth studio album.
Jeena Sharma of Paper magazine described promotional images of Gaga for "Stupid Love" as "pop-meets-punk." The images featured Gaga wearing a pink monochromatic look with makeup from her Haus Laboratories beauty line. Just before dropping "Stupid Love" and its music video, Gaga tweeted "Earth is cancelled." In the hours after its release, both the song "Stupid Love" and Lady Gaga herself were the top two trending topics on Twitter worldwide. The song was placed at the top of Apple Music's Today's Top Hits playlist, Spotify's New Music Daily playlist, and Spotify's Today's Hits playlist. On May 18, 2020, a 'lip sync' video was released for the song, promoting Gaga’s Haus Laboratories eyeshadow palette named after "Stupid Love". The video features influencers from the world of makeup, including drag queens Alaska and Aquaria.

Critical reception

Following the leak, W magazine's Kyle Munzenrieder wrote, "It was classic Gaga with a chugging power chorus, and a big room backing track. Her fans began dissecting what it told us about the upcoming album. Gaga herself, however, wasn't having it." Commenting on the leak, Harper's Bazaar described "Stupid Love" as an "upbeat cut with big vocals and dance and electronic-inspired production", seemingly "poised to be another radio hit from the singer". Variety described the leak as a "disco-infused anthem whose style harkens back to Gaga's Born This Way album."
Upon the song's official release, Michael Cuby of Nylon described the song as a "mix between 'Bad Kids' and 'The Edge of Glory' with a beat that instantly recalls the joyous electropop of 'Do What U Want'," and "the type of song you can easily imagine both blasting out of an expensive sound-system at your local gay club and out of a car speaker as it speeds down the highway with its top down in the summertime." Jamieson Cox for Pitchfork also compared the song to "Do What U Want," saying the "brawny, shiny disco" of "Stupid Love" sounds like a sped-up version of the former. Cox claims "Stupid Love" recalls Gaga's late 2000s era "without achieving the same kind of grandeur," yet welcomes Gaga's return and "the goofy, indomitable spirit that made her so refreshing in the first place." Writing for Rolling Stone, Claire Shaffer and Althea Legaspi described the song as a "dance jam," while Ben Kaye of Consequence of Sound as an "electronic disco banger." Sarah Jamieson from DIY thought that the track provides "maximalist addictiveness".
Spencer Kornhaber from The Atlantic called the single a "glorious comeback" and a "return to form not only for the singer, but also for her genre." Kornhaber added that even though the Max Martin production "feels perfectly calibrated for catchiness, Gaga’s voice is so big and personable that a sense of humanity remains intact" and concluded that "Stupid Love" is "light, sweet, and orderly." Kornhaber also praised BloodPop and Tchami's keyboard work and mixing of the song, mentioning the microseconds before the drop of the final chorus, calling it a "fake-out that tricks the ear every time, as superfans who’ve been giddily listening to the song since it leaked in January can attest." Stephen Daw from Billboard thought that the song "offers spine-tingling pop euphoria", and highlighted the "unbridled joy in Gaga's voice". For Slant Magazine, Alexa Camp was more critical of the track, describing it as a "catchy but uninventive slice of electro-pop" and compared its bassline to "Do What U Want". Michael Cragg from The Guardian called the song "fun and dumb".
In June 2020, the song was listed as the sixth best song of 2020 so far by Billboard.

Chart performance

In the US, "Stupid Love" debuted at number five on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Gaga's sixteenth top 10, twelfth top five hit, and her highest-debuting entry since "The Edge of Glory" debuted at number three in 2011. It also marked her first top 10 debut since "Dope" when it entered at number eight in November 2013, and first top ten since "Shallow" peaked number one in March 2019. Additionally, with "Stupid Love", Gaga became the fifth artist to have ranked in the Hot 100's top 10 in the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. The song debuted at the summit on Digital Songs, with 53,000 downloads sold and becoming Gaga's seventh leader on the chart. It also debuted at number one on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, becoming her fifth topper and 28th charted title, the most of any solo female. "Stupid Love" also became the first song to debut at number one on the chart. "Stupid Love" proceeded to fall to number 30 the following week. In Canada, the song debuted and peaked at number 7 on the Canadian Hot 100. It was certified Gold by the Music Canada for selling over 40,000 units.
The song debuted at number 7 in Australia and number 23 in New Zealand, which became its peak in both regions. It was present for seven weeks on the former nation's chart, while in New Zealand it dropped off after its second week. Official Charts Company reported, that the song is challenging for UK number one based preliminary sales and early streaming reports. "Stupid Love" was just shy of 1,200 chart sales behind the number 1 spot, occupied by The Weeknd’s "Blinding Lights" after two days of downloads and streams. The Weeknd had the edge on streaming, with Gaga ahead on downloads. The song later debuted at number five on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Gaga's thirteenth top 10 in the country. It was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry for 200,000 copies of streaming equivalent units. In Ireland "Stupid Love" debuted at number 6 as the week’s highest new entry and most downloaded track of the week. It also became her 15th top 10 in the country. Elsewhere, "Stupid Love"s highest position was attained in Scotland, Hungary and El Salvador, where it reached the top of the charts.

Music video

Concept and development

The music video for "Stupid Love" was directed by Daniel Askill and filmed on location at Trona Pinnacles, California. It was filmed entirely using Apple's iPhone 11 Pro triple camera system, with Askill saying that by not relying on "bigger, much more expensive cameras", they had "lot of new possibilities and freedoms to explore." The iPhones were mounted on drones and Steadicams and the Filmic Pro app was used for filming. Excerpts from the video were featured in an Apple commercial as part of its "Shot on iPhone 11 Pro" campaign.
The main concept of the clip was bringing different kinds of people together under music and dance. It is represented with separate groups of dancers, each forming a unique tribe with a corresponding color and logo – according to the singer, they are the "Kindness Punks" in pink, the "Freedom Fighters" in blue, the "Junkyard Scavengers" in black, the "Government Officials" in red, the "Eco Warriors" in green and the "Cyber Kids" in yellow. The video's choreographer, Richy Jackson auditioned around 1000 dancers in Los Angeles for the video, with the objective to hire a diverse cast of dancers. To highlight the differences between the tribes, he wanted to create different choreography for each of them. He explained: "The black-leather tribe's movement and the way they looked, from a styling perspective, inspired a hip-hop vibe. Our yellow tribe is into techy skills, so I thought they should move more abstract and awkward. I call our green tribe the House of Climate Change, because they look like a mini house within the house, so in that , they needed a voguing style! The red and blue tribes... were the strongest, so, no matter what, they'll never break or back down, so the movement had to represent that feeling." Richy also added that it was his idea to use sign language for Gaga's tribe as he really liked the "All I ever wanted was love!" line and felt that it required more than just dance to express it accurately.
In a Harper's Bazaar interview with Gaga's makeup artist Sarah Tanno, Tanno described using pieces that evoke armor to satisfy Gaga's desire to feel strong for the video. Describing Gaga's wishes, Tanno explains, "she wanted to exude a 'Kindness Punk', someone who fights for kindness and leads with love.” Tanno sought inspiration from a prior era in Gaga's career in creating Gaga's face pieces for the music video. "In the Born This Way era she had these cheek prosthetics—so I thought, what is the new special thing that I can make for her? This armor naturally will come in different shades of metallic pink," explained Tanno. Wanting the pieces to move with Gaga as she moved and danced, Tanno crafted the face pieces out of materials resembling bone prosthetics instead of opting for metal. Unlike the face pieces, Gaga's costumes featured pieces crafted of actual metal designed by Laurel DeWitt. "The mood boards were a crazy mash of futuristic armor, aliens, and even an insect type vibe. Everything had to be pink so I worked with her style team and just did my interpretation on it. Pink metal! I mean c'mon! It was perfect," DeWitt described. The four different outfits crafted for Gaga by DeWitt and Gaga's pink wig were seen as a departure from Gaga's previous style. DeWitt added that Gaga loved the styles, but she found some to be painful to wear, and said "but you know Gaga, anything for fashion."

Synopsis and reception

The video debuted online and on MTV on February 28, 2020, with teasers being released one day prior. It opens with the text "The world rots in conflict. Many tribes battle for dominance. While the Spiritual ones pray and sleep for peace, the Kindness punks fight for Chromatica." The camera pans to a desert scene with crystal mountains, on the fictional planet Chromatica. Gaga and her squad are running to the scene of a battle. The singer is seen in various hot pink outfits dancing it out with groups of dance warriors. Once the factions begin to fight again, Gaga cannot take it anymore. She levitates two fighters and slams them back to the ground. With that move, the battle is won. Gaga leads the dance warriors into one big celebration to conclude the video. The faction in pink, led by Gaga, restored peace to the desert region.
British Vogue thought that Gaga looked like a "Y2K-inspired desert warrior" in the music video and called the singer's aesthetics a return to her "meat-dress-era form." Dave Holmes for Esquire described Gaga's dancing in the video as "back to a kind of movement that is less 'dance' and more a series of gestures. The classics are back: 'wrists on forehead' makes a triumphant return, as do 'hand covering eye' and 'forearms in x formation. Craig Jenkins for Vulture described the video as a "purposeful visual overkill" with tight choreography and compared the video to the music video for "Genesis" by Grimes, the video game Bayonetta, and 1960s-era Star Trek. Brandon Wetmore for Paper magazine called the video as a Mad Max-evoking "pride parade", pairing "Bad Romance"-era choreography with Artpop-era camp and contrasted the vibrancy and color of the video with the muted and somber tones of the visuals from the previous A Star Is Born era. Sabrina Barr of The Independent highlighted the "outlandish" costumes of the video, saying that "the fashion in the video is as idiosyncratic and fabulous as Gaga herself", and pointed out inspirations from Power Rangers and the Alien films. Alexa Camp for Slant Magazine was critical of the video, calling it corny and lacking "the sophisticated mythology or narrative of videos like 2011's 'Born This Way.

Track listing

  1. "Stupid Love"
  1. "Stupid Love"
  2. "Stupid Love "
  1. "Stupid Love"

    Credits and personnel

Credits adapted from Tidal.

Weekly charts

Monthly charts

Certifications

Release history