© 2024 WOSU Public Media
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

In Their First Collaboration, Lady Gaga And Ariana Grande Get Exuberantly Dystopic

Lady Gaga released "Rain On Me," the second single ahead of her upcoming album Chromatica midnight Friday morning, followed by a music video Friday afternoon.

Featuring guest vocals from Ariana Grande, "Rain On Me" is Gaga at her electronic-dance-pop most, with those signature booming vocals and even some dramatic spoken lyrics just before the drop, another Germanotta staple. Few can belt the way that Gaga can and Grande is one of them, giving this the kind of grand-event feel that makes this kind of pop superstar team-up hum.

Fitting in with the sort-of-cyberpunk aesthetic around Chromaticaas a whole, the video features Gaga and Grande clad in sci-fi-inspired plastic-and-leather-wear, dancing amidst a rainstorm in a morose, futuristic city. At one point, Gaga becomes a giant, Blade Runner-style projection and — underscoring the song's message of making the best of a bad situation — by the end turns the dystopia into a dance floor.

(All of that said, only time will tell if it can topple Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" as the world's foremost rain-based pop anthem.)


Lady Gaga's new album,Chromatica, will be released May 29 on Interscope Records.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jon Lewis is a freelance writer and producer based in New York.