"Alejandro" is a song by the American singer Lady Gaga from her third extended play (EP), The Fame Monster (2009)—the reissue of her album The Fame (2008). It was released as the third single from The Fame Monster on April 20, 2010. Written and co-produced by Gaga alongside the Moroccan-Swedish producer RedOne, "Alejandro" was inspired by Gaga's fear of men and is about her bidding farewell to her Latino lovers named Alejandro, Roberto and Fernando. Musically, it is a dance-pop and synth-pop song with Europop and Latin pop beats, and it opens with a sample from the main melody of Vittorio Monti's "Csárdás".
Upon its release, "Alejandro" received generally mixed reviews from music critics; some praised the song's catchiness and production while others criticized it as unoriginal, mainly due to the influence from the Swedish pop groups ABBA and Ace of Base. Retrospective reviewers ranked the song as one of Gaga's best singles. Commercially, "Alejandro" was a global success, topping the record charts in Croatia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Russia and Venezuela. It was a Top 5 hit single in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States. In a 2017 journal, which studied structural patterns in melodies of earworm songs, the American Psychological Association (APA) called "Alejandro" one of the world's catchiest.
The accompanying music video, directed by American fashion photographer Steven Klein, was inspired by Gaga's admiration of her gay friends and gay love. In the video, Gaga dances with male soldiers in a cabaret, interspersed with scenes of near-naked men holding machine guns and the singer playing a nun who swallows a rosary. Critics complimented the music video's idea and dark nature, and compared it with the work of 1980s artists. The Catholic League criticized Gaga's use of religious symbols in the video. Retrospective commentators analyzed the music video's themes, including BDSM, anti-fascism, sexual violence and religion. Gaga performed "Alejandro" on the ninth season of American Idol and many of her concert tours and residency shows.
Background and release Lady Gaga and RedOne wrote "Alejandro"; they also worked on vocal arrangement and background vocals. RedOne served as the main producer, with Gaga co-producing with him. He also solely handled instrumentation, programming and recording, and worked with Eelco Bakker on audio engineering. The song was mixed by Robert Orton and mastered by Gene Grimaldi. Johnny Severin did vocal editing. "Alejandro" was recorded at FC Walvisch Studios in Amsterdam.
Interscope Records planned to release "Dance in the Dark" as the third single from the extended play (EP) The Fame Monster (2009)—the reissue of Gaga's debut studio album, The Fame (2008). Her own choice, "Alejandro", initially saw poor airplay and was not seen as a viable choice. Following a quarrel between Gaga and her label, "Alejandro" was chosen as the third single. Through her account on Twitter, Gaga remarked on the decision, "Alejandro is on the radio. Fuck it sounds so good, we did it little monsters." The single was officially sent to radio on April 20, 2010, in the United States. She told Fuse TV that the inspiration behind "Alejandro" was her "Fear of Men Monster". According to NME, Gaga longs for the affection of her ex-lovers but rejects them, fearing commitment and abandonment.
Music and lyrics "Alejandro" is a dance-pop and synth-pop song with what Billboard describes as a "romping, stomping Euro-pop beat". "Alejandro" opens with the main melody from the piece "Csárdás" (1904) by Italian composer Vittorio Monti played on violin, as a distressed Gaga states in a Spanish accent: "I know that we are young, and I know that you may love me/But I just can't be with you like this anymore, Alejandro." In a Cambridge University Press-published journal analyzing Gaga's "musical intertexts" on The Fame Monster, authors Lori Burns, Alyssa Woods and Marc Lafrance described her voice during this passage as "compressed and filtered to create a distant but focused effect". Gaga sings the pre-chorus where she describes her relationship as problematic and lets her lover know about making a choice: "You know that I love you, boy/Hot like Mexico, rejoice!/At this point I've got to choose/Nothing to lose." By the song's end, Gaga bids her lovers—Alejandro, Fernando, and Roberto—farewell.
According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the song is set in the time signature of common time, with a moderate tempo of 99 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of B minor with Gaga's vocal range spanning from F3 to G4. The song has a basic sequence of Bm–D–Fm as its chord progression. "Alejandro" is influenced by Ace of Base and ABBA, particularly the latter's 1975 song "Fernando". Burns, Woods and Lafrance believed by referencing "Fernando", which was popular within the gay community, Gaga identifies as an advocate for the rights of marginalized minorities. This is solidified by the influence of Latin pop songs in the chorus, especially Shakira's "Whenever, Wherever" (2001) and Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" (1987), which had commercial success in the LGBTQ community. Comparing the song with Ace of Base's "Don't Turn Around" (1994)—which tells the story of a woman left by her male lover—Burns, Woods and Lafrance added that "Alejandro" switches this concept where Gaga initiates the break-up. As such, the song shows Gaga's commitment to feminism and "liberat[ing]" performance art. Eve Barlow of Vulture praised Gaga's outspoken sex-positive feminism in the song, exemplified by the lyrics "don't want to kiss, don't want to touch/Just smoke my cigarette and hush".
In the European Journal of Media Studies, Anne Kustritz wrote that "Alejandro" showed Gaga's use of "unending semiotic shell game". She felt that the names Alejandro, Roberto and Fernando, the word "Mexico", and the brief Spanish lyrics confirmed either that the song is set in Latin America or Gaga's lover is Hispanic. Kustritz believed that, beyond these instances, the song conveyed little about Mexico, Latin America or intercultural relationships. Confused by the song's constant shift of viewpoint from "I" to "You" to "She", Kustritz noted how certain phrases introduce themes but do not develop them further and "merely appear, like drunken lyrical mad lib fill-ins. Words seem to have been positioned in 'Alejandro' not because they convey meaning but because of how they sound, a strategy which reverses the usual insistence that the signified trumps the formal properties of the signifier."
Critical reception and accolades Earlier critical reception to "Alejandro" was mixed. The song was called a summer-friendly track (BBC), a "lush paean to a love that's 'hot like Mexico (MTV News), "brilliantly catchy, deceptively simple and wonderfully melancholy" (MusicOMH), and light-hearted (NME and Los Angeles Times). Robert Copsey of Digital Spy praised the song's melodies, describing them as "deceptively catchy" and the lyrics as "wistful". In a mixed review, Jon Blistein of L Magazine wrote that "Alejandro" and "Monster", another track from The Fame Monster, are "half-decent club/pop songs in their own right—and much more well-organized than 'Bad Romance'—they don't seem like complete thoughts".
Comparisons with other artists, especially ABBA and Ace of Base's work, were constant in reviews. Reviews from Slant Magazine and Rolling Stone believed the song paid a delightful tribute to ABBA. It was described as a modernized version of an ABBA song by AllMusic and Pitchfork critics. In a five-out-of-five-star review, Copsey recognized similarities to "La Isla Bonita" and Ace of Base songs, but felt that Gaga added "her own inimitable twist too". Comparing the song to "Don't Turn Around" and "Fernando", Lindsey Fortier from Billboard added, "By the song's end, Alejandro, Fernando and Roberto aren't the only ones sent packing—the listener is dancing out right behind them." Sociologist Mathieu Deflem dismissed the criticism of the song as an "ABBA rip-off" as he believed the reference to the band was intentional by RedOne who is also from Sweden. Other comparisons of the song included with Madonna's 1987 single "Who's That Girl" and Shakira in the chorus.
Some reviews were negative. Sarah Hajibagheri from The Times dismissed it as a "painful Latino warble [and] a would-be Eurovision reject". The Boston Globe James Reed criticized it as "a tepid dance track" where she needlessly repeats the song's title. Nathan Pensky of PopMatters felt that it is "a song truly made up of nothing, not even bothering to revel in its vacuity". Acknowledging its catchiness, Pensky opined that making a simple pop song was not enough, especially considering the quality of Gaga's other songs—"Bad Romance" and "Telephone".
In retrospect, the song was ranked as one of Gaga's best by NME, The Guardian, Belfast Telegraph, Rolling Stone, Billboard and Vulture. It was considered one of "Gaga's most enduring singles" by The Guardian, and one of her catchiest pop songs by Vulture. Belfast Telegraph approvingly highlighted "the inexplicably European lilt" in the spoken-word lyrics and "the femme-fatale chilliness of its chorus". For Billboard, "The sweaty, stomping production ramps up during one of Gaga's simplest, most effective hooks to date." On the song's 10-year anniversary, Mike Wass of Idolator complimented it for still sounding "as audacious and addictive as it did back then", concluding that "every element of 'Alejandro' comes together perfectly to create dance-pop bliss".
"Alejandro" won an International Dance Music Award for Best Pop Dance Track and a BMI Pop Award for Most-Performed Songs of the Year. It received nominations for a Gaygalan Award for International Song of the Year and a Rockbjörnen prize for Foreign Song of the Year. A 2017 journal, published by Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts studying structural patterns in the melodies of earworm songs, compiled lists of catchiest tracks from 3,000participants, in which "Alejandro" ranked number eight.
Commercial performance In the United States, "Alejandro" debuted at number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the chart issue dated April 17, 2010. The same week, the song debuted on the Mainstream Top 40 chart at number 35, and the Hot Digital Songs chart at number 71, after selling 24,000paid digital downloads according to Nielsen Soundscan. The song went on to reach a peak of number five on the Hot 100, becoming Gaga's seventh consecutive top ten single in the nation. As a result, she became the most recent female artist to have her first seven singles reach top-ten threshold in the US, since R&B singer Monica did so from 1995 to 1999, with Gaga eclipsing this rate by doing so in only 17 months. On the Mainstream Top 40 chart, "Alejandro" peaked at number four, becoming Gaga's first single not to reach the number one position there. It also debuted on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart at 40 and reached the top spot on the chart issue dated July 7, 2010. The song has sold 2.63 million digital downloads in the US as of February 2019, making Gaga the second artist in digital history to amass seven consecutive two million sellers as a lead act. The track was certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in October 2017. On the Canadian Hot 100, "Alejandro" peaked at number four on the issue dated May 8, 2010.