Born This Way is the second studio album by American singer Lady Gaga. It was released by Interscope Records on May 23, 2011. Gaga co-wrote and co-produced it with other producers, including Fernando Garibay and RedOne, who had previously worked with her. She also worked with musicians including E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons and Queen guitarist Brian May. Gaga and Garibay served as the album's musical directors.
The music on Born This Way builds on the synth-pop, electropop, and dance-pop styles of Gaga's previous material while incorporating instrumentation different from that of her earlier releases, including electronic rock and techno. It features a broader range of genres, such as heavy metal, disco, house, and rock and roll, while its lyrical topics include sexuality, religion, freedom, feminism, and individualism. Despite divided opinions among religious and conservative commentators, the album was well received by music critics, who praised the varying musical styles and Gaga's vocals. Several music publications included the album in their year-end best-of lists. Born This Way received three Grammy Award nominations, including Gaga's third consecutive nomination for Album of the Year. In 2020, Rolling Stone included it in their updated list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Born This Way debuted atop several major music charts worldwide, including the US Billboard 200, where the record sold 1.108 million copies in its first week; an estimated 440,000 copies were sold on Amazon in two days of its first week at a price of 99 cents. It has since been certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Four of the album's singles—the title track, "Judas", "The Edge of Glory", and "You and I"—reached the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, where "Born This Way" remained at number one for six weeks. At the time of its release, the title track was the fastest-selling single in iTunes history. The fifth single, "Marry the Night", charted within the top 30 in the United States. After going viral on the video-sharing service TikTok, "Bloody Mary" was released as the album's sixth single in 2022, eleven years after the album's release. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Born This Way was the third global best-selling album of 2011. As of 2021, it had more than 5.8 billion global streams, 5.2 million physical copies sold, and 31 million digital tracks sold.
Gaga performed songs from the album on various occasions, such as the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards and the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, as well as on television worldwide and at other events, including her third headlining concert tour, the Born This Way Ball (2012–2013). In November 2011, Born This Way and its remix album Born This Way: The Remix were packaged as a compilation album titled Born This Way: The Collection. On June 25, 2021, Gaga released Born This Way The Tenth Anniversary, a special anniversary edition of the album featuring six renditions of Gaga's songs by artists who are members or allies of the LGBT community.
Background and recording Lady Gaga released her first studio album, The Fame, in August 2008. It received generally favorable reviews from critics and topped the charts in several countries. After its worldwide success, a reissue of the album, titled The Fame Monster, was released in November 2009, which also received positive reviews. Gaga described them as yin and yang because their styles and concepts contrasted.
In March 2010, Gaga said that she was working on a new album, saying that she had written most of the songs for this project. Meanwhile, producer RedOne described it as Gaga's "freedom album" as her then-manager, Troy Carter, felt her public image would begin to change after the album's release. A few months later, Gaga said that she had finished writing songs for the album: "It came so quickly. I've been working on it for months, and I feel very strongly that it's finished right now. Some artists take years. I don't. I write music every day." She first alluded to Born This Way during a SHOWstudio interview that year, answering what she would call the movie of her life. In another interview, she declared the album "the anthem of [this] generation," adding, "It includes the greatest music I've ever written. I've already written the first single for the new album and I promise you, that this album is the greatest of my career."
Born This Way was written and recorded during the Monster Ball Tour (2009–2011). In addition to sessions on tour buses, recording and mixing for the album took place at several studios: Abbey Road Studios in London, England; Germano Studios in New York City, The Mix Room in Burbank, California, Studio at the Palms in Las Vegas, Henson Studios in Los Angeles, Larrabee in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, Setai Recording in Miami Beach, Warehouse Productions in Omaha, all in the United States; Gang Studios in Paris, France; Studios 301 and Paradise in Sydney, Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, all in Australia; Officine Meccaniche in Milan, Italy; and Livingroom Studios in Oslo, Norway. All mastering happened at Oasis Mastering in Burbank. Queen guitarist Brian May and E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons worked with Gaga on the album.
Writing and composition
Influences and themes
Musically, Born This Way is considered a notable departure from Gaga's previous works. It incorporates a broader range of musical genres such as opera, heavy metal, rock and roll, Europop, electro-industrial, disco, and house and features a wider variety of instrumentation and musical styles. For example, an organ can be heard as Gaga closes "Born This Way", a Gregorian chant-inspired male vocal choir is a prominent feature in "Bloody Mary", guitars and violins in "Americano", and electric guitars in "Bad Kids". The songs "Hair" and "The Edge of Glory" are distinguishable from the rest of the album, as a saxophone – performed by Clemons, a prominent E Street Band member – can be heard throughout.
In several interviews, Gaga said she was mainly inspired by Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Bruce Springsteen;Inspirations for Born This Way: Billboard: NME: MTV 1: MTV 2: On Air with Ryan Seacrest: other musical influences on the album include Prince, Iron Maiden, Kiss, Queen, TLC, Pat Benatar, and En Vogue. At the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, while accepting the award for Best Pop Vocal Album for The Fame Monster (2009), Gaga thanked Houston, "I wanted to thank Whitney because when I wrote 'Born This Way', I imagined she was singing it because I wasn't secure enough in myself to imagine I was a superstar. So Whitney I imagined you were singing 'Born This Way' when I wrote it. Thank you." In May 2021, during the 10th anniversary of the album, she revealed that it was inspired by Carl Bean and his song "I Was Born This Way", released in 1977. On her social media, Gaga wrote, "Born This Way, my song and album, were inspired by Carl Bean, a gay black religious activist who preached, sang and wrote about being Born This Way."
The album mainly contains moderate-tempo dance songs, described by MTV's James Dinh as "anthemic style melodies with really sledge-hammering dance beats." In the months before the release of Born This Way, Gaga characterized her new music as "something so much deeper than a wig or lipstick or a fucking meat dress" and upon hearing it, Akon remarked that she would take music to the "next level". The album includes references to several religious figures of Christianity, notably Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus of Nazareth. Several songs on the album refer to sexuality and feminism. Other themes on the album include individualism, equality, and freedom.
Music and lyrical content
The standard edition of Born This Way has 14 tracks; the deluxe edition includes eight additional tracks—three original songs, an alternate version of the title track, and four remixes. Fernando Garibay, one of the producers, revealed that each song on the album was revised "about 50 times", as Gaga wanted to try different genres and sounds. Born This Way opens with "Marry the Night", a song written as a homage to New York City. It is a dance-pop record which contains church bells, a thumping four-on-the-floor house beat, a funk rock-influenced breakdown, and contains elements of disco, techno, funk and Hi-NRG music. Owen Myers of Pitchfork described it as "an enormous, bravura flex of electronic pop." Jody Rosen from Rolling Stone compared the song's sound to that of 1980s pop and glam metal artists, including Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar and Bonnie Tyler. The title track, "Born This Way", is about equality, regardless of skin color, sexuality, or creed, and that everyone can fulfill their dreams. Compared to Madonna's "Express Yourself" (1989) by some critics, the song features Euro disco beats. "Government Hooker" contains elements of opera music, and a dance melody resembling genres such as techno, trance, industrial and post-disco, as well as a hip hop-influenced beat. The song was compared by Los Angeles Timess Randall Roberts to the work of German electronic band Kraftwerk. It is followed by "Judas", which Gaga said was influenced by the Biblical Judas Iscariot. The song's lyrics concern betrayal and "honoring your darkness in order to bring yourself into the light," according to Gaga. It is a dance-pop and house track, with influences from techno, industrial and disco, a 1980s-inspired pop chorus, as well as a breakdown with elements of dubstep and techno music.
The album's fifth track is "Americano", a mariachi song with techno, house and disco influences. Sung in Spanish and English, Gaga composed "Americano" in response to the Arizona immigration law Arizona SB 1070. Critics noted vaudevillian elements within the song, and it has been compared to the work of Judy Garland by Billboard, with Gaga said she heard the influence of French chanson singer Édith Piaf. "Hair" is a song about expressing freedom through one's hair. The song has a dance-pop melody, with influences from rock/heavy metal music artists like Springsteen, Iron Maiden and Kiss. It also incorporates disco and Europop. "Scheiße", contains faux-German lyrics and a feminist message, accompanied by heavy synths, techno beats, as well as Euro disco influences. Dan Martin from NME stated that the song's melody drew comparisons to Madonna and electroclash artist Miss Kittin. After "Scheiße" is "Bloody Mary", which is a relatively slow-tempo and dark electropop song containing "plucked strings" and "filthy beats", as well as numerous religious references, a trance-influenced melody, and lyrics infused in French and Spanish. "Bad Kids" contains 1980s synthpop influences and electric guitars. Martin also compared its disco beat to the music of Donna Summer, and noted heavy metal influences in its composition.
"Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)" is Born This Ways tenth track. A dance-pop song, it has Springsteen influences by Rolling Stones Rosen, as well as powerful drums and synths. The next is "Heavy Metal Lover", a song of electropop and techno tendencies, which contains elements of house music, electro-industrial beats, and was compared to the power pop of the 1990s. Synthesizers are the song's focal point. Following "Heavy Metal Lover" is "Electric Chapel", a heavy metal-influenced pop song noted to contain elements of Europop that was compared by some reviewers to Madonna's work. "You and I", is a rock and roll ballad which contains elements of country rock. The song contains a moderato tempo, and Queen guitarist May is also featured on it. The song also samples Queen's 1977 single "We Will Rock You".