Nach einem Wochenende steht für mich fest: „Judas“ ist groß! Was ist bloß los mit Euch?
Die endgültige Wahrheit formuliert wie immer Popjustice:
Imagine a highly evolved, Titanium-plated ‚Bad Romance‘ from the year 2511 travelling half a millennium back in time to save music from a tidal wave of ‚in the club‘-obsessed pop drivel, and that’s ‚Judas‘. We love this song so much. It’s pop in all the right ways, it’s noisy in all the right ways, it’s brash and bombastic and funny and audacious and stupid in all the right ways, and it’s smart in all the right ways, too.
On the surface it’s a song about being double-crossed („even after three times he betrays me“), contemplating revenge („bring him down, I’ll bring him down down, a king with no crown, a king with no crown“), but being repeatedly drawn to awfulness: „I’m just a holy fool but baby oh baby he’s so cruel, but I’m still in love with Judas, baby“.
Vocally Gaga’s in completely new territory (in the verses and pre-chorus she hurls herself into a decadent half-sung, half-rapped Jamaican Patois style), the chorus is a thousand storeys high, there’s a demented tribal techno breakdown, and the whole thing is a little bit overwhelming for all the right reasons. Importantly, as a turbo-charged electrogothic wrongness anthem ‚Judas‘ sounds like a lot of fun – like Gaga had fun writing it and like RedOne had a lot of fun producing it. If Abba ever went to the sort of poppers-’n‘-fisting Mannheim sex club Jake Shears told us about in 2009 ‚Judas‘ is the sort of song they would have come up with. Maybe this is all good news for those of you who felt that the overstudied carefreeness of ‚Born This Way‘ missed its target.
--