Lady Gaga and Her Posse of Pink Power Rangers Will Save the World

As February 2020 comes to a close, our planet is in chaos: creeping fascism, a possible pandemic, The Masked Singer. Life is traumatic, dispiriting, and extremely expensive. We need a lift.

As has been true throughout time, only the theater kids can save us.

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Since 2013's underrated Artpop, Lady Gaga has taken detours into country, prestige film, and failing to make her grandmother cry in the documentary Five Foot Two. But she is back to her weirdo-pop roots with her new single "Stupid Love," from an upcoming new album that right now only exists as speculation and fan theory on Reddit. "Stupid Love," incidentally, is a thing of yours that she wants, a thing that I suppose is different than the "Bad Romance" of yours that she wanted in 2009, but also maybe not. And listen: if she's just going to recombine the same four lyrical elements for the rest of her career, like a pop star Taco Bell, I have no choice but to stan. Lady Gaga, I want your thematic Crunchwrap Supreme.

The video for "Stupid Love" dropped just after midnight today, and right away it takes us off to the Gaga races: according to the onscreen text: "The world rots in conflict." And apparently, as with the current American political left, the world is rotting in factionalism: "While the Spiritual ones pray and sleep for justice, the Kindness punks fight for Chromatica," the final word spelled out in a graffiti-esquie font that is absolutely being tattooed across the upper back of someone named Jaedyn as you read this, whenever you read this.

From there, we go to a future desert-scape straight out of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, where Lady Gaga and her posse of pink Power Rangers have rolled up to cool down a fight among multiple future gangs dressed in primary colors. The overall effect of the first fifteen seconds of action is The Warriors filtered through the 1970s game show Tattle Tales.

Our heroes begin to solve the conflict, as you might expect, through the medium of dance. And after a seven-year break, Gaga is 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. The claw and OK symbol over one eye sit this one out in favor of some new, more sweeping movements including a sort of bunny-ears kind of thing. It is all part of an evolving American Gaga sign language that Germanottaologists will decipher for generations to come. All I know is she's trying to tell us something. She is Jane Goodall and we are the apes.

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And then the various candy-colored factions begin to fight again, and Gaga simply cannot take it anymore, so, like Michael Jackson in "Beat It," she brings them together through choreography. And they all join in: Bondage Jolly Green Giant, The Bride From The Anime Version of Kill Bill, Britney and Justin In The Matching Denim Outfits But Make It Activewear. It works!

Finally, Gaga summons The Force, like the Skywalker descendent we have always known her to be, levitates the two most stubborn dance-fighters a foot and a half off the ground, and then slams them back down; her finishing move. The battle is won, and the people dressed in the color of Bazooka Bubble Gum will lead us to peace. Gaga spins and reveals herself to be a Kindness Punk. The aesthetic of a new album, possibly called Chromatica, has debuted, and if this is what Burning Man is like, I may finally have to go.

It catches the eye and kidnaps the ear. It will send the Little Monsters on an Easter-egg hunt that will last through the year. It is pure Gaga, which is to say: it is a lot.

I'm going back to bed. For justice.

Dave Holmes Editor-at-Large Dave Holmes is Esquire’s L.A.-based editor-at-large.

To read the article in English. esquire.com