Bad Romance
"Bad Romance" is a song by American singer-songwriter Lady Gaga from her third extended play, The Fame Monster —the reissue of her debut studio album, The Fame. Following an unauthorized demo leak, Gaga premiered the final version of the song during Alexander McQueen's 2010 Paris Fashion Week show in October 2009. Written and co-produced by Gaga alongside Moroccan-Swedish record producer RedOne, "Bad Romance" was released as the lead single from The Fame Monster on October 19, 2009. Musically, it is an electropop and dance-pop track with a spoken bridge and a hook featuring nonsense syllables. Inspired by German house and techno music, the song was developed as an experimental pop record. Lyrically, Gaga drew from the paranoia she experienced while on tour and wrote about her attraction to unhealthy romantic relationships.
"Bad Romance" received widespread acclaim from music critics, who praised its chorus, beat and hook. Commercially, the song was a global success, topping the record charts in more than 20 countries. It peaked at number two on the US Billboard Hot 100 and was certified eleven-times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, having sold 5.9 million digital downloads as of 2019. "Bad Romance" has sold 12 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling digital singles of all time. The song won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and was included in annual "best-of" lists of Rolling Stone and Pitchfork; the former named it one of the 100 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century and 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In a 2017 journal, which studied structural patterns in melodies of earworm songs, the American Psychological Association called "Bad Romance" one of the world's catchiest.
The accompanying music video for "Bad Romance", directed by Francis Lawrence, features Gaga inside a surreal white bathhouse where she is kidnapped and drugged by supermodels who sell her to the Russian mafia for sexual slavery. It ends as Gaga immolates the man who bought her. The video garnered acclaim from critics for its fashion, choreography, costumes and symbolism. Briefly becoming the most-viewed YouTube video in 2010, it received a record ten nominations at the MTV Video Music Awards, winning seven, including Video of the Year. It received the Grammy Award for Best Music Video and was named the best music video of the 21st century by Billboard. Gaga has performed "Bad Romance" at television shows, award ceremonies, her concert tours and residency shows, and the Super Bowl LI halftime show.
Background and release
and RedOne wrote and arranged "Bad Romance"; they were also responsible for background vocals. RedOne solely handled instrumentation, programming and recording, and also served as the main producer, with Gaga co-producing with him. He worked with Johny Severin on vocal editing, and Dave Russell and Eelco Bakker on audio engineering. The song was mixed by Spike Stent and mastered by Gene Grimaldi. "Bad Romance" was recorded at the Record Plant in Los Angeles and FC Walvisch in Amsterdam.Before its official release, a demo version was published illegally on the internet on October 2, 2009, prompting Gaga to comment via Twitter that it "is makin my ears bleed. Wait till you hear the real version." Gaga performed a snippet of "Bad Romance" on Saturday Night Live on October 3, 2009, along with "Poker Face" and "LoveGame". The song's final version premiered during the finale of Alexander McQueen's 2010 Paris Fashion Week show titled Plato's Atlantis, which was his last work before his death a few months later. On October 19, "Bad Romance" was released as the lead single from the extended play The Fame Monster, the reissue of Gaga's debut studio album, The Fame.
"Bad Romance" was one of the songs Gaga wrote in 2009 while touring. These songs were about the various abstract "monsters"—metaphors for her paranoias—she faced during the tour. Gaga explained that she generally felt lonely in her relationships and was attracted to unhealthy romances, which became the song's themes. Gaga wrote the lyrics in Norway on her tour bus. She elaborated on the writing process in an interview with Grazia:
I was in Russia, then Germany, and spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe. There is this amazing German house-techno music, so I wanted to make a pop experimental record. I kind of wanted to leave the '80s a little bit, so the chorus is a '90s melody, which is what the inspiration was. There was certainly some whisky involved in the writing of the record. It's about being in love with your best friend.
Music and lyrics
"Bad Romance" is an electropop and dance-pop song with house, new wave, and techno influences. Sociologist Mathieu Deflem recognized rock influences in the song, while BBC critic Paul Lester noted the rave-inspired synthesizer sounds. Musicnotes published this song in common time with a tempo of 119 beats per minute in the key of A minor. Gaga's vocal range spans from the low note of E3 to the high note of C5. The song follows in the chord progression Am–C–F–Am-C–G in the verses and F–G–Am–C–F–G–E–Am in the chorus.Describing Gaga's voice in "Bad Romance", Deflem wrote that it is "at times raw and raspy, not soft and smooth, and incorporates the contrast of gentle and harsh vocal styles, alternating singing softly with screaming loudly". The song opens as Gaga sings a portion of the chorus, then transitions into the "Rah-rah—ah-ah-ah, Roma-roma-ma, Gaga-ooh-la-la" hook, which she says is an abbreviation of the word "romance". The song then incorporates keyboard sounds. They are followed by the first verse and the pre-chorus as Gaga voices the lines, "You know that I want you / And you know that I need you". The "full-throated" chorus follows where she sings, "You and me could write a bad romance... / Caught in a bad romance."
Critics noted the influence of other songs and artists on "Bad Romance". Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine noticed influences from 1980s music. Simon Price from The Independent and Daniel Brockman of The Phoenix compared the song to works of the groups Boney M. and Depeche Mode, respectively. In the verse, "I want your psycho, your vertigo shtick, Want you in my Rear Window, Baby, you're sick", Gaga is listing Alfred Hitchcock films. She said, "What I'm really trying to say is I want the deepest, darkest, sickest parts of you that you are afraid to share with anyone because I love you that much." Price stated that the line "I want your ugly, I want your disease" established the grim tone of The Fame Monster.
The lyrics address a bad relationship; the Boston Public Health Commission included "Bad Romance" in its "Top 10 List of Songs with Unhealthy Relationship Ingredients". For Brockman, the song is a declaration of "liberation from a significant other". Explaining its title, author Robin James in the book Resilience & Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism wrote that it does not romanticize "bad" things but is only "pointing out the badness of conventionally-scripted pop song 'romance' itself".
Katrin Horn, a postdoctoral fellow in American studies, found that "Bad Romance" works on two levels. As gay and lesbian youth account for a large proportion of Gaga's fans, the line "I don't wanna be friends"—which explores the issue of falling in love with one's heterosexual best friend—resonates with them. On the other hand, the song thematizes Gaga's "bad romance" with fame and fortune. Horn interpreted the part "all your lovers' revenge" as Gaga referencing her fans' previous idols, and in the line "I want your love", she is seeking applause from her fans when performing live.
Critical reception
"Bad Romance" received widespread critical acclaim. It was named the best song on The Fame Monster by Maureen Lee Lanker of Entertainment Weekly. It was included in lists of best songs of 2009 by Pitchfork, MTV News, and Rolling Stone. Calling it one of the "most memorable pop singles" of the late 2000s, NME credits the song with establishing Gaga as an icon. In his review of the album, Scott Plagenhoef of Pitchfork found it "arguably the best pop single" of 2009."Bad Romance" was praised for its chorus, beat, and hook. Kaufman lauded the drastic transition into a bombastic beat during the chorus, which was called catchy by Rolling Stone Jody Rosen, one of Gaga's best by
MusicOMH Michael Hubbard, and "so wonderfully big it dwarfs the industry of a million angry dudes with guitars" by NME Emily Mackay. Christopher John Farley from The Wall Street Journal praised the "Jabberwockian" catchiness of the hook. Other reviewers commented on the song's sex appeal, praised it for making Gaga's name a "Teutonic chant", and called it a "turbocharged Euro-soul" and a club-friendly tune that possessed a "sordid underbelly".
"Bad Romance" was compared to Gaga's previous singles by reviewers with the criticism that it was not on par with them and it lacked their instant catch. Critics compared Gaga to other artists. Kitty Empire of The Guardian wrote "Bad Romance" made "this driven, uncharismatic Italian-American being the new Madonna", and Spin Josh Modell thought that with its "earworm nonsense lyric ", the song "plays like the best Madonna song in ages". Jon Blistein from L Magazine believed it is an amalgamation of a Cher song, "faux-European accented verse", and "bland spoken-word bridge".
Chart performance
In the US, "Bad Romance" debuted at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 14, 2009, with 143,000digital downloads. After two weeks, the song reached number two, holding the spot for seven non-consecutive weeks. It was barred from the top position by Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" and later Kesha's "Tik Tok". The movement to number two was first prompted by a 49% digital gain, which led to the song's top spot on the Hot Digital Songs chart. As of February 2019, "Bad Romance" has sold 5.9 million copies in the US, according to Nielsen Soundscan, making Gaga the second artist after Katy Perry to have three singles—along with "Just Dance" and "Poker Face"—each selling five million digital copies. After the Recording Industry Association of America started including video streams in their tabulation of single certifications, "Bad Romance" was certified 11× platinum for 11million in sales and streaming. According to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems, it briefly set the record for most weekly plays in the 17-year history of the Pop Songs chart, registering 10,859plays from 130radio stations monitored for the chart. Following Gaga's Super Bowl LI halftime show performance in 2017, "Bad Romance" re-entered the Hot 100 at number 50 and the Digital Song Sales chart at number 9. On the Canadian Hot 100, "Bad Romance" debuted at number 58 and reached number one the following week. Replaced by "Tik Tok" for two weeks, "Bad Romance" returned to the top spot on the chart. Music Canada certified "Bad Romance" Diamond, denoting sales of 800,000copies.On the European Hot 100 Singles chart, "Bad Romance" spent two weeks at number one. It topped the charts in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Sweden, and Norway. In the UK, "Bad Romance" debuted at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart. In December 2009, the song reached the top spot with 72,919copies sold, making Gaga the first female artist to have three number-one singles in one year. It attained multi-platinum certification by the British Phonographic Industry. According to the British company Phonographic Performance Limited, the song was the UK's most played in 2010. As of February2025, "Bad Romance" has sold 2.2million copies with 145million streams, making it Gaga's third best selling single in the UK.
"Bad Romance" debuted at number 16 on the ARIA Singles Chart in Australia and at number 33 on the RIANZ Singles Chart in New Zealand before peaking at number two in both countries. The song was certified eleven times platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association for shipment of 770,000copies. The song sold 9.7 million copies worldwide in 2010—making it the second best-selling of the year—and 12million as of 2018, becoming one of the best-selling singles of all time.