●●●●○

Lady Gaga has returned after a three year hiatus with a track that possesses all the drive and restlessness of 2015’s gynocentric Mad Max: Fury Road. Assisted by Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, Mark Ronson, and BloodPop, much like Fury Road, Gaga goes high-octane fast and doesn’t relent, her untreated voice backed by disco-rock guitars, synth, and a thundering four-on-the-floor drum beat.

Gaga’s minor key hollering about mistaking something for love and the realisation of its illusory quality, meanwhile, correspond with the aesthetic concept of Schein. Often translated as “semblance”, it suggests a dialectic of deception in contrast to revelation. It is precisely Gaga’s redemption from both the aesthetic and lived illusion of love (“I still feel the blow but at least now I know…”), which sustains this dialectic on the track.

The aesthetic illusion’s redemption finds its climax in Gaga’s first ever outright key change at the 1:50 mark. This shift (up a major second) is unprecedented in her work, with the most notable previous modulation (in the choruses of 2008’s “Paparazzi”) being done via a rather clever use of an established classical music theory transition. Signalled with a crescendo here, this key change makes no qualms about its indiscriminate cranking up of an already piercing melody.

 
If the appearance of pure integration is illusion pushed to the extreme, “Perfect Illusion” asserts that an element of disintegration and deceit is preconditional in art, as in life. Gaga’s career has arguably been built upon such an illusory wholeness, her success a product of a seamless amalgamation of pop music, fashion, and high art. But it can only go so far. Gaga’s critical relationship towards such utterly second-hand tools as the brazen key change on display here see her proving that a more true unity can only be achieved through disjunction, not in spite of it.