Let’s Give It Up for the Freaks

It’s fair to say we’re living in some freaky times, and what better way to think through this moment than to listen to some of the most legendary freaks in music? Lady Gaga, Robert Smith of the Cure, and Tyler, the Creator are each freaks in their own right — and obviously not in any sort of pejoratively way. A freak to us is someone who’s unique, nonconforming, and continues to redefine norms. Ahead, the Switched on Pop staff have a roundtable discussion on three recently released singles from each of these artists to get to the bottom of their respective freakishness.

“Disease,” Lady Gaga

Nate Sloan: This song, true to its title, is all about disease. The chorus alone: “Eyes roll back in ecstasy / I can smell your sickness / I can cure your disease.”

Charlie Harding: Those are some freaky metaphors.

Reanna Cruz: Quite freaky. That’s classic Gaga. Since the early days of her career, she has talked about nasty things on songs. And while disease was already discussed on “Bad Romance,” this is next level.

N.S.: I’m glad you mentioned “Bad Romance,” Reanna, because I feel like this is something of a return to classic Gaga here. You know, what have we heard from Gaga recently? She had this duet with Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile,” which is a kind of ’70s retro power duet. We’ve had her Folie à Deux tie-in album, Harlequin, which was kind of old-school cabaret-style torch songs. And going further back to her last big album, Chromatica, that was kind of house music for the end of the world. So it’s been a while since we’ve heard the “Bad Romance”–style Gaga, and it’s refreshing to hear this freaky darkness from her. To me what makes this song so freakish is the way it blurs harmonic identity to create a metaphor between “Disease” and the Cure.

R.C.: Wait, the band? I thought you were making a joke, cause Gaga also has a song called “The Cure.”

N.S.: The band! Before we’ve even heard a single lyric of this song, we’ve gotten this dissonant tension between the major and the minor third, and we’ve got this choked Gaga utterance, like exasperated an cry. Then the verse drops.

I also hate that I’m about to say this, but I am bound by the musicologist version of the Hippocratic Oath to point out that this melody we hear at the beginning of verse one is very similar to another recent pop song by a legacy act: Katy Perry’s “Woman’s World.”

C.H.: Stop it.

R.C.: Oh my God. Nate, you’re so right.

N.S.: Not exactly, but very reminiscent. I just had to point that out. Now that that’s out of the way … We have already established the theme of this song. There’s this disease. This person is running out of medicine, then we get to the pre-chorus and it feels like it’s getting progressively more classic Gaga and the freakiness is just kind of ratcheting up — you know, “poison on the inside / screaming for me, baby.” It’s getting darker and darker.

R.C.: I find “Disease” to be very similar to the work that Gaga did on Artpop, where we have these maximalist synthesizers and these weird vocal quirks. I find Artpop to be her most freaky album, so I think that’s why, when listening to this song, I automatically place it next to songs like “Swine.”

“Noid,” Tyler, the Creator

R.C.: Speaking of freaks, we have one of the head freaks of hip-hop with a new album: Tyler, the Creator, and his record Chromakopia. I want to focus on the album’s lead single, “Noid.” You have this chorus singing the word “paranoid” over and over and over again. The song obviously wears its themes on its sleeve.

C.H.: I feel like this paranoid feeling is created through this heavy electric guitar riff — that da dum. Every time it hits, it comes in at a different place in the bar. You can’t anticipate it. It’s constantly moving around.

R.C.: I love that guitar riff. It’s — to use the F bomb again — freaky. It’s actually a sample from a Zambian rock song: “Nizakupanga Ngozi,” by Ngozi Family.

C.H.: The first thing I thought of when I heard “Noid” was not Zambian rock but Black Sabbath and the king of freaks himself, Ozzy Osbourne. I thought it sounded like “Paranoid.”

R.C.: Yeah, similarly, I thought the sample sounded like Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.”

N.S.: Tyler is such a singular artist in this current era. He has these songs that are kind of out there and dark. He doesn’t always stick in one genre in a clear way. And yet he seems to be always rewarded for his almost outsider approach to pop.

R.C.: On this track, he struggles with the pressures of being famous and constantly feeling paranoid, and he jumps around within multiple genres. The intro, we get this psychedelic, zamrock vibe, but later on the song, Tyler raps — and the way he raps is extremely stream of consciousness. It kind of just keeps going over this, like, rising synthesizer and percussion rhythm. It gives that physical feeling like Tyler is actively running as he’s rapping.

C.H.: So you’re saying that these background vocals and these extra vocal melodies that are sort of swirling around our head, this is the paranoia.

R.C.: Exactly. And you know, we have these chords at the end — these jazzy melodies underscoring lyrics about these paranoid feelings. And it’s kind of comforting framing it this way over all of these voices that very melodically are singing things like “who’s looking in my window?”

C.H.: Oh, this is freaky.

R.C.: He’s always leaned into the freaky.

“Alone,” The Cure

R.C.: You know who else has created dark meditations on the perils of fame? The Cure.

N.S.: The final freak in our trilogy, Robert Smith.

R.C.: The Cure are known for atmospheric sounds and introspective lyrics about joy, love, and heartbreak. But also isolation and despair.

N.S.: These songs have a lot of emotional complexity to them. They are whole universes unto themselves.

C.H.: We’re going to focus on “Alone,” the lead single from their new album. The song puts me in a state of deep despair — these haunting strings and ghostly pianos and synthesizers. It sounds like we’re in a vacuum chamber of droning, distorted guitars. Robert also starts with this grim lyric: “This is the end of every song that we sing / The fire burned out to ash and the stars grown dim with tears.”

R.C.: First song in almost decades and that’s what you open with.

C.H.: It feels like we’re pondering some big questions about mortality, our place in the world. He goes on to ask about what has happened to our hopes.

N.S.: It’s uncanny how similar that vocal sounds to all the Cure tracks from the ’70s and ’80s.

C.H.: It’s amazing. And I feel like he accomplishes this feeling of suspended animation. Are we achieving our hopes and dreams? By creating a non-resolving chord progression that seemingly never ends. The whole thing just kinda hangs.

N.S.: I feel like listening to this song is whetting my appetite to check out the rest of this album, which I’ve seen reviews calling it this remarkable extension of the band’s legacy after 16 years. Yet I’m concerned that we haven’t delivered on our promise of this trilogy of freaks. Is this song freaky?

R.C.: Mmm.

C.H.: My gosh, it’s so freaky. It’s like contemplating mortality and what the future is gonna be. All our hopes and dreams are out the window. The rest of this album talks about war and the state of the world. It also does offer some hints of love and promise, uh, here and there. But, it’s mostly with dealing with death, despair, the fear of the unknown. That’s freaky to me.

N.S.: All right. You’ve persuaded me. We came, we saw, we freaked.

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