Baby I Was Born This Way (Express Yourself)

The debut of the new Lady Gaga single Born This Way marks the culmination of one of the most hyped releases in recent memory. There's no video up yet (understandably, it's only just premiered on US Radio) but you can listen to it here, for the time being.

But enough of all that. What's it actually like?

First of all, take this:



Then add a bit of this:



And that's pretty much Born This Way.

Is it a good song? Yes. The lyrics in particular are unbelievably catchy and we can just imagine ourselves repeating "I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way" for about 80% of the rest of the day. The only problem we have is that at the moment, Born This Way doesn't have quite the initial impact that it does if it wasn't so reminiscent of what had gone before. Obviously a little bit of incessent radio play will soon sort that out, but for now it feels like "Gaga does Madonna" instead of "Gaga does a third album".

The good news is that Gaga has impeccabe taste in what she chooses to pay homage to. Born This Way is in every way as catchy and joyful as its source material. And there's something quite refreshing, amidst all of this impossible hype, to hear a record that's purely disco, rather than an 8 minute long operatic masterclass in which Gaga performs an aria all in the name of equal rights. Gaga has oriented Born This Way firmly to the dancefloor and does a fantastic job of it. This is a catchy, addictive record which will have people falling over themselves to dance to it (possibly literally).

When the initial excitement and "spot the similarities" competition dies down, we're confident that Born This Way will sit comfortably alongside Alejandro, Dance in the Dark and Paparazzi in the Gaga canon. It certainly whets the apppetite for when the album Born This Way makes its way out into the world.