Lady Gaga's best song on each album

01 of 09

Best track from every Lady Gaga album

Our love affair with Lady Gaga's music has been anything but a bad romance. And, with the release of Gaga's third remix album, Dawn of Chromatica, the EW team tackled one of the most heated debates amongst the staff: Which song is the best from every Lady Gaga album? Because Cheek to Cheek and Love for Sale are all covers, we've excluded them here, but we chose to include the A Star Is Born soundtrack, given Gaga's instrumental role in writing and recording it. Everyone has a million reasons behind their favorites, but, in the end, only the following eight songs could be the queen of the Monster ball.

02 of 09

The Fame (2008): "Paparazzi"

"Just Dance" and "Poker Face" may have been Gaga's first two singles—and the tracks that made her a star—but this twisted take on stalkerish devotion was far and away the EW staff fave. While so much of The Fame are solid dance tracks that prove Gaga was born to be a pop star, "Paparazzi" is the track that really points to her ability to interrogate fame and love in compelling, provocative ways. It proved that, while Gaga was always down to make you dance, she was also unafraid to push the envelope and explore the vagaries of love, sexuality, fame, and more in her songwriting. We're this song's biggest fan, we'll follow it until it loves us. —Maureen Lee Lenker

03 of 09

The Fame Monster (2009): "Bad Romance"

Could there be any other choice? "Telephone" has the strength of an iconic music video, but from the moment "Bad Romance" dropped, Gaga ra-ra-ah-ah-ah'd her way into our hearts. Its dance beat combined with boundary-pushing lyrics defined so much of what the world has come to associate with Gaga as an artist, while ironically also pointing to her own oft-unlucky love life. It won two Grammy awards, firmly enshrining it as a Gaga all-time classic. But, beyond that, the song firmly rooted her in a surrealist, pulsating, provocative sensibility that still defines her artistry today. There will never be a time that we don't want it bad, this bad romance. —M.L.L.

04 of 09

Born This Way (2011): "Yoü and I"

It feels impossible to choose one track off this album with its wealth of riches that includes "Born This Way," "Judas," "The Edge of Glory," and "Marry the Night." But, EW staff opted for the first big single to really nod to Gaga's piano-playing, singer-songwriter roots. There's still a hint of the glam rock she loves so well here, particularly in Brian May of Queen's guitar solo, but it's altogether a more stripped-down song than the pop bops that dominated her early career. It's become a stalwart classic at her live shows, a chance to make it just about the piano and her deeply powerful voice that we love just as much as her distinct dance moves and pop bravado. There's just something (something) about this song. —M.L.L.

05 of 09

Artpop (2013): "Applause"

Lady Gaga lives for the applause, and we live for the way this song makes us feel. Artpop pushes Gaga's pop sensibilities to their limit, infusing her pop-rock brand with heavy EDM and techno influences. The entire album—but "Applause" in particular—offers a return to the electropop sound that launched Gaga's career. We love the duality of this track, its desire to plumb the lines between art and pop culture, while also celebrating Gaga's pure love for performance and, well, applause. Lyrics don't get much clearer than "I live for the applause, applause, applause," and we love that Gaga so unabashedly loves performing and the high she gets from applause. So, here's a standing ovation for Gaga and this Artpop track. —M.L.L.

06 of 09

Joanne (2016): "Million Reasons"

While Gaga is the queen of the glam pop dance track, she's equally adept with a bare-bones ballad. In its totality, Joanne offers listeners a softer, more stripped-down version of the often outré star. "Million Reasons" is perhaps the purest reflection of this, with its pleading, plaintive tone and its emphasis on Gaga's own spirituality in the lyrics: "I bow down to pray." It showcases the haunting beauty of Gaga's voice in unprecedented fashion. With her Sound of Music medley performance at the 2015 Oscars, Gaga began to transition to a new image, exposing even more of her trauma and pain. The master of contorting her public image, she opted instead for authenticity, and it reached its crescendo in "Million Reasons" meditation on self-doubt and yearning. We've got a hundred million reasons to love this song, but we only need one good one to put it on our list. —M.L.L.

07 of 09

A Star Is Born soundtrack (2018): "Always Remember Us This Way"

There's an A Star Is Born track for every mood, and the EW staff's devotion to them is as varied and beautiful as the soundtrack itself. "Shallow" might seem the obvious choice, given that it won the Oscar for Best Original Song, but we've opted for another Ally ballad, "Always Remember Us This Way." Lyrics like "That Arizona sky burning in your eyes," "It's buried in my soul like California gold," and "Lovers in the night/Poets trying to write," make the song a poem in its own right, evocative and elegiac. The piano-driven ballad is a showcase for Gaga's powerhouse voice, as it moves from the whisperings of its opening lines, soft and invoking love as an act of prayer, to the heroic belt of the chorus. While "Shallow" is a roller coaster ride of romantic discovery and yearning, this song is a full-throated expression of love. "Shallow" may have earned Gaga an Oscar, but we'll always remember the film and Gaga's emergence as a true movie star this way. —M.L.L.

08 of 09

Chromatica (2020): "911"

For many, Gaga's sixth studio album will always be the one that got away. Released in May 2020, Chromatica was supposed to be a return to form, her most club-tailored effort to date, the soundtrack to Pride parties everywhere. Instead, eclipsed by a raging pandemic, it arrived with little fanfare, at least by Gaga standards; we didn't so much crash-land on planet Chromatica as get a glimpse of it while cruising by on our COVID-paranoia rockets. Yet, if any song on the record encapsulates that bizarre, frantic, vulnerable moment in time, it's "911," a song detailing how the antipsychotic drug olanzapine basically saved Gaga's life. Its blend of disco, synth-pop, and techno was as dizzying as the summer's news cycle, the artist's robo-vocals as deadening and monotonous as those endless months spent in lockdown, the lyrics ("My mood's shifting to manic places," "Watch life, here I go again") eerily relevant. The single's surreal video and the myriad memes that it and its orchestral intro "Chromatica II" spawned aside, "911" resonates because it's about owning your limitations, taking control of your life, and, maybe most important, still carving out space to dance—even if you can't leave home to do it. —Jason Lamphier

09 of 09

Dawn of Chromatica (2021): "Babylon (Bree Runway & Jimmy Edgar Remix)"

While most remix albums are a further celebration of the lead artist's music, the forward-thinking Gaga uses Dawn of Chromatica to also spotlight some of the recent pop talent that's blossomed in her image. Artists like Charli XCX, Rina Sawayama, and Arca tinkering with her latest body of work leads to expected delights, but, in terms of the more unconventional choices, it's Bree Runway who shines. The British rapper instinctively understands the vibe of the album's runway stomp closer, first serving her fellow little monsters some referential, tongue-in-cheek bars like "Just dance, Bree, it'll be okay/Don't act up with your poker face," and then switching things up with an electric layer of harmonies, holding her own between Gaga and the background choir. The Detroit musician is a welcome addition as well, giving the production a hefty kick, and some rousing beat drops. —Marcus Jones