Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)
With a title seemingly mined from a Warholian crack factory, Highway Unicorn immediately seizes a picturesque hybrid of motorcycle pipes headed by the bust of a screaming Gaga, something akin to the controversial album cover to Born This Way. Despite the criticism, Gaga pulls out her pop performance shtick, calling it a mobile evolution of what her music stands for.
Progression, then, means regression, as Gaga’s talents are more repertory than revolutionary. Highway Unicorn immediately calls upon the smokin’ wheels of Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road, albeit with catchier vocalizations and sly allusions to the Arizona immigration law and gay marriage (“she don’t care if your love or the papers are the law). Gaga is the conglomerate, a pastiche of Madonna and Queen, Whitney Houston and Norah, appetized by the largest producers in the music industry and delivered at the perfect junction in American dance history. Her craft revives the 80′s glam-rock reminiscent of theatrical stagework and screaming performances, the ones littered with costumes and histrionics, traits she deems lost to modern performers today. And while everyone’s climbing up to the Gaga standard, she continuously reinvents herself, as a motorcycle no less.
Hell, those ethereal bell chimes from Marry the Night peal at the climax of the song. It’s something to produce a five-star record, and it’s even more rewarding to insert musical easter eggs to reward the faithful devouring the entirety of the album. But the lead track works too: back to exploring new streets and venturing into the Gaga microcosm as we now it.
The fantastic Highway Unicorn takes you down uncharted ambitions, with only “heels” and a “smoking gun” for company. There isn’t much assurance on the Road to Love- comfort from loneliness with only a hallucinatory unicorn to lead you otherwise from the hysterically perfect teenage exploits from movie Road Trip(s). But Gaga sits on her throne, and says, if I can do it, so can you. Highway Unicorn captures that time on the road, between pit stops, where adventure bleeds into the unknown future and even if there’s some undeniable anxiety, she reminds, “we can be strong, on this lonely road to love.” Remember, she received this magnitude of fame by pulling herself by the bootstraps (shoulderpads?); supposedly you can too.
The song’s highlight is that declarative “get your hot rods ready to rumble, cause we’re gonna fall in love tonight.” Maybe it’s the sincerity, the forcefulness or even the ridiculousness, but for a second I believed taking my beat up 94′ Camry for a spin would crash course into the person of my dreams. This power-rock-electro-mongrel is best saved for ceaseless road trips and overly long escapades of little love and even less human comfort, when you can take your wheels out and spin on a dream.
