How do we know? Why, she says so, over and over again, on her new song, “Judas”! And that’s just the beginning of the long, intense WTF experience that is listening to this thing. On hand here: “Bad Romance”–style “rah rahs,” only they’re “Judaaas Judah-ahs“; a massively fuzzy bass line that’s big enough, but not quite frantic enough, to be considered dupstep; a sweet, instantly agreeable hook that reiterates the song’s basic thesis; a truly awesome spoken-word part that includes the phrase “in the most biblical sense, I am beyond repentance” and then some garbled bits about “prostitutes” and “hookers” and “wenches” and the like; all manners of “whoaa-oh-ohs”; and a synth breakdown that would warm the hearts of any Tri-Lamb. The point of the fable is simple: “Jesus is my virtue,” Gaga explains, but “Judas is the demon I cling to.” And, reading between the lines, we understand that to mean: Judas is more fun to party with. (Paul Westerberg might agree: According to the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait,” Jesus “never buys any smokes.”) Anyway: If we were zooted out of our minds at five in the morning on a dance floor in the sketchy part of Berlin right now, this would almost definitely be the greatest song we’d ever heard.
