This Time I’m Not Leaving Without Yoü

Lady Gaga “Yoü and I”

“Yoü and I” isn’t merely a love song. It’s a grandiose display of affection; a monument to the man Gaga loves. It’s a power ballad about Gaga and her on-and-off boyfriend Lüc Carl, a guy who, by all accounts, is the love of her life. He’s a rocker dude, so it’s a big rock song. There’s a bit of Shania Twain country rock in the mix, but it’s mostly a pastiche of Def Leppard, Guns N’ Roses and Queen. Since Gaga has the economic leverage to achieve stylistic verisimilitude through hiring her influences, Def Leppard/Shania mastermind Mutt Lange produced the track, which samples Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and features a guitar solo from Brian May. (Maybe an alternate version exists in which Axl Rose sings back-up vocals.)

The song plays power chords and glam metal solos on my heart strings. I get totally overwhelmed by the starry-eyed passion expressed in this music. I feel her joy, but I also feel a pang of envy. “Yoü and I” makes me want to love someone this much. It makes me wonder what it must be like for someone to love you so much that they need to pay tribute to you with a stadium anthem.

There’s an aspirational quality to this song. It’s a fantasy of something pure and wonderful, but also flawed. They break up, they screw up. She’s chasing him down for years and hoping that this time it might work out. This is the flip side of “Bad Romance;” the version where the drama and angst results in the happiest possible ending. In either case, Gaga presents her relationship as a narrative, an epic romance between two archetypes — the New York Woman and her Cool Nebraska Guy. As a result, her love life becomes a work of art as thoroughly aestheticized as any of her songs, outfits, videos or performances.

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