A Timeline of Lady Gaga’s Messy Chromatica Rollout, From Pregnancy to Birth

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Like Nick Jonas’s middle tooth or Kim Kardashian’s fear of dancing, music leaks are what the universe gave to musicians to keep them from being too powerful. Lady Gaga’s new album, Chromatica, must be whole-destroyingly good because it has faced a maelstrom of leaks, mishaps, and plain ol’ drama leading up to its release this week. We should’ve known from the moment Gaga tweeted that she’s “pregnant” with the album that things were only going to get weirder. A whole pandemic, an ex-girlfriend, and even Target came out of the woodwork and threatened to derail Chromatica’s moment. A dance album set on a fictional world is exactly the escape we could use right now. To recap, here’s a timeline of LG6’s chaotic journey, which also kind of doubles as a quarantine calendar, for those of us who have lost track of time.


March 12, 2019: Lady Gaga confirms that her sixth album is officially on the way with a sarcastic tweet. “Rumors I’m pregnant?” she wrote. “Yeah, I’m pregnant with #LG6.” Congratulations, it’s a chart-topper!

October 1, 2019: Lady Gaga dedicates LG6 to the pengest ting this side of the Atlantic, Adele. “I’m calling my next album ADELE,” she tweeted one afternoon. With the glaring clarity of time, we know now that Gaga considers this album to be hugely emotional, despite the dance beats. She told Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s New Music Daily radio show that she was “miserable, sad, depressed,” and “cried constantly” while making Chromatica. If Gaga’s getting emo, we’d bet there were many long nights weeping to 25.

January 18, 2020: What was I doing on this day? What were you doing? After a snippet of Lady Gaga’s then-rumored first single, “Stupid Love,” leaked online (later leaking in full), the title went viral on Twitter. But Little Monsters … would … never!

January 22, 2020: The jig is up! Gaga tweets very specific stock photos of a young girl in a black ski mask dancing to music and looking suspicious, with the caption “can y’all stop.” She knows that’s exactly what you looked like dancing to “Stupid Love” in your room a few nights ago and, for that, she’s gonna make you wait.