Real Life Rock Top 10: April 1, 2025
Battle of three bands and two TV commercials
1 Lady Gaga, “How Bad Do U Want Me,” from Mayhem (Interscope). This song brings home to me what I hope for from Lady Gaga: something you can imagine her singing on that stage in A Star Is Born when Bradley Cooper walks in and you can believe he’ll never be the same. This comes close—there are moments at the end of a movement when it seems like she might really dive off of the song into the boiling waters of “Bad Romance.” That will never happen again—all those scenes in A Star Is Born where the star that’s being born is trained right out of herself have echoed through her music since. Which is why the title of this album pales against all the Dean Winters Allstate commercials starring his character of the same name that so brighten the airwaves. He was great in Homicide, he added a sense of humor to Special Victims Unit that not even Richard Belzer was allowed to do, and he keeps this long-running joke about wrecking cars and breaking up houses alive.