Fun Tonight

Album: Chromatica (2020)
Charted: 111
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Songfacts®:

  • This contemplative track finds Lady Gaga pouring her heart out about her struggles with depression. She recounts the contradiction between her craving for life in the public eye and her private battles with mental illness.

    You love the paparazzi, love the fame
    Even though you know it causes me pain
    I feel like I'm in a prison hell
    Stick my hands through the steel bars and yell


    Gaga told Beats 1's Zane Lowe "Fun Night" means so much to her she gets "choked up" whenever she listens to it.
  • Gaga wrote the song with producers Rami Yacoub, Burns and BloodPop. The buoyant house-pop production contrasts with the downbeat lyrics. Said the "Poker Face" singer: "I can't tell you how many nights that people who really loved me, trying to get me to smile, or laugh or be optimistic, and I just had no ability to be happy, it just wasn't there. But then I would write this music and I would listen back and I'd go, 'Why is that so fun? Why is that so happy?'"
  • Rami Yacoub, Burns and BloodPop's other productions on Chromatica include "Rain On Me" and "Sour Candy."
  • Lady Gaga addresses her struggles with mental illness on multiple Chromatica tracks. She told American Songwriter magazine that "Fun Tonight" is actually "one of the saddest songs on the album," as she's singing it to herself.

    "I was kind of incapable at certain moments of being happy for other people when they were having fun," she explained. "And I would sit with myself and think, 'I don't care how many people I see dancing or smiling right now. I cannot have fun.' Then after I wrote the record, I listened back to it and I said, 'I'm singing to myself.'"

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