Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande - Rain On Me (Arca Remix)

  • Arca turns Gaga's smash hit into a floating mass of ethereal vocal chops and elegant instrumentation.
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  • Lady Gaga's Dawn Of Chromatica is one of the most audacious mainstream remix albums, well, ever, featuring paradigm-shifting contributions from the likes of LSDXOXO, Doss, Coucou Chloe and Lil Texas (who provides a bananas speedcore drop at the end of "Sine From Above"). Maybe the most eyebrow-raising remix is Arca's take on "Rain On Me," the album's smash hit and collaboration with Ariana Grande. The remix is both about as unusual as you'd expect yet also unusually approachable: it morphs through several different sections, pulling the rug out from under the first chorus and then building up for a drop that dissipates into gorgeous plucked string work. From here, Arca plays out bits and pieces of Grande and Gaga's vocals, looping them into wordless hooks with the grace and sampling genius of her most recent works before, driving towards a hectic but satisfying climax. Giving over the album's biggest sound to an iconoclastic artist like Arca—and actually taking it further away from the dance floor than the original—is a bold decision that pays off. Dawn Of Chromatica isn't perfect, but it feels like it could be the future of pop music.
RA