"You and I" (stylized as "Yoü and I") is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Lady Gaga, taken from her second studio album, Born This Way (2011). She also co-produced it with Robert John "Mutt" Lange. The track samples Queen's "We Will Rock You" (1977) and features electric guitar by Queen's Brian May. Gaga debuted "You and I" in June 2010 during her performance at Elton John's White Tie and Tiara Ball. Footage of the performance appeared on the Internet, and positive response encouraged her to include the song on her setlist for The Monster Ball Tour. She later performed the song on Today to a record crowd in July 2010, and on The Oprah Winfrey Show in May 2011. On August 23, 2011, Interscope Records released the song as the fourth single from the album.
"You and I" is a downtempo song featuring instrumentation from electric guitars and piano, with Gaga and Lange providing background vocals. The song received critical acclaim, with reviewers listing it as one of the highlights from Born This Way. After the release of the parent album, "You and I" charted in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, due to digital downloads from the parent album. After being released as a single, "You and I" reached the top ten in the US, Japan, and seven additional countries. The song was also certified Triple Platinum in the US for selling three million units. Season ten American Idol contestant Haley Reinhart performed "You and I" in May 2011 before its release, earning positive reviews. Her studio recording was released to the iTunes Store as a single, and appeared on the compilation album, American Idol Top 5 Season 10. "You and I" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 54th Grammy Awards, which was held on February 12, 2012.
The accompanying music video for "You and I" was also met with a positive response. It was shot by Gaga's long-time collaborator Laurieann Gibson in Springfield, Nebraska, and it was released on August 16, 2011. It features Yüyi, Gaga's mermaid alter ego, and Jo Calderone, Gaga's male alter ego, who also appears on the single's cover. Gaga later performed the song dressed as Jo Calderone at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The song has subsequently been performed on the singer's concert tours and residencies.
Background and release
"You and I", written by Lady Gaga and produced by Gaga and Robert John "Mutt" Lange, was one of the first songs previewed from the album. Gaga said she wrote the song in New York, while she was busy playing her old piano. The singer first played "You and I" at Elton John's White Tie and Tiara Ball in June 2010. She said that the song was a bit of a "rock-and-roll tune" and, as such, was unlikely to be released as a single from Born This Way. She said that it "is very dear" to her heart. Footage of the performance appeared on the Internet soon after, and positive response encouraged Lady Gaga to perform the song during the first concert of the North American leg of The Monster Ball Tour in Montreal. Gaga told MSNBC's Meredith Vieira and Ann Curry that "'You and I' was written about the most important person that I ever met", allegedly Lüc Carl, her ex-boyfriend.
Gaga announced "You and I" as the fourth single from Born This Way on July 22, 2011. Its cover, released on August 5, 2011, via TwitPic, was accompanied by the line: "You will never find what you are looking for in love, if you don't love yourself." It features two black-and-white images of Gaga's male alter ego Jo Calderone smoking a cigarette and sporting sideburns. The Calderone character made a previous appearance in June 2011, when Gaga posed as him in London for a series of photos by photographer Nick Knight, arranged by stylist Nicola Formichetti. One shot features him wearing a blazer and white T-shirt with his head down smoking a cigarette. The other image is of Jo Calderone in silhouette exhaling a cloud of smoke.
A writer for Australia's The Daily Telegraph described the images as having a moody and scruffy look, and felt that Gaga had become "bored with being an outrageous woman and has decided to switch gender instead." Rap-Ups David Jones commented that Gaga's Calderone character appearing on the cover looked similar to musician Bob Dylan. Steve Pond of Reuters stated about the artwork: "Lady Gaga loves herself even when she's dressed as a guy."
Composition
"You and I" was written solely by Gaga. The song has rock, arena rock, and country music influences, and features British rock band Queen's guitarist Brian May. It was recorded by Tom Ware and Horace Ward at the Warehouse Productions Studio in Omaha, Nebraska, and Allerton Hill in the United Kingdom, respectively. Along with May, Justin Shirley Smith also played guitars; Gene Grimaldi mastered the track. Olle Romo did additional recording and programming. Gaga teased that "someone legendary" would be producing the track before production credits were announced in April 2011. Gaga, a Queen fan (even taking her stage name from the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga"), admitted to "[falling] to the floor crying and laughing" when she found out that May agreed to the collaboration. Lange asked Gaga to record a "rough lead vocal" for the track while she was touring. Gaga later recalled: "I had about 30 cigarettes and a couple of glasses of Jameson and just put on a click track and sang my face off, thinking we'd redo the vocals." However, Lange was satisfied with her recording and used it on the track. Ware recalled that the song was recorded the night after Gaga's March 17, 2011, concert for The Monster Ball Tour. She welcomed his opinions and encouraged his input which he said helped make the four-hour session the best working experience he has had with a celebrity. "She was flattering toward the studio — and Omaha, too, for that matter. She is a bright young lady with remarkable music instincts who charts her own path," he added.
According to the sheet music published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, "You and I" is set in common time with a slow tempo of 60 beats per minute. It is written in the key of A major. During the song Gaga's voice spans from the notes of E3 to C5. The song begins with an A–G–A chord progression, which changes to A–Bm/A–D/A–Bm during the chorus, and back to the former chords afterwards. The opening lyrics—"It's been a long time since I came around/ It's been a long time, but I'm back in town/ And this time, I'm not leaving without you"—describe a whiskey-breathed lover for whom she is pining. Gil Kaufman of MTV News described it as the "tune eschewed most of her dance flavor, right down to a rollicking barrel-house piano solo." Her voice sounded like growling during the main verses, where she sings the lines: "He said, 'Sit back down where you belong, in the corner of my bar with your high heels on, Sit back down on the couch where we made love the first time..."
Noting the differences between live performances of the song and the studio version, Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph observed that the piano parts were replaced mostly by "fizzing synths, a stomping beat sampled from "We Will Rock You", thundering electric guitars and backing vocals stacked into shimmering choral walls." Kitty Empire of The Guardian described the song as an "umlaut-toting digital country power ballad" with two Bruce Springsteen references: "born to run" and Nebraska.
Critical reception
"You and I" received acclaim from music critics. After hearing the White Tie and Tiara Ball performance, Entertainment Weekly Leah Greenblatt complimented the song for its "torchy, slow-burn cabaret quality" and for lacking "Auto-Tune, fancy production, or performance gimmicks." McCormick, noting the differences between Gaga's live and studio versions of the song, described the studio version as "bigger, bolder and less quirkily emotive, a custom-built radio rock ballad to induce hand claps in packed stadiums. This is not music for the underground: it is cheesy, high-gloss, pop rock for the mainstream middle, a kind of instant Eighties retro classic to seduce middle-aged rockers – possibly the last demographic to remain sceptical about her appeal." Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone called the song a confessional power ballad "with a torrid, Sturm und Drang vocal turn". In his review for The Guardian, Tim Jonze said the song "aims for a 'Hey Jude' style singalong but – owing to its determination to have someone playing kitchen sink in the background – ends up as bloated as Oasis' 'All Around the World'." Kitty Empire said the song is Gaga's "unlikely heartland moment – a bid, perhaps, to locate herself as an all-American balladeer as well as an art-disco avatar with tent pegs under her skin", referring to the prosthetics featured in the music video for the song "Born This Way".
The Dartmouth Kate Sullivan wrote that "You and I" may be Gaga's most honest song to date. Shirley Halperin of The Hollywood Reporter wondered whether pop radio would play the song, considering Gaga's popularity. Halperin felt that the track emoted "a sense of grandness that listeners don't always get with Gaga's RedOne-produced heavily synthetic sounds." Conversely, she felt that the live piano and background vocals by Gaga and Lange added "an undeniably lush quality, while the lyrics drives the song home and potentially into hit territory." Kerri Mason of Billboard felt that the "country ballad" made no contextual sense. Nekesa Mumbi Moody, while reviewing Born This Way for Florida Today, compared the song to "Speechless", a similar tempo song included on The Fame Monster (2009). Robert Copsey, a writer for the website Digital Spy gave the song four out of five stars calling it a "torchy, retro-classic, all-American power ballad custom-built for the masses – and one we suspect Stefani would be proud to call her own." Amy Sciarretto of Artistdirect concluded that the song was "a bit bluesier than anything you'd expect from the dance floor icon." AllMusics Stephen Thomas Erlewine chose the song as a highlight on Born This Way saying that Gaga shows her vulnerability in it.
"You and I" was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, which was held on February 12, 2012.
Chart performance
In the United States, "You and I" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 36 on the June 11, 2011 chart, having sold 83,000 downloads. The song re-entered the August 27, 2011, Billboard Hot 100 at number 96, while debuting on the Pop Songs chart at number 35. The following week, the song was the greatest gainer on the digital chart, entering at number 24 having sold 56,000 copies, while moving to number 35 on the Hot 100. It also gained airplay and became the highest debuting song on the Radio Songs chart, entering at number 58 with 22 million audience impressions. Following her performance on the MTV Video Music Awards, "You and I" moved up to number 16 on the Hot 100, with a 92% increase in digital sales to 109,000 and a 50% increase in airplay to 32 million, according to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems. The following week, it moved to number six on the Hot 100 with a 61% increase in digital sales to 175,000 and a 32% increase in radio play to 41 million audience impressions, reaching number four and number 23 on the Digital Songs and Radio Songs charts, respectively. "You and I" became Gaga's eleventh consecutive top ten single on the Hot 100. In October 2011 it became Gaga's tenth song to sell 1 million in the U.S. As of February 2018, "You and I" has sold 2.4 million digital downloads in the US becoming Gaga's tenth two-million seller. In February 2016, "You and I" received a triple platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America.