"Judas" is a song by American singer Lady Gaga, recorded for her second studio album, Born This Way (2011). It was released by Interscope Records on April 15, 2011, as the second single from the album. Written and produced by Lady Gaga and RedOne, it is an electro house song about a woman in love with a man who betrayed her. It embodies the incidents that have haunted Gaga in the past, and its core meaning refers to the negative parts of her life that she cannot escape. Gaga has further explained that the song was also about honoring one's inner darkness in order to bring oneself into the light. The artwork for the single was designed by Gaga in Microsoft Word. In spite of a polarizing impact on several religious groups, the song was generally well received by critics, who likened the song to "Bad Romance" with some noting it should have been the album's lead single.
The song has a similar sound to Gaga's previous RedOne-produced tracks, including "Poker Face", "LoveGame", "Bad Romance", and "Alejandro". It contains three distinct hooks and a house-influenced break down. Gaga explained that the lines spoken during the breakdown talk about her as beyond redemption, regarding the traditional views of what a woman should be. Commercially, "Judas" reached the top ten in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Years later, its resurgence on TikTok propelled it to number 73 on the Billboard Global 200 and helped it surpass one billion streams on Spotify, becoming the most-streamed song from Born This Way. It received a diamond certification in Brazil, multi-platinum certifications in Australia and the United States, and platinum certifications in Greece, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
A music video for the song was filmed in April 2011, co-directed by Gaga and Laurieann Gibson and co-starring Norman Reedus and Rick Gonzalez. It has a Biblical storyline where Gonzalez played a Jesus-like character, Reedus played Judas Iscariot and Gaga played Mary Magdalene. The video portrays them as modern day missionaries going to Jerusalem. It included the Biblical story of Judas betraying Jesus, and ended with Gaga as Magdalene getting stoned to death. Before its release, the Catholic League condemned Gaga for the use of religious imagery and her role in the video. However, the video was generally praised by critics and nominated for two awards at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Gaga has performed "Judas" on a number of television shows, including The Graham Norton Show, Saturday Night Live, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Good Morning Americas "Summer Concert Series", and many of her concert tours and other performances.
Background "Judas" was revealed as the name of the second single in Gaga's interview for Vogue. Gaga confirmed the release of "Judas" as the second single, on Ryan Seacrest's radio show on February 14, 2011, and also revealed RedOne as the co-producer of the song. At the 53rd Grammy Awards, RedOne told MTV News that if the previous single, the title track from Born This Way, polarized people, "Judas" was expected to shock them more. On the talk show Last Call with Carson Daly, Gaga explained to the host that "Judas" was about always falling in love with the wrong man over and over again. "'Judas' is a very, very dark song. It's rad", she added. With MSN Canada, Gaga revealed the metaphors and the meaning behind the song: 'Judas' is a metaphor and an analogy about forgiveness and betrayal and things that haunt you in your life and how I believe that it's the darkness in your life that ultimately shines and illuminates the greater light that you have upon you. Someone once said to me, 'If you have no shadows then you're not standing in the light.' So the song is about washing the feet of both good and evil and understanding and forgiving the demons from your past in order to move into the greatness of your future. I just like really aggressive metaphors—harder, thicker, darker—and my fans do as well. So it is a very challenging and aggressive metaphor, but it is a metaphor. Gaga further elaborated on the inspiration behind the song as walking towards the light force in her life and peering towards the devil in the back, while clutching onto the source of the light. "I sing about what a holy fool I am, and that although moments in my life are so cruel and relationships can be so cruel I'm still in love with Judas. I still go back again to those evil things," she said. During her interview with Google, Gaga added to the song's meaning as honoring one's inner darkness in order to bring themselves into the light. One has to learn to forgive themselves in order to move on with their life. With Popjustice she clarified that she has a lot of things that have haunted her from her past, including her choices, men, drug abuse, being afraid to go back to New York, confronting old romances. Hence "Judas" represented something that was not good for her, something she could not escape. Gaga said: "I keep going back and forth between the darkness and the light in order to understand who I am."
Composition Garibay said that "Judas" sounded similar to many of Gaga's previous singles, like "Poker Face", "LoveGame", "Bad Romance", and "Alejandro". According to Jocelyn Vena of MTV, "Judas" finds Gaga in a similar territory music-wise but vocally she is in completely new territory; according to Popjustice, in the verses and pre-chorus, Gaga hurls herself into a decadent half-sung, half-rapped Jamaican Patois style." Jason Gregory of Gigwise called the song a "heavy slice of electro-house of the highest order". The song contains three hooks, and begins with Gaga singing the line "Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, I'm in love with Judas", accompanied by building synths. This is followed by a thumping electronic beat, as Gaga sings, "Judas/ Juda-a-ah/ Gaga". The utterance of these words are reminiscent of the opening verse in "Bad Romance". Gaga's vocals are partially spoken, and at times have a Caribbean accent. The first verse follows as: "When he comes to me I am ready/ I'll wash his feet with my hair if he needs/ Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain/ Even after three times, he betrays me/ I'll bring him down, a king with no crown." The tone lightens up on the song's chorus, which is influenced by '80s pop in its melody, as the beat picks up a bit and Gaga sings, "I'm just a holy fool/ Oh, baby, it's so cruel/ But I'm still in love with Judas, baby."
After the second verse and chorus, the song features a break down influenced by house music. Gaga chants the lines in the same way she does in the middle of "Born This Way". Then she sings, "I wanna love you/ But something's pulling me away from you/ Jesus is my virtue, Judas is the demon I cling to, I cling to." In this section, Gaga's vocals drew comparison to that of Rihanna's by Matthew Perpetua of Rolling Stone. He also added that her voice sounded less dark and dramatic and was full of "bubbly sweetness". Popjustice wrote that the breakdown sounded like tribal-techno, and the whole song was "a turbo-charged electrogothic wrongness anthem". Dan Martin from NME wrote that the breakdown was in the dubstep genre with the chorus being "pure-pop". There were some similarities and influences of "Bad Romance" in the song, which Gaga said was deliberate. She explained that while sometimes it is important for her to push herself in new directions, she did want her characteristic sound to be imbibed in her records. "I wanted ['Judas'] to be an evolution from where I've been before but in terms of the formula I wanted there to be something about 'Judas' that reminded people of what I've done in the past," she added. According to the sheet music published on Musicnotes.com, the song is written in the time signature of common time, and is composed in the key of C minor with a tempo of 131 beats per minute. Gaga's voice ranges from the tonal nodes of B3 to E5 and the song follows a basic sequence of A–Fm7–Cm–B–Cm as its chord progression.
Gaga had posted some of the lyrics of the song in February 2011, and next month she revealed more lyrics for "Judas" in the Google interview. Gaga also confirmed that the song was influenced by the Biblical Judas Iscariot. According to Popjustice, lyrically on the surface "Judas" is a song about being double-crossed and contemplating revenge, but being repeatedly drawn to awfulness. The middle eight of the song, with the lyrics "But in the cultural sense I just speak in future tense. Judas kiss me if offenced, or wear an ear condom next time", talks about Gaga being beyond the ability to redeem herself, in terms of the traditional views of what a woman is supposed to be. "But I don't want to redeem myself, because in the cultural sense I believe that I'm just before my time. And if you don't like it, wear an ear condom," she explained. The main portion of the song is about Gaga in private and the middle eight is about Gaga in public, two themes that are explored elsewhere on the parent album too.
Artwork and release In the 42nd episode of Gaga's web video series, called Transmission Gagavision, it was revealed that the single's accompanying cover artwork was designed by Gaga in Microsoft Word and featured a black background with the word "Judas" written in red capital letters in Impact font. Below it was a red Christian cross with a heart in the middle. Gaga photographed the design on her computer screen using her cellphone "for texture," which resulted in visible pixels on the letters and cross, as well as a faint reflection of her face and hands holding the phone, to appear on the cover. The episode showed Gaga sitting in a meeting with her creative team Haus of Gaga, discussing the specifics of her album release. Scattered around Gaga were a number of photographs, which were speculated by MTV as something "Judas"-related. On one photo the word "Judas" was printed with a cross on it. Jocelyn Vena from MTV felt that the artwork could have easily appeared in director Baz Luhrmann's version of Romeo + Juliet (1996).
On the 41st episode of Transmission Gagavision, Gaga announced that the song was going to be released soon. She added the abstract message along with the announcement: "Let the cultural baptism begin. If they were not who you were taught they would be, would you still believe?" "Judas" was scheduled to be sent to mainstream airplay on April 19, 2011, and digital retailers on the same day, but after the track was leaked to the internet, its release was brought forward to April 15, 2011. This was done to counteract the pre-release leaks. Before the release, Gaga tweeted about the single, saying: "#PawsUpForJudas! I've learned love is like a brick, you can build a house or sink a dead body." On April 15, 2011, hours before the song was played on radio she again tweeted: "Even After Three Times He Betrays Me," she wrote, harking back to the song's lyrics about love and betrayal. In the United Kingdom, the song premiered on The Capital FM Network on April 15, 2011, during their program Home Run. Gaga addressed the leak in the 43rd episode of Transmission Gagavision, likening it to a disembodiment, saying, "A slow death! Just put me out of my f---ing misery, just put that sh-- out. They were tearing [the song] limb for limb. First it was the arm of the song, then the liver...."
On May 28, 2021, a bounce cover by American rapper Big Freedia was released as the first single of the tenth anniversary edition of Born This Way. Billboard ranked it as the best cover on the album, stating "her arrangement matches the original's manic energy with a totally different sonic palette: squawking horns, 808s, marching snares, and stacks of cheerleader backing vocalists."
Critical reception