She's usually known for her outrageous costumes and makeup, but Lady Gaga’s newest album "Joanne" shows her more authentic self in a stripped-down, country-leaning performance that critics say is nonetheless powerful in the honesty and intimacy of its simplicity.
Although some songs like "A-Yo" and "John Wayne" beg for a stadium (Gaga is headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show in February), most of the tracks are as devoid of showiness as Gaga is on the cover, clad in a simple hairdo, simple makeup, and a simple pink hat. The album was named after Gaga’s aunt who died recently.
Although some critics weren’t impressed, others hailed the album as Gaga’s best work in years and were drawn to the depth and sincerity of her newest self-reinvention. Here's what they had to say"
Rolling Stone: "'Joanne' is Lady Gaga’s best album in five years, since the disco-stick hair-metal manifesto that was 'Born This Way.' ... It works best when Gaga gets some grit into the songwriting, especially the hands-down highlight 'Sinner's Prayer,' a faux-country family melodrama when she wails, 'I don’t wanna break the heart of any other man but you.'"
USA Today: "'Joanne' still bears traces of Gaga's hit-making past, and is being marketed as such, in lead singles 'Perfect Illusion' and 'A-YO.' But the rest of the album tells a different story, one of an artist stripping away the theatrics that have accompanied the rest of her releases for a collection of songs colored by country and western, invoking the genre's familiar specters of trouble-causing cowboys, independent women, and God.
The New York Times: "Even the best parts of 'Joanne' — and for all this album’s flaws, it has several strong moments — don’t tell a coherent story. Lady Gaga is, now as ever, an impressive if not especially nuanced singer. Often on this album, she sings with a stern, terse vibrato that codes seriousness from a distance but feels more like a simulacrum of feeling than the real thing. Even if that is purposeful, it feels misapplied on an album that pretends to transparency, from an artist for whom the idea of performance is never far away."
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