Lady Gaga makes her return with her first full album since her 2014 collaboration with Tony Bennett, Joanne. In this album, Gaga tests the waters, expanding beyond her standard electropop and delving deeper into a versatile playlist of 14 songs.
The first half of the album features a few songs that don’t stray too far from Gaga’s past formulas. We hear catchy choruses, distorted guitars and fast tempos that move the songs along fairly well.
Midway through Joanne, Gaga slows everything down and focuses on tracks that spread themselves across a few genres. While songs like “Million Reasons” and “Angel Down” are put together with acoustic guitars and ambient percussion, exhibiting a folk flavor, others take on an a more traditional influence with standard piano chords and soulful saxophones, like “Come to Mama” and “Just Another Day.”
Because of slower pace of the latter half of the album, Gaga not only gets to present her vocal ability, but her lyrical talent as well. The songwriting cruises through multiple themes, including political commentary, friendship and religion, making this section of the album very interesting to listen to.
However, the best lyrics seem to only appear in the verses, not the choruses. During these choruses—with the exception of a few songs like “Sinner’s Prayer” and “Million Reasons”—the lyrics come off as simple and repetitive, and don’t share the same introspective sense with the verses that bookend them.
The only collaborative feature on Joanne comes in the form of “Hey Girl!,” a song where Gaga is accompanied by Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine. Their voices work well with each other and gracefully convey the song’s theme of friendship. It is intriguing to listen to both vocalists go back and forth in a refreshing duet that’s one of my favorite tracks on the project.
As a whole, Joanne represents a side of Lady Gaga that we are not used to seeing. We see Gaga really stretch her vocal talent to reach many different tones and themes. For fans of her electric dance style this may come off as uncomfortable, but this release is evidence of Gaga’s growing curiosity and desire to head into unknown territory. The album has a song for everyone so I give the album an eight out of 10 and encourage everybody to give it listen.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Alvaro Sanchez at alvaro.sanchez@colorado.edu.
