Album Review: Joanne
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The latest album by Lady Gaga, Joanne, is named after the singer’s father’s late sister, Joanne Germanotta, and has running themes of family life and “all of life’s emotions”. Gaga has said, “It’s a wonderful, soul-searching experience. And it’s very unlike [Artpop] in that way.”
The album does indeed overall feel extremely different from Lady Gaga’s previous albums, and stands away from her other work in that it focuses more on her vocal ability. The stripped back country-rock tone suits her voice and talent in a way we haven’t been able to see previously. In this way the song ‘Perfect Illusion’ stands out as the one which differs the most from this theme, and for that reason my least favourite on a very strong album. Florence Welsh makes an appearance on the track ‘Hey Girl’, one of my stand-out songs from the album.
I have always enjoyed Lady Gaga with a hint of irony; she’s a talented and popular artist who is generally considered something of a novelty due to her outlandish dress sense and tenancy to lean into the dramatic. However, Joanne reveals something of her bare-boned musical skill that is sometimes lost in meat dresses and seven-inch heels (not that I don’t enjoy these things; I happen to quite respect what Gaga does and her reasons for it). Over the past year or so we have seen another side to Gaga’s talents; her appearance as an actor in American Horror Story being a credit to her ability. I love Joanna, and it has dispelled any doubt I had about Gaga. A widely very good album, with two or three stand-out tracks and one or two I felt not quite up to the same standard, but all with an interesting message and the full weight of Gaga’s talent behind them.