1) Diamond Heart; 2) A-Yo; 3) Joanne; 4) John Wayne; 5) Dancin' in Circles; 6) Perfect Illusion; 7) Million Reasons; 8) Sinner's Prayer; 9) Come to Mama; 10) Hey Girl (feat. Florence Welch); 11) Angel Down
Gaga tries to go for her roots but loses track of the road on the way there.
Key tracks: "Diamond Heart", "Joanne", "Perfect Illusion"
Fame was the drug, Artpop was the binge and the painful comedown, Joanne was the detox. The whole Artpop period was a notoriously difficult time for Lady Gaga mentally and physically, and to recover she needed to distance herself from everything associated with her career so far that had lead her down that path. She started to hang out in different crowds, started her acting career, there was a jazz standards album with Tony Bennett, and eventually she went home to her family for inspiration. Joanne, titled after her aunt, is an intentional clean break from everything that had come before, aiming for a rootsier sound more at home in dive bars than dance clubs - somewhere as far away from Hollywood glamour as possible.
Joanne isn't a rock or a country album even though it seems to have a reputation of being one, but that's precisely its problem: it exists in this awkward middle ground that doesn't strongly commit to anything, and so near everything featured on it sounds half-hearted or half-baked as a result. Its rock songs are weighed down by a pop production that fails to give the instruments the kick they need, its pop songs are let down by a wishy-washy need to strip things down when they would need to pop off instead, and its homebound country heart simply just means that there's more acoustic guitars in the back of the mix. You can't shake the pop away from Gaga no matter how much she tries and Joanne primarily acts as a testament to that as it tries to establish an identity completely separate to the previous albums, but is incapable of shaking off old habits. There's no doubt that it's an album that means a lot to Gaga herself, and so it's doubly awkward just how non-committed it sounds to everything it tries to do. Towards the end of the album there's an inexplicable retro tract where Gaga first flirts with a motown-esque 60s MOR flair ("Come to Mama") and then embraces 80s synths as she duets with Florence Welch in the out-of-nowhere J-folk pastiche "Hey Girl" (seriously, this sounds like an Off Course cut and the song is unexpectedly in my good books because of it), and it just highlights how disjointed the whole affair is. I just want Joanne to be something, because being in this weird partway point between everything in its DNA isn't doing any of its ideas a service.
I use 'ideas' very deliberately there because even if you were to add a little more focus to the record, I still don't think the material would be near her past peaks. Joanne is an album largely composed out of the kind of late-album filler you'd find on an average pop album, awkwardly trying to maintain a presence as they're pushed onto the centre stage. "A-Yo", "Dancin' in Circles" and "Sinner's Prayer" mash together more club-friendly beats with the country house aesthetic but they're tired on arrival and sound like microwaved leftovers of better Gaga ideas from the past few albums with some acoustic guitar slapped on top, and "Million Reasons" and "Angel Down" represent the weakest parts of Gaga's balladeering. The confused production - which sounds weak no matter what musical angle it's trying to pander to - is a big part of the blame here but it would take a lot more workshopping to bring these songs alive in the first place. So much of the record feels like it's fighting with itself and at worst,
the result are quite frankly boring, which Gaga should never be by
her very nature. Even some of the album's bigger successes feel like compromises. "John Wayne" is a country disco stomper which is exactly what you'd expect from the concept of Gaga putting on an Americana cosplay and it's a really stupid and in some ways a cheaply obvious song, but it's also as raucously fun as it is camp; meanwhile "Perfect Illusion" features Kevin Parker, Josh Homme and Mark Ronson as Gaga's indie cred backing band but you'd never be able to tell because any rock edge it's meant to have has been polished off so as not to scare away the audiences too much - which is a big shame because it's the most impassioned and envigorated performance across the entire album and it just begs to explode louder.
I have absolutely no doubt that Gaga had the best intentions with Joanne, that it was meant to be something more insular and act as a quiet sweep to clean the slate so she could restart afresh; there was definitely a different kind of swing to her general comings and goings after Joanne (for better or worse) and it's undeniable that the process helped her find a new spark. "Diamond Heart" and "Joanne", the album's two best songs by far, even back up the notion that the general direction for the album could've worked very well - the former is the rough and gutsy rock anthem which embodies the album's more rebellious side perfectly, the latter a gentle and genuinely lovely ballad where the album finds its heart. But for an album that comes across like an attempt to refocus, it gives the impression that the attention span of everyone involved faded away partway through and what was meant to have been a cosy homecoming country rock album became what it is now because leaning into old comfort zones was a quick and easy way to wrap it all up. Joanne has gained an ill reputation in some parts for Gaga ignoring the dance and pop sound that she made her name with, but had she actually done so we probably could've had a more divisive but absolutely a more interesting record.
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