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Oct 21, 2016Joanne still represents a striking course correction for Lady Gaga. By abandoning the dance club for the dive bar, she may have tossed aside her status as a pop star once and for all. But Gaga has emerged as something better and truer.
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Oct 24, 2016[Joanne is] a leavetaking song of great, simple beauty, more tenderly affecting than anything Gaga’s done before, showcasing the emotive power rather than the force of that great voice. The rest of the album too, rings with urges for us to take care of each other in a cruel world.
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Oct 24, 2016She remains in a state of full control throughout the album, and by album’s end it’s clear that Gaga has released one of her most dazzling albums to date.
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Oct 19, 2016While its modernity is expressed by mixing and matching genres or adding digital zing to familiar tropes, for all its bravura exuberance and pop slickness it is old fashioned to its core.
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Oct 24, 2016Joanne is a curious bauble, demonstrating that although Gaga’s power to shock has waned, her artistry continues to evolve in exceptional ways.
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Oct 24, 2016The result is a work that may not close any circles, but instead start the pattern of a new shape: something weird, but compelling, and largely authentic.
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Oct 21, 2016Joanne may not become the multiplatinum blockbuster Bella Donna was, but the record absolutely feels like Gaga is once again on an upward trajectory.
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Oct 20, 2016It's not a perfect record and finds Gaga pulling in so many different directions, but these are songs tied together by a common feeling. There is so much warmth here, so much that's human, and a lot to love.
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Nov 9, 2016Joanne is certainly not the all-conquering opus it was intended to be and will prove divisive, but it remains a daring and exciting record, delivered from one of modern pop’s most unique and singular voices.
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Nov 8, 2016The less is more production suits her, and for a first time we get a real and lasting glimpse of Stefani herself.
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Oct 21, 2016Joanne is Lady Gaga's best album in five years, since the disco-stick hair-metal manifesto that was Born This Way.
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Oct 20, 2016Where previous Gaga albums were high-wire acts, Joanne is decidedly earth-bound, a record made by an artist determined to execute only the stunts she knows how to pull off.
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Oct 25, 2016Joanne never reveals much of a narrative or stylistic through-line, and even her brief dips into indie-rock--her collaborations with Father John Misty on “Sinner’s Prayer” and “Come to Mama” (Misty is also credited as a writer on Beyonce’s Lemonade), and Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker on “Perfect Illusion” (Rihanna covered Parker’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” on Anti)--feel familiar.
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Q MagazineNov 15, 2016Flawed though it is, this brave and canny album hits the reset button and buys her a future. [Jan 2017, p.105]
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Nov 11, 2016Unfortunately, therein lies the biggest problem with Joanne: for every time that Gaga seemingly breaks free of her shackles and embraces something more “real,” she quickly scuttles back into her comfort zone and hides behind glistening production. This probably isn’t quite the sound of the real Stefani Germanotta, but if you squint hard enough there’s a semblance of a real person in amongst the pop haze.
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Oct 24, 2016Intentionally overwrought, brash, and totally different to anything she’s ever done before, Lady Gaga’s Joanne doesn’t quite nail the artistic frankness she’s aiming for.
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Oct 24, 2016Joanne’s influences are writ so large it takes a while to settle. At its core, however, is a career-extending, creative curio that, even in its weaker moments (Come to Mama is wretched), is never dull.
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Oct 21, 2016The album's peaks offer compelling paths forward for Gaga--the country balladry of "Million Reasons," the slinky pop of Florence Welch duet "Hey Girl"--but a dearth of memorable melodies makes Joanne's restlessness often feel aimless.
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Oct 21, 2016Working together, they [Mark Ronson, Beck, Father John Misty and dudes from detail-obsessed rock bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Tame Impala] assemble some gorgeous pieces. ... Yet other songs, for all their vivid sonic color, lack strong stories.
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Oct 21, 2016It’s understandable that Joanne finds Gaga performing authenticity, if only because it’s the strongest way to convey artistic evolution to the masses in 2016. The image here--the illusion, really--is as imperfect as it is meticulously rendered.
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Oct 21, 2016Even if Joanne fails to connect with you emotionally, it’s nonetheless the album that will make fans and observers once again rethink what they know about the daring diva. Make no mistake: even with all her extracurricular endeavors paying off cultural dividends, Gaga’s greatest achievement is yet to come, and Joanne, flaws and all, feels like the necessary step to get there.
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Oct 20, 2016Joanne stumbles a bit, and will be received with bafflement by everyone other than hardcore Little Monsters, but you can’t help admiring her boldness.
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Oct 19, 2016To a certain extent it works, especially when Josh Homme’s on hand to lend gritty riffing and imaginative lead lines to some tracks: his spiky but fluid breaks on “A-Yo” and “John Wayne” are undoubted album highlights. Sadly, the bombastic orchestral stomper “Perfect Illusion”, a much-anticipated collaboration with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, is less impressive, just stridently dull.
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Oct 18, 2016Although Joanne lacks the indelible pop hooks that those two influences [Elton John and Prince]--not to mention Gaga herself--are famous for, the album is more sonically consistent and thematically focused than the singer's last solo effort, the regressive Artpop.
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Oct 21, 2016Once a step ahead of everyone else in recalibrating what it means to be a pop artist, she made her appropriations and reinventions look like fun. Now she sounds like she's just trying too hard.
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Nov 3, 2016Gaga has wrenched herself away from dance-pop to focus on the country and classic rock influences that have always been present in her music, albeit gussied up like a coked-out drag queen stumbling out of a bar at 4 am.
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Oct 19, 2016While Joanne is elemental, nothing about it is bare. Instead, it’s confused, full of songs that feel like concepts in search of a home, small theater pieces extruded from other imaginary productions and collected in one miscellany bin.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 2,913 out of 3658
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Mixed: 173 out of 3658
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Negative: 572 out of 3658
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Oct 21, 2016
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Oct 21, 2016