There is a vocal flourish on Diamond Heart, the opening track of Lady Gaga’s ‘Joanne’, that must feel like home to long-time Little Monsters. During the line ‘Young, wild American, come on baby, do you have a girlfriend?’ the syllable ‘friend’ hits three semiquavers on a downward trajectory before the beat drops and the phrase is repeated with extra brio.
It’s the kind of detail that is often found in musical theatre showtunes or - when coupled with shrill vibrato, as it is here - old school country hits about love and loss. ‘Joanne’ is full of these kind of details.
The title track (a co-write with Mark Ronson) is a soft rock ballad with elegant James Taylor-esque string arrangements that uses a domineering change in the second vocal phrase to secure total emotional lift off, while Sinner’s Prayer is another country-infused track where the structural pacing is precise and beautifully terse.
The sound feels liberated, fresh and occasionally classic. These are songs that might have been over-produced into sterility had they appeared on an earlier Gaga album and the shift is timely.
Lady Gaga is a superstar whose first two albums exploded, but whose image began to spiral into self parody on her previous record, 2013’s ‘Artpop’. It felt like Gaga had been marketed as an heir to Bowie and/or Madonna, but had not really earned the accolade. In that environment, her split from long-time manager Troy Carter and a highly dubious collaboration with R. Kelly that undermined her role as a sex-positive performer and advocate for the LGBT community seemed to suggest an artist without a clear creative mandate whose devastating vocal ability was papering over the cracks.
But ‘Joanne’ doubles down on musical ingenuity to right the ship. It’s a record steeped in sentimental Americana that also retains the poker face of its author with tracks like Perfect Illusion and Dancin’ In Circles. It tries to strip away much of the artifice inherent in Gaga’s particular brand of musical theatre disco and, for the most part, succeeds nicely.
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