Album Review: Lady Gaga, Joanne

With 2014’s Artpop selling a relatively unspectacular 2.3 million copies, Lady Gaga risked becoming the forgotten woman of outrageous chart music. Set against Taylor Swift’s girl next door affability and Beyonce’s glitter-ball feminism, for a moment, Gaga seemed neither sufficiently relatable nor culturally direct enough to warrant her place on the podium.

Not to worry: Gaga understood the wind had turned. And so, the savviest mass-market chameleon of them all set about rebooting her image via Cheek To Cheek, her 2014 covers collaboration with Tony Bennett. Now, the overhaul continues on the sometimes stripped-down, often rollicking Joanne, a character based on a bar room diva who happens to be her aunt. She has described it as her “without make-up” record. Acoustic guitars may be to the fore, but there is certainly no lack of grit, with Mark Ronson contributing unfussy production and cameos by Beck, Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme – who contributes excellent guitar on ‘John Wayne’ – and Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker.

How strange, then, that Joanne’s standout moments are those that most unabashedly recall the artist’s original incarnation as purveyor of marvellously bonkers arena escapism. Opener ‘Diamond Heart’, for instance, is a gale-force power ballad; upcoming single ‘A-Yo’ brilliantly demonstrates her mastery over an instantly catchy hook; first single ‘Perfect Illusion’ works on both counts. And then there’s the Prince tribute ‘Hey Girl’, on which she duets with Florence Welsh. It’s when she tries to upend the formula that Gaga seems less certain of herself. To these ears, ‘Sinner’s Prayer’, a country-esque co-write with Father John Misty, doesn’t quite work; and ‘Just Another Day’is a honky-tonk piano jam that shoots for Randy Newman-meets-Elton John, but ends up sounding oddly like a wedding-band with a few drinks taken. Ultimately, Joanne is flirts with being an out-and-out triumph. With the avant-garde clutter that tripped up Artpop dispensed with, Gaga has rediscovered her propulsive irreverence.