Lady Gaga
Joanne

Joanne by Lady Gaga is, like it or not, one of the most significant and intriguing events on this year's international pop calendar. It is, in fact, the latest musical chapter of a buzzworthy figure whom industry experts, fans, and critics alike have been eagerly waiting for, following the chaotic saga of Artpop and the attempt to "clean up" with the jazz adventure of Cheek to Cheek alongside Tony Bennett.

Lady Gaga represents one of the leading musical phenomena of the new musical era. A child of the Eighties, labeled as the heir to Madonna, Michael Jackson, Queen, David Bowie, and Prince—figures of the early MTV era—Miss Germanotta has, in many opinions, had the merit of revitalizing the dull pop scene of the late 2000s. It was dominated by the American ghetto-urban style without substance, identity, and especially without a "diva" or "divo" capable of transforming into the iconic essence of that precise timeline: a sort of identifying "symbol," as Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Prince were in the Eighties, Celine Dion, and Mariah Carey in the Nineties, and various Britneys in the early 2000s. The task was, therefore, to reconstruct authentic pop, using the ancient ingredients dictated by MTV-mania: iconography, transgression, extravagance, exaggeration, chameleonism, stardom, theatricality, a distinct visual - sound - aesthetic - artistic concept for each musical chapter, elaborate music videos, and magnificent tours.

Well-equipped with such an arsenal, Lady Gaga burst onto the scene with The Fame and The Fame Monster and their respective hit singles, Just Dance, Poker Face, Paparazzi, Bad Romance, Telephone, and Alejandro, demonstrating to the world that the identity and profit crisis-stricken music industry can still produce new "diva" characters, akin to the pop El Dorados of the Eighties and Nineties. Moreover, with the novelty of proposing music, in other words, the internet: Lady Gaga is among the pioneers of the idyll between the music market and the Facebook universe, an idyll that, over time, has created a third world war battlefield among bloggers, influencers and self-proclaimed ones, keyboard warriors, supporters, and haters—many small ant-like users with a strong individual potential powerful enough to determine the future success or failure of songs, albums, careers, and personal reputations. As a pioneer of this phenomenon, Lady Gaga has partly fallen victim to it. Thus, the well-studied and in-depth concept of The Fame and The Fame Monster made way for the confused and criticized "artistic" ambitions of Born This Way and Artpop, works that, although of quality (with some exceptions), introduced a pop star perhaps a bit too pretentious and too eager to distinguish herself from the colorless mass of colleagues. Moreover, with the now-known tendency to prefer masks, costumes, and other freakshow oddities as conceptual elements.

The turning point in Lady Gaga's career was, as mentioned, the collaboration with Tony Bennett in Cheek to Cheek: emerging as a new interpreter of the standard jazz repertoire, Miss Germanotta managed to shed much of the "freak-star" reputation inherited from Artpop. This brings us to Joanne, whose title pays homage to her deceased aunt and is also Lady Gaga's middle name, aka Stefani: this new musical chapter marks, at least temporarily, a total abandonment of the aesthetic extravagances, of the carnivalesque elaboration much used and equally reviled in recent years. Here, Lady Gaga opts for minimalism but chooses to adopt a character on purpose, that of the cow-girl full of genuine "American vibe," halfway between Dolly Parton, Shania Twain, and Carrie Underwood. In the conceptual basket of Joanne are the Midwest prairie atmosphere, the psychedelic rock-tinged discopop of Perfect Illusion, and the mini promotional tour the singer is conducting in Yankee taverns, the Dive Bars (always to connect with the "Pure American Taste")—all components of a strategy useful for defining a musical chapter less "complex" than the previous ones, less extravagant, less bizarre, and less stuffed with "artistic" ambitions from an Artist with a capital A. A lesser complexity that actually shapes the album in its entirety: Joanne is Lady Gaga's first work where heavy synths, eurodance sounds, major techno beats, and club productions do not take center stage, but a slightly and pleasantly rock-tinged mood, fresh and lively enough, which only occasionally gives the idea of the much-vaunted "country album," a nickname that the internet is using to describe the work in rather bland forms. Pop-rock winking also at funk, folk, indie, alternative, blues, soul, and gospel with only occasional danceable and electronic hints. Space is given to instrumentalization, voice, and the acoustic freshness of a nostalgic ballad in Million Reasons and Angel Down, while the "country" flavor, although equally distributed and thus present in the songs, has more scenic significance than sound, more as a seasoning than a base ingredient: to be clear, Joanne doesn't sound like Shania Twain, nor like Carrie Underwood, and, obviously, is light years away from Dolly Parton styles. But it's not Taylor Swift either, for that matter.

The album highlights the energetic and sparkling pop-n-roll of Diamonds Hearts, the spaghetti western atmosphere à la Sergio Leone in Sinner's Prayer, a track where guitar riffs and accordion touches create a "cinematic" folk effect of home on the prairie, the almost unplugged title track Joanne, nostalgic and vaguely romantic like Through the Barricades, and the 80s pop-soul baroques in Hey Girl in collaboration with Florence Welch. The dance touches are very few, but pleasant: in Dancin' in Circles, one of the standout tracks on the album, it's as if These Boots Are Made For Walkin' was mixed into a big cauldron with the very current dancehall sounds of One Dance and Cheap Thrills, A-Yo is nothing but the sequel to Manicure, a track from Artpop, where Lady Gaga plays rock in a country/doo-wop sauce, Perfect Illusion falls into disco-rock with funk at times, while John Wayne emerges as the genuinely electronic unicum, albeit flirting with the alternative - psychedelic sounds of Muse and Placebo.

Let's move to conclusions. Joanne is an appreciable and enjoyable musical effort, devoid of the pretentiousness and pomp of its predecessors. No disguises, sequins, glitter, aberrations. More instrumental pop music than synthesizer, with minimal scenic surroundings. But it's precisely the sharp and decisive cut from the recent past that raises some concerns: after reaching the peak of the theatrical-sound pantomime in Artpop, Lady Gaga moves from hyperbolized complexity to total minimalism: it's like attempting to make forty steps in one or climb Mount Everest with a hop. Essentially, Lady Gaga with Joanne might have bitten off more than she can chew, not allowing for an "intermediate" step between excess and simplicity, perhaps better internalized by that audience who awarded her at the beginning with dance-electro tracks. So, it leaves us with the difficult judgment.