By Gonzalo Enriquez, Staff writer
In a much anticipated release, New York singer Lady Gaga releases her fth studio album, Joanne. The new album is set to be Gaga’s most personal album yet. Even the name of the album, Joanne, is in reference to the singer’s aunt, her father’s sister, Joanne Stefani Ger- manotta, who apparently died in Dec. 18, 1974, when she was only 19 years old due to lupus, according to USA Today.
The sound alone is different from your traditional Gaga and it works immensely. Gaga worked with Mark Ronson, BloodPop, and Kevin Parker to get this Amer- ican country folk sound that she herself has described as pop. Mark Ronson worked with powerhouse Amy Winehouse, but most recently Bruno Mars. Rolling Stone has raved about the album, even stating it is Lady Gaga’s best album in five years. Production wise, it’s a very well-crafted album and you can tell they took time to perfect each song.
The standard version of album comes with 11 songs, while the deluxe version comes with 15 songs. Gaga sold more than 200,000 album units of Joanne in its rst week of release according to billboard and made for Gaga’s fourth chart-topper. The album does a good job at making Gaga more relatable to the general public, and this album is more personal than her previous albums. ‘Grigio Girls’ is on the deluxe version and the song is about one of Gaga’s closet friends who has been battling a tough fight with cancer. Gaga said that her and her other friends would often wait until their friend with cancer would leave the room or even until she fell asleep to cry because they wanted to be strong for their friend.
One of my favorite tracks off the album is ‘A-YO’ because it reminds me of the movie Footloose and it’s a really fun, energetic song. Some of my other favorites include ‘Diamond Heart,’ ‘Come to Mama,’ ‘Hey Girl,’ ‘Dancin’ in Circles,’ ‘John Wayne,’ ‘Million Reasons,’ and ‘Perfect Illusion.’
‘Hey Girl’ is a collaboration between Gaga and Flor- ence Welch from Florence + The Machine. The song is about women empowerment and helping one another. The song lyrics include ‘Hey girl, hey girl We can make it easy if we lift each other; Hey girl, hey girl; We don’t need to keep on one-in up another,’ in which her and Florence sing each line back to each other.
Vocally Gaga’s vocals are sharp and on point. You can clearly tell she has some true pipes and ‘Million Rea- sons’ the seventh track off the album, will convince you of this. Gaga is very raw vocally and it’s such a good, powerful song. The song also reached No. 1 on iTunes and it became the second single off Joanne.
Gaga also wrote a song called ‘Angel Down’ about the whole Black Lives Matter movement. The song is about Trayvon Martin’s death and just how people stood around and didn’t do anything. She talks about how
African American fans would open up to her about the anxiety they feel when they hear a police siren.
In all, the album is a great album because Gaga is tak- ing a risk reaching out to a new genre. People should check out the new album, which is available now via iTunes, Spotify, Google Music, Amazon, etc. The album showcases Gaga’s true vocal ability and herself as a per- son. It will attract a new group of fans to her. So if you don’t really listen to Gaga or you’re not really into her style of music, you should definitely check out the new album Joanne and give her another chance.