Back in 2008, Lady Gaga answered PopMatters’ 20 Questions, and although her answers are short and hurried, some proved to be indicative of where she would be nearly a decade after the fact. The best piece of advice she actually followed? “My dad telling me to stop doing drugs.” Her hidden talents? “There are none hidden.” Best thing she ever bought, stole, or borrowed? “Inventing, building and paying for my ‘disco stick’.”
Yet question number seven was key: what do you want to be remembered for? Her answer, while broad and more than a bit cliche, was exactly what you’d expect: “Being important to music and culture, and possibly changing pop culture.”
Eight years later, Gaga is putting out her sixth proper studio release (assuming you’re counting 2009’s mini-set The Fame Monster, which you absolutely should be) in the form of Joanne, a musical left turn in a career that’s already seen the Manhattan-born Stefani Germanotta effect pop culture in surprising ways, largely by becoming not only a dance-pop and music-video icon, but also a Golden Globe-winning actress, an Oscar-nominated singer, a Super Bowl Half Time performer, and, most important of all, Tony Bennett’s best friend.
Yet Joanne comes at a pivotal time for Gaga, because although her recent performances at the Academy Awards have drawn praise and her tour with Tony Bennett, as unexpected as it was, nevertheless endeared her to demographics that artists like Katy Perry wouldn’t dare to touch, Gaga has been figuring out what to do with herself for the past several years. Her implosive 2013 effort Artpop found her being so enthralled with the idea of turning trend-riven dance-pop into capital-A “Art” that she wound up scoring a Top Five single with a song that contained the lyric “One second I’m a Koons / Then suddenly the Koons is me”, giving her rabid fan-base the decadence they’ve come to expect while leaving critics and casual fans out in the cold. What was one unique and bizarre had since become expected and outlandish, her laving music videos growing so much in run time that one feared she was close to accidentally remaking Berlin Alexanderplatz.
So even as Joanne‘s “Papa Don’t Preach”-as-sung-by-Stevie-Nicks lead single “Perfect Illusion” writhed around on the floor in love with its own ‘80s decadence, one had to wonder: what is Gaga truly trying to accomplish with this album? Redemption? Catharsis? “Realness”? The more Joanne unfolds, the more it feels less like an album and more like Gaga, acoustic guitar in hand, throwing ideas at the wall and trying to see what sticks, breaking from her past but not in such a way that she’d alienate her armies of Little Monsters. It’s different, it’s unfocused, it’s interesting, and—make no bones about it—it’s far from revolutionary. It’s less a reinvention than it is a casual reboot, and even if its pleasures are modest, it’s still a fascinating document from a diva who refuses to remain in one place.
