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Publication info: Weblog post. The Record [BLOG] , Washington, DC: NPR. Oct 21, 2016.
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"I am lost, I confess, in the age of the social," Lady Gaga intones in her saddest alto in "Angel Down," the anti-
violence anthem that concludes her fifth studio album, Joanne, officially released today. It's a strange disclosure
from a pop star whose entire career has seemingly played upon the 21st-century practice of inhabiting
constructed online identities to escape reality, earn a lover's affections or scam a path toward success. Gaga
crashed the Top 40 in 2008 with The Fame, an examination of the risks and limits of democratized glamor
written in cool club bangers. As she progressed, she found purpose by championing the insurgent queer
communities where she'd learned her drag style and rock and roll attitude. She became a favorite of avant-
garde fashion designers and post-Pop artists like Jeff Koons and took her own avatar cultivation to science-
fiction levels.
As often happens with outsiders who grab a mainstream moment, she began to bore pop's novelty-seeking
gatekeepers, at which point she exposed another layer of herself, the pure vocal talent supposedly at the root of
all her schtick; but even singing this more allegedly intimate material, the diva born Stefani Joanne Germanotta
was always fully made-up and bewigged. How could this shape-shifter find the social network inhospitable? It
seems on Joanne, her alleged rejections of all the masks, Gaga is close to denouncing her own artificial roots.
In fact, Joanne is as theatrical as anything Gaga has ever done. The album repositions her passion for posing
within a soundscape whose touchstones are the great costume dramas (and comedies!) of pop. As on her most
focused and effective album, 2011's Born This Way, Gaga uses rock and roll, that raw form populated by
supercooked personalities, as a stylistic touchstone, a source of deep feeling and immediacy. Doing so, she
upholds her romantic belief in a theatricality grounded in broad gestures and bold declarations, not in the
carefully monitored, physically removed self-design of today. If Beyoncé has shown how a star's life can be so
carefully curated that it translates into powerful universals and Rihanna has developed a sound that evokes a
woman's consciousness dissembling through smoke and beats and cyberspace's ether, Lady Gaga still
attempts to give her listeners the ancient pop thrill of catharsis: that experience of release that comes from
immersing in a drama that absorbs an audience's shared spirit and might even transform it. For Aristotle, the
vehicle of catharsis was tragedy. For Gaga, it's Bowie and Queen and her own high notes.
Joanne's eleven songs trace the messifying path of rock and roll through other musical traditions: musical
theater, crossover country, the disco-rock hybrid Donna Summer perfected in hits like "Bad Girls." Its ballads
are earnestly mannered, a la David Bowie and Elton John; its dance tracks gain their fun from comical effects
and florid guitar lines. There's even a nod to 1950s nostalgia, the font of pop postmodernism from glam through
"Grease" and onward to Bruno Mars. Joanne may sport some semi-confessional lyrics, but that kind self-
revelation is not the heart of it. The core belief it reflects is about sound, stance and attitude: that rock's dictum
to kick out the jams can apply across genres and produce a sustaining sense of community and freedom.
Partnering with the producer Mark Ronson, known for loosening the noose of pop revivalism with his DJ's knack
for irreverent recombination on mega-smashes like "Uptown Funk," Gaga enlisted a roster of collaborators for
Joanne that initially seems random, but which in fact is a diverse group of kindred spirits. The Nashville
songwriter Hillary Lindsey may be based in country music, a genre sometimes strangled by authenticity myths,
but she's part of the definitions-busting country moment that's given us glamour goddess Carrie Underwood and
Pages: np
Year: 2016
Publisher: NPR
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