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Metacritic, a website that compiles and averages reviews, has started compiling and averaging the reviews for the debut album of indie folk-pop chanteuse Joanne.
Based on the 15 reviews that have so far come out, the score for Joanne is...
65/100
Breakdown and excerpts from the critics
Pretty Much Amazing
83
Joanne still represents a striking course correction for Lady Gaga. By abandoning the dance club for the dive bar, she may have tossed aside her status as a pop star once and for all. But Gaga has emerged as something better and truer.
The Telegraph (UK)
80
While its modernity is expressed by mixing and matching genres or adding digital zing to familiar tropes, for all its bravura exuberance and pop slickness it is old fashioned to its core.
The A.V. Club
75
Joanne may not become the multiplatinum blockbuster Bella Donna was, but the record absolutely feels like Gaga is once again on an upward trajectory.
The Line of Best Fit
75
It's not a perfect record and finds Gaga pulling in so many different directions, but these are songs tied together by a common feeling. There is so much warmth here, so much that's human, and a lot to love.
Rolling Stone
70
Joanne is Lady Gaga's best album in five years, since the disco-stick hair-metal manifesto that was Born This Way.
AllMusic
70
Where previous Gaga albums were high-wire acts, Joanne is decidedly earth-bound, a record made by an artist determined to execute only the stunts she knows how to pull off.
Exclaim
60
The album's peaks offer compelling paths forward for Gaga--the country balladry of "Million Reasons," the slinky pop of Florence Welch duet "Hey Girl"--but a dearth of memorable melodies makes Joanne's restlessness often feel aimless.
Los Angeles Times
60
Working together, they [Mark Ronson, Beck, Father John Misty and dudes from detail-obsessed rock bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Tame Impala] assemble some gorgeous pieces. ... Yet other songs, for all their vivid sonic color, lack strong stories.
Spin
60
It’s understandable that Joanne finds Gaga performing authenticity, if only because it’s the strongest way to convey artistic evolution to the masses in 2016. The image here--the illusion, really--is as imperfect as it is meticulously rendered.
PopMatters
60
Even if Joanne fails to connect with you emotionally, it’s nonetheless the album that will make fans and observers once again rethink what they know about the daring diva. Make no mistake: even with all her extracurricular endeavors paying off cultural dividends, Gaga’s greatest
The Guardian
60
Joanne stumbles a bit, and will be received with bafflement by everyone other than hardcore Little Monsters, but you can’t help admiring her boldness.
The Independent (UK)
60
To a certain extent it works, especially when Josh Homme’s on hand to lend gritty riffing and imaginative lead lines to some tracks: his spiky but fluid breaks on “A-Yo” and “John Wayne” are undoubted album highlights. Sadly, the bombastic orchestral stomper “Perfect Illusion”, a much-anticipated collaboration with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, is less impressive, just stridently dull.
Slant Magazine
60
Although Joanne lacks the indelible pop hooks that those two influences [Elton John and Prince]--not to mention Gaga herself--are famous for, the album is more sonically consistent and thematically focused than the singer's last solo effort, the regressive Artpop.
Chicago Tribune
50
Once a step ahead of everyone else in recalibrating what it means to be a pop artist, she made her appropriations and reinventions look like fun. Now she sounds like she's just trying too hard.
The New York Times
40
While Joanne is elemental, nothing about it is bare. Instead, it’s confused, full of songs that feel like concepts in search of a home, small theater pieces extruded from other imaginary productions and collected in one miscellany bin.
Other Metacritic scores for Lady Gaga:
ArtPop: 61
Born This Way: 71
The Fame Monster: 78
The Fame: 71
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