Reviews
3.5 stars out of 5 -- "With JOANNE, Gaga starts over with music that feels stripped-down, restrained, modest and other adjectives that you wouldn't usually associate with her. It's an old-school Nineties soft-rock album, heavy on the acoustic guitar...", "Her latest, JOANNE, finds Gaga mostly stripped of the bombast that permeated her early work and injected with surprising but fresh shades of country and light Americana.", "She’s never sounded more matter of fact than on the arpeggiated folk of album’s title track, an ode to her father’s sister whom she was named after....Intimate moments register throughout -- especially on the Hillary Lindsey-co-penned country dirge 'Million Reasons'...", "Gaga Americana is not the Nashville kind, nor the big-beards sort, but a schlocky, thrill-packed theme-park. When Gaga strips herself back, what’s underneath is just a more streamlined strangeness.", "JOANNE is surprising, wandering, and, yes, inexplicable -- which is to say, it’s Gaga -- and with it comes an infectiousness that was introduced in 2014’s CHEEK TO CHEEK but is solidified here: When Gaga is having fun, we all are." -- Grade: B