Not Gaga for Born This Way

Photo from gagadaily.com

It's probably not a good sign when Amazon.com makes your brand new album available for $0.99 on it's release date. That's just what they did with Lady Gaga's newest offering, Born This Way. We're not complaining that they did because we were able to snatch it up and give it a listen, whereas we otherwise probably wouldn't have bothered based on the album's first few releases. We're sure there will be plenty of "little monsters" who will run out and buy it due to pure dedication. But now that we've heard the album... we kind of want our $0.99 back.

Here's the thing though... we like Lady Gaga.  She's got an amazing voice, and is great at generating fairly constant news.  But it's not always wise to tell the worldwide media 6 months before your 3rd album in 2 years comes out that it's "the best album of the decade."  That's a lot to live up to.  The best song on the album is "You and I" because it's the least techno sounding song and moves it more in the direction she'll probably go next.  More of a gritty southern feel (there's definitely still techno elements though), it's actually quite country.  We're serious in saying don't be surprised if her next album is a country album, and it'll probably be better than the average release out of Nashville.  One only needs to listen to "Born this Way (Country Road Version)" to see that she definitely has a talent for this.

We're also not going to go into all the comparisons to Madonna that are going across the blogosphere and media, even though we have a lot of thoughts on that issue.  Maybe this album is just a misstep along a path to a long career by a talented musician.  Maybe we just don't get it, but this album has been one of the most heavily cross promoted albums we can remember.  Just last week Words with Friends (which is owned by Zynga the makers of Farmville) was heavily promoting the new album by entering you into a contest every time you played certain Gaga related words and Zynga also created a Gagaville for fans of both Lady Gaga and Farmville.

Our least favorite song on the album is the 3rd single, "The Edge of Glory" it's a weird late 80s soft pop, Celine Dion like song.  It features saxophone from the E Street Band's saxophonist which adds to the cheese.  The song that might actually be the most fun is "Scheibe" which seems to be an homage to German techno hits of the 90s.  It begins with Gaga saying "I don't speak German but I can if you like".  One of the other good songs on the album is "Bloody Mary" with a nice staccato string sound through out. Lady Gaga has an amazing voice and does showcase it on every one of these songs.  We'll definitely continue to listen to her and as she grows, we just wish the album really would have been the best album of the decade, we might just listen to the Madonna albums Ray of Light or Music in the meantime (most of today's pop music sounds like those albums anyway).

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