thoughts

I’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, when I debut a month of major daily content!

Considering I just wrote about this song six weeks ago and in doing so deconstructed it considerably, what else is there to say?

A lot.

The choice of “Perfect Illusion” as a lead single turned out to be less a canary in a coal mine and more a Trojan Horse. It is by far the most synthy, thrashing, disco-tinged tune on the entire record. Only yesterday’s “Dancin’ In Circles” comes anywhere near it in sound and the chorus of “Diamond Heart” in ferocity.

That begs the question for me – was this a obligation single? You know the kind that I mean. That one song the artist begrudgingly produces to sound a lot like their older work so that their record makes an initial impact on radio, but then quickly ditches and never references again.

We’ll never know Lady Gaga’s true intent. One signal that “Perfect Illusion” was a throwaway is that Gaga hasn’t been performing it visibly past a single pub warmup gig in the UK. It played but not published for her Bud Light sessions on YouTube, not on her release-day Facebook Live concert, and not on Saturday Night Live this weekend. The only full-quality performance we’ve seen is a stripped down version that would have fit in with the ballads on this disc.

Is that in response to tepid radio pickup of the tune, or was it always going to be this way?  I’m not sure, and we won’t have more of an indication until we see if it shows up in tour setlists.

What we do have is its context on the record. “Perfect Illusion” acts as a crescendo to the build of energy throughout the first half of this album. The back half is a much more subtle affair. When the vinyl of this record drops I would be surprised if it wasn’t the final song on Side A rather than the start of side B.

There’s also the thematic content of the album to consider. As a lead-off single, “Perfect Illusion” seemed like a standard kiss-off to a past lover – an easy inspiration to assess considering Gaga’s recently-ended engagement. Instead, try reading it as a song that’s about making Artpop.

Tryin’ to get control
Pressure’s takin’ its toll
Stuck in the middle zone
I just want you alone

My guessing game is strong
Way too real to be wrong
Caught up in your show
Yeah, at least now I know

Gaga fired her longtime manager Troy Carter simultaneous to Artpop‘s 2013 release, when media attention and fan expectations were at their peak. She had promised for months to deliver a stunning work of artistic perfect on par with her highly-regarded Fame Monster EP, but Artpop turned out to be a mirage of synthesizers and drum programming more about The Fame that Gaga had been chasing than about the woman herself. Most critics and fans brushed it off like a gossamer soap bubble. She was truly caught up in her own show on “Applause” and flop “Venus,” which was scrapped for middling performer “Do What U Want.”

Would it have been better off more undressed, with a plainer, Gaga at its center? Did she let producers, managers, and A&R reps second guess her own direction – or perhaps did she second guess herself? Maybe she wasn’t as obsessed or inspired by all of those layers of fabrication as she claimed she was. Maybe it wasn’t love – not for her, or for her fans. It’s evident that the world loves a less-guarded, still-unique Gaga based on the success of her intervening work like Cheek to Cheek, American Horror Story, and “Til It Happens To You.”

In that interpretation, maybe “Perfect Illusion” was the only possible lead single to Joanne – a callback to a less-fussy sound that lays bare all of Gaga’s pent up anxieties about exposing something a little more stripped down and true on this record.

Or maybe that’s all just useless speculation about an inscrutable pop star who is smart enough that she can make us assume anything she wants to about her true motivations.

Either way, the vital, live-rock sound of the song is already aging well even if the brevity of its actual content continues to dissuade repeat listens. It turns out that Joanne would have plenty of live-band sound to share with us, but just not in the same vein as this tune.

I’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, when I debut a month of major daily content!

The title track of Joanne introduces yet another new facet of Lady Gaga – a finger-picked, acoustic folk-rock ballad.

I am one of those music fans who tends to fetishize acoustic instruments as being “real” music. That doesn’t stop me from loving buzzy, synthy music from the likes of Garbage and Gaga, but I’m always a little more excited when I see an artist I love at an acoustic piano or wielding and acoustic guitar. I was excited over the idea of Madonna holding a guitar a a prop when the first images of Music debuted at the very start of this blog, and later lost my mind when she actually played one in concert.

Yet, I don’t have that same thrill with Lady Gaga. Almost the opposite, actually.

I’ve seen her tear things up on piano and dance while playing keytar. I know she writes her own songs. I’m sure she can play guitar, but it’s not going to be her most expert skill, so why waste time there?

“Joanne” answers that question.

Lady Gaga can certainly play these exact arpeggios on piano, but certain songs need the acoustic guitar – belong with it. This song is akin to Paul McCartney’s solo Beatles cut “Blackbird,” with its carefully merged set of picking, tapping, and bass sounding like a single instrument. “Joanne” adds a sheen of shimmery organ behind its choruses to fill out the sound, but that’s no different than McCartney’s simple dressing of bird song.

The verse starts simply enough, picking through a standard I-V-IV progression in G. “Take my hand, stay Joanne, heaven’s not ready for you” is about as treacly simple as any folk song can get – way past “Hey There Delilah” on the treacle scale. On my first listen, I was already girding myself for an awful, earnest tune.

Then I reached the chorus.

The simple “Girl, where do you think you’re going? Where do you think you’re going, girl?” chorus is a hook for the ages. It recalls the sharp knife simplicity of the best Neil Young refrains. (Don’t forget, she name-checks his “Heart of Gold” on “You & I.”)

So many tiny, deliberate choices in the chorus make it a classic. That Gaga starts the first one in a softer, more mixed voice before launching into a full-throated belt. The higher melodic jump on “think” in the second phrase. The surprising dip to the minor-seventh step to resolve on IV on its otherwise verbatim repeat.

The power, sentiment, and performance behind this one vague line makes it one of the most memorable in Lady Gaga’s entire catalog.

When you have a chorus that plain and powerful, you don’t need fancy dressing on the rest of the song. You can afford a plaintive, almost-silly set of lyrics that includes lines like, “I can’t wait to see you soar.” If the verses were too complex, too poetic, they would would disarm the simple power of that chorus.

I sometimes feel this tiny-voiced, swooping, raspy singing from Gaga on the verses is somehow “fake” because I’ve heard her do so much big-throated belting. Who I am to say what Gaga’s “real” voice is? Maybe this is the way she loves to sing? Her ability to occupy a spectrum from her weird melodic mumble on “Poker Face” to her lovely Sound of Music medley on the Oscars to the too-perfect pronunciation on “Perfect Illusion” to this folk Americana vocal sound proves the prowess of her musicianship.

Lady Gaga truly is as much Whitney House as she is Madonna. You can’t do the things they’ve done vocally and sonically, respectively, without being acutely aware of your choices. And, just as Gaga acknowledged and interpolated her Beatles influences on “Speechless,” here she does the same for influences like Neil Young and even Dolly Parton.

I’ll be dissecting Joanne song by song every day until November, when I debut some much bigger daily content!

Lady Gaga has never quite recovered from the sophomore success of the stunning Fame Monster EP in 2009. Born This Way had a handful of strong singles but was manic and didn’t have legs. ArtPop found a deliciously dirty synth sound but brought too few good songs along with it.

Her new LP Joanne is a step in the right direction, and that step is discarding the idea that Lady Gaga must always equal synth pop. It was an unwinnable equation that left her stranded on a shrinking island of radio play. Even the keyboards of the first tune on the record quickly give way to a sizzling live band sound that currently works just as well on pop or rock radio.

Opener “Diamond Heart” vibrates with the warm, fuzzy, analog sound of electric piano. Gaga plays it loosely, which pairs well with her live-sounding, unprocessed lead vocal. This goes beyond the sparse opening measures of “Marry The Night” to sound like something vintage. If “Speechless” was Gaga’s take on The Beatles “Something,” this might be her version of Linda Ronstadt. “Some asshole broke me in,” she sneers, “rag-dolled my innocence. I’ll just keep go-go-ing this dance for you.”

A tangle of electric drums break the throwback spell and drag us to the present day before everything drops away but Gaga’s voice, though the transitional phrase of “Young wild American, come on baby, do you have a girlfriend” seems wasted on the sudden focus, with the actual refrain shoved into the back half of the chorus. “I might not be flawless, but you know I’ve got a diamond heart,” she proclaims, inserts a slurred interval leap in the middle of “diamond” (the only big ascending jump in the chorus).

It definitely feels like this song came from a pair of disparate elements – the coming-of-age travelogue “Young Wild American” which could have been a solo ballad, and the stormy “Diamond Heart” which could have easily been a part of an earlier stage of “Perfect Illusion.” Both concepts are strong, but the two don’t especially match up. You can hear the creaking of gears every time the song transitions from one to the other.

Even if it’s not Gaga’s most coherent tune, it’s still a bracing opening salvo on her first solo album in three years . It rocks as hard as anything she’s released previously, and the live vibes, guitars, and drums are a good portent for the rest of the album.

Chords to play this song after the jump: [Read more…] about Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “Diamond Heart” (Track 01)