BORN THIS WAY is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lux_littledreamer]

Americano
Bad Kids
The Edge Of Glory
Judas
Hair
Government Hooker
Highway Unicorn(Road To Love)
Electric Chapel
Scheiße
Marry The Night

OMFG! whole album is amazing!
.
.
.
everythin is so awesome well done GAGA girl!

[rhysxx.aguilera]

goverment hooker, bloody mary, judas and electric chapel are the only decent songs.

the album is a mess tbf.

[mybabygorl]

I'm very disappointed with this album. It's just Fame Monster pt.2 nothing more nothing less.
2/5

[lux_littledreamer]

i love it no matter what,its a good dance album

[Skye]

Ahh..I'm hearing great things about the LP but I am waiting until the official release (5-23-11) to give it a listen. Glad that you are enjoying it however.

[Skye]

Album Review: Lady Gaga, 'Born This Way'

Gaga doesn’t know when to hold back – and it’s a damn good thing

‘Hype’ is a disgusting word. But when an album, which was a self-declared phenomenon before it was even an album, appears to be an experiment in hype itself, it becomes an unavoidable part of the conversation. There’s been a suspicion in the epic run-up to the release of Lady Gaga's second-and-a-half album that she’s just been being deliberately ridiculous just to piss people off. But then, having a go at a pop star for being ridiculous is in itself as ridiculous as having a go at a brain surgeon for being too hung up on all the neurosurgery.

There’s another possibility here though. In our man Peter Robinson’s (rather amazing) cover feature the other week, she expressed genuine surprise that people found ‘Born This Way’ the song something of an ‘Express Yourself’ parody. The suggestion actually moved her to tears. It’s in the nature of artists to miss the blindingly obvious about their own work.

But for the entire world to have the exact same instantaneous reaction, to the point where the words ‘Express Yourself’ began trending on Twitter, suggests that comparison holds water. You’d think somebody – somebody – in her team could have noticed. It’s just possible that Gaga is now such a powerful entity that everybody was just too scared of losing their jobs to point it out.

It would certainly bear out the chain of events that led to that appalling, badly-photoshopped mess of a cover image getting signed off. And if that’s the case then we really are in new territory for mainstream pop music, where somebody at the absolute peak of commercial heaviosity is able to operate with the artistic imperative of a David Bowie without an iota of outside interference. What you definitely cannot fault about this album is the scale of its artistic ambition.

One thing that much-debated 'Born This Way' album cover does get right is the record’s obsession with the fusion of flesh and metal. As if Gaga, having already (in her own head at least) fused herself with her fanbase to create a singular entity, she wants to weld physically to her synthesisers as if to create one all-powerful dreadnought of self-empowerment. For the most part this is one relentless torrent of heavy-metal-rave-pop. At the very least it’s a triumph in sound engineering.

‘Hair’ is an empowerment anthem using the simple image of the wind blowing through a person’s hair to illuminate the album’s Love-Yourself-And-Let-It-All-Hang-Out message way more effectively than the title track. It trumps it once again by being quite the gayest thing you will ever hear for a long time. On the same tip is ‘Bad Kids’, a homage to the NYC club kids era, hammering home the freak message to the Little Monsters, but with a chorus that is adorable instantly and forever.

‘Bloody Mary’ is a serene flipside to ‘Judas’ this time using Ms Magdalene to do much the same job, as dainty plucked strings careen around filthy beats to create something weirdly graceful. And ‘Americano’, a Hispanic upgrade of ‘Alejandro’ which riffs on both Evita and Santa Esmerelda’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’, succeeds because it is so colourfully deranged. Elsewhere the sci-fi goth night-stalk ‘Electric Chapel’ perhaps nails the record’s blood-and-chrome aesthetics most effectively of all.

Things get rather knottier when the beats drop heavier. ‘Schei?e’, which channels Miss Kittin doing a rave take on Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ strides into a commanding pop song and comes out a triumph. ‘Government Hooker’ drops down into freeform industrial techno impressively early on in the tracklist, but there’s scant evidence of any real political message in lines like “Put your hands on me, John F Kennedy”. And ‘Heavy Metal Lover’s staccato filth-fest is impressively murky but the relentless smut ends up sounding daft. The ostentatious ‘Highway Unicorn (Road To Love)’ aims for some kind of weird chamber-rave-metal-concerto yet comes out a total mess.

But then at the end, something spectacular happens. Skynet is given a rest and it emerges again that when Gaga does do pure emotion, she does it exceptionally well. ‘You And I’ is a quite epic exercise in futurist honky-tonk, apparently directed to a lesbian lover or a drag queen. And finally, the gleaming ‘The Edge Of Glory’ (apparently a love song to her late grandfather, yet with a romantic twist) finds her dancing “On the edge of something final we call life tonight” in the most ecstatic pop serenade this woman has ever come up with.

That beautiful simplicity reminds us that Lady Gaga can be guilty of trying too hard. But do you really think that’s wrong? ‘Born This Way’ doesn’t get everything right. It’s not the clarion to the dispossessed that it thinks it is. And after pushing so hard in this direction, she should probably strip it back to just her and a piano next time if she really wants to shock. Because rather than an exercise in hype, what ‘Born This Way’ really is an exercise in the pushing of everything to its ultimate degree. And for all the black, white and silver, it passes that test with flying colours. Dan Martin

Download:
'Hair'
'Bloody Mary'
'The Edge Of Glory'

Rating: 8 out of 10


Link: http://www.nme.com/reviews/lady-gaga/12061

[Skye]

Lady Gaga
Born This Way
by Sal Cinquemani

Prophets of doom claim that this Saturday—May 21, 2011—will be the beginning of the Rapture and that God's forsaken shall be left on Earth to be tormented for five months before the world comes to its final end. Satan, you can imagine these Christian fanatics saying, will be revealed in the form of a pop star, saturating radio airwaves with her malevolent message of equality for all, leading the damned to hell on the backs of grotesque motorcycle-human hybrids sporting hooker-red lipstick and branded with the definitive sign of the devil: a beveled and embossed logo. Of course, that's just an allegory conceived to frighten us into subverience to pop music's status quo. But Lady Gaga's official sophomore long player, Born This Way, feels like it's been hyped for almost as long—and certainly as fervently—as the End of Days. Which poses two disctinct problems: the age of its songs and its stubborn obedience to said status.

M.I.A. is often cited as a counterpoint to Gaga, as an artist who, despite criticisms of commercializing political violence in the same way American rappers have packaged and sold the gangster lifestyle to suburbia, makes music that's as challenging as her persona is hypocritical. Gaga's flaw is almost exactly the inverse: She fancies herself a cultural revolutionary, employing subversive, if not always completely cogent, visual messages to promote self-love and civil rights, but fails to create music that similarly challenges pop-radio audiences. It's a dilemma that faces any mainstream artist who wants to attain—and maintain—popularity, and thus reach the widest possible audience.

For the better part of two decades, the hip-hop community has applied a strict litmus test to any newcomer hoping to crack the upper echelons of rap: Street cred is essential. Rock has often had a similar requirement of authenticity, but almost anyone is accepted in the glittered halls of the pop pantheon. That is, unless the level of one's dues-paying is deemed disproportionate to his or her success. Questions about Gaga's Upper East Side upbringing and rise to fame have persisted since she became a household name, and with good reason: Her willful admission that everything she does is artifice, her on-stage declarations that she hates the truth, and her opportunistic transformation from vapid fame whore to protective mama monster with a message all point to her being, to paraphrase the performer in an early interview, the most impressive con artist pop music has ever seen.

Madonna has always been accused of appropriating the "other" for her professional gain, but it's Gaga who's taken that conceit to almost obscene levels, pandering to the gay community in particular in ways no other pop artist ever has, not by paralleling her oppression as a female to that of other minorities, as Madonna so frequently and shrewdly has, but by actually transforming herself into a "freak," first with outlandish costumes and, more recently, with prosthetic body modification. These elements are all fascinating redefinitions of beauty, of what's "normal," and physical manifestations of the ugliness that Gaga may have once felt inside, but the girl who was, by many accounts, pretty popular in high school, has effectively fetishized the "other."

The reason many have accepted this blatant co-opting, then, is because we want to believe that—again, like Madonna—Gaga's motivations are pure, even if championing the cause of what she realizes is her core fanbase seems like the ultimate exploitation. Gaga's near-pathological, around-the-clock commitment to the persona she's created, to say nothing of her devotion to her fans (no matter how self-serving it might seem), is about as "real" as it gets in the pop world. And, occasionally, she succeeds at convincing us that being a freak is a state of mind: The freakiest thing about her fantastic "Born This Way" video isn't its ideas (the creation myth that opens the clip is really no different from the story of Adam and Eve or the war between matter and antimatter in the early universe), it's Gaga herself—that 30-second span leading up to and through the final chorus where she unleashes her inner freak, grinding up against Rick Genest, whipping her Pink Ambition ponytail around, and rolling her eyes into the back of her head like she's possessed.

For all the griping about "Born This Way" sounding too similar to "Express Yourself" (which it does), it's also an inferior retread of The Fame Monster's "Dance in the Dark," which shares the same producer, structure, and themes—only those themes aren't pounded into submission with too-literal lyrics and a sound design that was ostensibly tinkered with nonstop since Gaga first sang the hook at the VMAs way back in September. "Born This Way" might have sounded good in a multimillion-dollar recording studio, but on today's portable gadgets, its chorus is a busy, over-produced earsore.

In fact, choruses seem to be the problem with all of the album's singles so far. And what's a pop song without a good hook? The speed metal-meets-"Bad Romance" knock-off "Judas" is lyrically more interesting than "Born This Way," but its Aqua-esque chorus is too sweet and poppy for a torch song dedicated to one of the Bible's greatest villains. The electro-rock ballad—and accidental third single—"The Edge of Glory" isn't retro so much as retrograde, starting off with some crafty Art of Noise synth tones before morphing into what sounds like the theme song to an early-'90s sitcom, or an inspirational sports flick, as sung by Bonnie Tyler. And the promo single "Hair" is a derivative but perfectly serviceable club track about highlights that's turned into a dumping ground for every bad idea Gaga's had in the last 12 months: schmaltzy piano-woman melodies, overwrought choruses, inexplicable sax solos. Apparently she's never heard of Hair—or the queen of all hair-as-self-actualization dance-pop anthems, RuPaul's "Back to My Roots."

Which is all to say that I had my claws out for this one, but I can't stay mad at Gaga for very long—not with songs like "Marry the Night," a more worthy successor to "Dance in the Dark" that channels post-disco Moroder, and the filthy-fabulous "Government Hooker," which manages to make the oft-robbed bassline from New Order's "Blue Monday" sound brand new. And not when the girl sells a lyric like "Dirty pony, I can't wait to hose you down" in a faux-continental accent without cracking up on "Heavy Metal Lover." (Typically flouted watersports-enthusiast community: You now have your very own anthem!) Gaga's self-proclaimed status as a student of all things pop culture results in some obvious but largely exhilarating experiments in pastiche: "Electric Chapel" is like a song by the Cardigans as fronted by Debbie Harry, featuring Slash, and produced by John Carpenter, while "Unicorn Highway (Road 2 Love)" might be what it would have sounded like if the Lizard King's heart had held out a few more years and he recorded a disco song.

References to other erstwhile '70s icons like ABBA ("Americano," "Judas") and Queen ("Yoü and I") are less imaginative, and Gaga gets in trouble when she allows her affinity for her fans to inform her songwriting, as she does on "Hair" and "Bad Kids" (for the record, it sounds like she's singing "***got" instead of "bad kid," which, come to think of it, would have made for a much ballsier, albeit dicey, political statement), but it's easy to forget that she was still only 24 when she composed most of these songs. She's indeed on the edge of glory—that is, she isn't quite there yet, but it's fun, if infuriating at times, to watch her try so devotedly.

Norman Mailer once said that, when writing fiction, one should draw from their own personal narrative at oblique angles rather than cutting straight through and using it wholesale; this way, a writer can use their personal experience over and over in different ways without ever exhausting it. To that point, Gaga has tapped the well of the Queen of Pop so often and so directly that it will become impossible for her to continue to do so without facing fierce criticism. Which is unfortunate since she's most interesting, even most relevant, when striking that particular pose, as she does on "Scheiße," a Dietrich-by-way-of-Madonna-on-steriods techno-feminist manifesto.

But as it stands, it appears Gaga's most prominent muse throughout most of Born This Way is Lita Ford. When Gaga graduated to stadiums, her music clearly followed suit. There's nothing small about this album, and Gaga sings the **** out of every single track. In many ways, Born This Way is akin to the Killers' sophomore effort, Sam's Town: bloated, self-important, proudly American, an exercise in extraordinary excess. There are lots of mentions of Jesus Christ throughout the Born This Way project, not to mention Judas, Mary M., and machine guns that shoot church bells. Which makes sense, since Born This Way will likely be playing on a loop in hell. And all the bad kids—and ***gots—will be dancing to it for eternity.

Rating: 4 out of 5 *'s

Link: http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/r...-this-way/2508

[Skye]

Lady Gaga's Born This Way Album Is Everything To Everyone

Singer's hotly anticipated album streamed (and leaked) online Wednesday.

On the cover of the current issue of V magazine, Lady Gaga can be seen sporting three heads, a symbolic gesture to the many facets of her personality. But after listening to her brand-new Born This Way album, you'll quickly realize that the V cover is a bit of an understatement: three heads are clearly not enough.

On Born This Way, (which premiered in full on the website of U.K.'s Metro newspaper early Wednesday morning, for U.K. users only, and also leaked online), Gaga proves that she is one of the most multifaceted pop stars on the planet. She takes on roughly 750 different personas on the album — throughout the course of 14 songs, she professes to be "a warrior queen," "a soldier," "a winner" (and, later on, "a loser"), "a selfish punk," "a bad kid" and "a degenerate young rebel" (and proud of it), to name just a few. She is also a messiah, an idol, a down-and-dirty homegirl, a lonely girlfriend, a mother, a martyr, a prostitute and a mother superior. Shoot, she even speaks German and Spanish.

Perhaps she sums it up best on the sumptuously dirty "Government Hooker," when she proclaims, quite matter-of-factly, "I could be anything. I could be everything."

That quote is a pretty apt way to sum up Born This Way's entire mission statement: It tries very hard to be everything to everyone. From the piston-pumping electronics of "Marry the Night" and the tarantula tango of "Americano" to the twitching, "Transformers"-large techno of "Heavy Metal Lover" and the Queen-sized balladry of "You and I" (featuring the one-and-only Brian May on guitar) and "The Edge of Glory" (featuring the one-and-only Clarence Clemons on sax), there truly isn't a genre she doesn't attempt to cram onto the disc.

And believe it or not, it all works. This is definitely a long player (the shortest song clocks in at a hair under four minutes), but an album this full of songs and ideas should take all the space (and time) it needs. It is epic. It is excellent. It is exactly the kind of album you'd expect the hugest pop star on the planet to make.

But above all, Born This Way succeeds because it is almost always interesting. Politics aside, this is a sonic smorgasbord, packed with forward-thinking rhythms (the eternally building strut of "Schiße," the icy synths of "Bloody Mary," the gnarly electro-guitars of "Bad Kids," the pulsing pump of "Heavy Metal Lover") that make it the most compelling pop album in recent memory. Even at its most indulgent, it's still undeniably real. You get the feeing that there truly isn't as much as a keytar squiggle that Gaga didn't obsess over ... for all the big names that worked on it, and all the all-star cameos it features, Born This Way is, at its core, a handmade thing. A labor of love.

While I'm still ingesting the majority of it, my first impression is this: Born This Way is a great, unapologetically huge album. It is brave and bold and even a little silly at times, but Gaga pulls it all off flawlessly. You will dance to it and take it to the bedroom; you will probably cry and sing along to it, too. It is everything to everyone.


Link: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/166...y-stream.jhtml

[Chi^_^]

I'm very disappointed with this album. It's just Fame Monster pt.2 nothing more nothing less.
2/5

After hearing this album (especially the non-single tracks), I really don't understand how you came to that conclusion. Sounds almost nothing like TFM.

[lux_littledreamer]

Bloody Mary is my jam right now!

[Skye]

Review | Lady Gaga, Born This Way

Lady Gaga's game-changing debut, 2008's The Fame, and its hit-filled add-on, The Fame Monster, ruled. But the phenom's second LP is the one she was born to record. Wildly audacious and arresting (imagine Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Madonna poured into a sonic blender!), it's equal parts stadium-worthy epic anthems like "Hair" and convention-defying dance-pop. And her hard-core little monsters will eat up the studio

Rating: 4 out of 5 *'s

Link: http://www.usmagazine.com/moviestvmu...is-way-2011185

[Skye]

Clearly it is morally and legally wrong to download the Lady Gaga album.

But if we had downloaded 'Born This Way', and if we had put it into iTunes, and if we had given each song a star rating INSTEAD OF LEGALLY STREAMING IT ON THE METRO WEBSITE THEN LABORIOUSLY MOCKING UP AN iTUNES SCREENGRAB WHICH IS DEFINITELY WHAT WE HAVE DONE, this is how we would rate the songs.



So that's a solid 4.5/5 or - if you like - 9/10. Which feels about right. What an extraordinary album.

And what about the bonus tracks you'll hear on the Special Edition format? Well 'Fashion Of His Love' is one of the tracks Gaga played us in demo form a year ago then again when we saw her at the end of March this year. Remember when she went out of her way to thank Whitney Houston at the Grammys in February? She was talking about how she imagined Whitney belting out the 'Born This Way' single but 'Fashion Of His Love' (along with 'Marry The Night' on the main album) also struck us as channelling Whitney's spirit. In our 'Fashion Of His Love' notes from the more recent listening session we have written the phrase 'techno monster'. As for 'The Queen', we heard it' for the first time in March and haven't heard it since. Our notes are fantastically **** - all we've written is "Ronettes", "Belgian techno", and "I can be the queen you need me to be". We're looking forward to hearing it again. (We haven't heard 'Black Jesus † Amen Fashion' so that will be a nice surprise.)

Link: http://www.popjustice.com/index.php?...446&Itemid=206

[Skye]

Lady Gaga - Born This Way

Freedom, Communication, Love, and Artistry

Lady Gaga takes us on a wild musical rollercoaster ride unified by explorations of personal freedom, the difficulties of communication, the power of love, and a never ending quest for artistry. By the end we are left standing at the edge, not alone, but with another in a moment poignant and powerful enough you might shed a tear or two. Individually, some songs here may seem a bit messy or unusual in lyrical content, but in context it all makes sense as Lady Gaga encourages us all to, "Marry the Night."

Audacity and Openness Reign Making 'Born This Way' a Master Stroke

Born This Way would be nothing without Lady Gaga's sheer audacity and openness on record. We are pulled into the murky world of personal religious conflict on tracks like "Judas" and "Bloody Mary" in a way that completely dismisses any concern about blasphemy. With the release of the title single Lady Gaga proudly proclaimed the value of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people in a way that dared pop radio to play it and now has kept it there in the top 20 for the last three months. She brazenly welds disco to metal guitars embracing all of her musical influences in a mad clash of styles that works more often than not. Born This Way is not an album for those who don't like to feel an artist in their face. Here she enlists a team of producers but most prominently Fernando Garibay and RedOne in bringing her musical visions to life. Lady Gaga will happily challenge all of your assumptions about what pop music can be.

Energy That Obliterates Missteps

On its own the song "Hair" seems rather silly and overdone in its focus on using one's hair as a metaphor for personal freedom. However, sandwiched between the charming "Americano" and full throttle half-German dance attack of "Scheisse," we are carried along by the energy that bursts out of all of the songs here. This is an album that will leave you feeling you need to catch your breath by the time the end rolls around after 14 songs, none of which amount to filler. It is difficult to imagine Born This Way missing any of these songs.

Top Tracks On 'Born This Way'

•"Marry The Night"
•"Born This Way"
•"Bloody Mary"
•"Heavy Metal Lover"
•"The Edge Of Glory"

Born This Way Is a Powerful, Muscular Pop Music Journey Not To Be Missed

Born This Way begins and ends with near perfection. The album opens with the song "Marry the Night," Lady Gaga's grand invitation to embrace the darkness both within and without. She knows that we will all enjoy and understand her musical presentation better if we first open our hearts and minds to our own selves. It is no surprise she then segues into "Born This Way," the ultimate celebration of individuality. For the rest of the album we are shuttled among songs that seek a wide variety of words, metaphors, and expressions to explain the importance of personal freedom. Lady Gaga shows us the power of connection in raw, physical terms. The carnal power of "Heavy Metal Lover" is impressive to behold. Finally, the whole album is wrapped up with "The Edge Of Glory" which absolutely glows as the conclusion to this masterwork of an album. It blends pop, rock, and dance music in a statement simple and profound, "I'm on the edge of glory, and I'm hanging on a moment of truth. Out on the edge of glory, and I'm hanging on a moment with you."


Rating: 5 out of 5 *'s

Link: http://top40.about.com/od/ladygaga/f...n-This-Way.htm

[Skye]

Lady Gaga – Born This Way

After months of teasing us with new material from her second studio album “Born This Way”, releasing singles, “Born This Way” the controversial “Judas” and most recently “The Edge of Glory” and “Hair”, the album has finally been made available to UK fans for streaming online before it’s release this Monday (23rd May) and I find I’m not let down with Lady Gaga’s efforts.

So lets stop with the tedious introductions and see what else Gaga has in-store for her ‘monsters’…

“Marry The Night” is a slow burner, lighting up the album with great pace before releasing it all into this soon-to-be Dance anthem. Strange, yet romantic lyrics that get you punching the air, with hints of the 80’s sprinkled over the top to round it off just right.

“Born This Way” which was released as the first single off the album back in February harks back to Madonna and I just love it. One of the few feel good tracks that doesn’t become cheesy with the passing of time, instead with each listen it matures. Again an upbeat tempo with addictive lyrics that last forever. If only all role models were as individual as Gaga, we would listen all the more.

The third track “Government Hooker”, has a different flavour, that’s not to say it’s not welcome, going for the operatic angle mixed well with Techno before moving into the satirical. As with Katy Perry, each track could stand alone as a single and trample the competition. “Hooker” is a return to the 80’s experimental sound as she wraps her lips around the U.S government and all its adultery.

Returning to the second single she released from the album, “Judas” is a hard hitting Dance track taking you on a journey to the dark side of sexual fantasy. Anything goes, for this naughty girl who asks to be spanked, self proclaiming her sins. It’s alright to be naughty as we enter the private lair of Gaga. Biblical sounds mixed into this raunchy track that has you racing through your moves.

“Americano” has a strong Italian feel that reaffirms the individual sound that only she can produce. With another memorable chorus that has you on your feet till they hurt. The singular sound is like an exotic cocktail that you try for the first time and find’s yourself going back for more.

“Hair” sees her go for the more P!nk autobiographical style, as she breaks out of her shell to be herself. On a par with “Born This Way” in terms of a feel good anthem, her hair being the main tool in her fight to find herself. A struggle we will join in with, pounding the dance floor, it is a strong promo single that comes from the girl within. This is a triumphant sound that will have you on your feet for hours.

“Scheiße! has a surreal German introduction that is common place with Gaga, producing a Trance sound that weaves in between Dance and back again, with strong hints of the eighties once more.

“Bloody Mary” is a haunting track, a slower and far darker track than the others on the album. She drizzles with more exciting sounds as we move through this classical inspired piece. Disturbing lyrics that take you on a mystical journey, I find that everything she touches is turning to gold for this younger singer/songwriter, with her unique style combined with eclectic sounds.

“Bad Kids” again returns to the 80’s, a fast paced track that takes no prisoners, attacking her parents, this is her revenge… Or is it? That’s the magic of Gaga. Another potential single lies here in the album ready to be unleashed. Full of emotion and heart, returning to her childhood thoughts, questioning the labels, now look at her.

“Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)” leaps in to produce a mythical beast that we want to know more about. Another anthem lays here, a person who cannot be touched. I’m reminded of The Beatles “Get Back”. Building up our strength to find the love in our lives, hints of my little pony, whisked away enough energy to take you on your journey to cloud nine without loosing your way in dream land. We will fall in love, I just know with songs like this keeping your spirit alive.

“Heavy Metal Lovers” reeks of lust, Gaga is stopping at nothing to get her prize. The volume is turned down, which is made up for in pace and rhythm. I’d say in the loosest possible terms this is the weakest song in comparison to the other strong songs featured on this album, however that is only the preference of the reviewer. A change in pace may be allowing us to get ready for what is to come from this monumental album.

With “Electric Chapel” the temp is increased again, which is what the album is great at doing. This fast paced track gets straight to the point with echoes of bells and piano. Her voice takes centre stage more as we near the end of this album, we are able to see the vocal range that she has on offer.

“Yoü and I” sees Gaga return to the piano, another strong track, reminiscing of a lost love, the good times and the bad. This is the kind of song that has you waving your lighter in the air with your head swaying back and forth in the crowd. Pumping out the emotion, it must’ve been a great time they shared together. A pure Rock song, filled with guitars and drums turned up to the max, sheer emotion and sweat ooze out of this feel good track.

The album finishes with the latest single, “The Edge of Glory”. The track belongs in the 90′s but it’s so fresh. We can see the end but I don’t want it to come. I’m finding that I want to return to this over and over. A feel good track that has you on your feet, you can feel her passion as she has reached glory; we want to touch it and share it which is only intangible. The saxophone solo stands out as we reach the end of this anthem.

This is another anthem packed album that only Gaga can deliver, she’s avoided the pitfalls of the ‘second album’, choosing not to be overly confident. Instead she has delved further and has pulled out these iconic tracks that will stay forever with a generation that have welcomed Gaga into their hearts as an iconic, creative figure that only comes every 20 years or so. Whatever you do Mr. Record Label, don’t get complacent, you have a unique individual who if looked after will produce many more hits that will be loved just as much as these songs on this strong second album she has produced and is finally about to release.


Rating: 5 out of 5 *'s

Link: http://www.misformusic.com/index.php...is-way-review/

[Skye]

Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way': A Track-by-Track Breakdown

Rolling Stone takes you inside the new album

Last night, Lady Gaga's Born This Way (out Monday) leaked online. The contents of the disc haven't been a total mystery – Gaga's released four singles from the album, her third, since February, and has performed other songs from it in concert – but she still managed to pack in some surprises. Here, Rolling Stone senior critic Jody Rosen goes through the album song by song.

"Marry the Night" – It begins big, with Gaga belting "I'm gonna marry the night/I won't give up on my life" over tolling, church-like synths. And it just gets bigger. And bigger. And bigger still. The chorus arrives in an eruption of drums and power chords; there's a pummeling funk-rock breakdown; and the touchstones are Eighties arena pop and hair metal: Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tyler, Bon Jovi.

"Born This Way" – Yeah, yeah: it's an "Express Yourself" bite. And yes: you've heard the song 700 hundred times in the last month. But Gaga's big hit sounds different in the context of the album that shares its name: like an experiment in the audacious plus-sizing of Eighties dance-pop.

"Government Hooker" – The requisite "kinky" song – though what exactly Gaga is saying here isn't clear: "I'll be your hooker/Government hooker," "I could be Mom/Unless you want to be Dad." But the techno-pop production, by DJ White Shadow, is gripping: a shape-shifting assemblage of buzzes, beeps and clattering beats. Choice couplet: "Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy."

"Judas" – "Wear an ear condom" next time, Gaga sings in a track with one of the catchiest choruses on an album devoted to catchy choruses above all. Gagaologists will spend years pouring over the runes of that rapped bridge. ("But in the cultural sense/I just speak in future tense," etc.) The rest of us will be busy dancing to Red One's walloping production.

"Americano" – The campiest song Gaga's recorded yet, which is saying something. A disco-fied showtune with a pronounced "Latin"-flavor, complete with flamenco guitars and castanets. Possibly about a star-crossed lesbian romance. Definitely set in East Los Angeles. Completely hilarious.

"Hair" – Gaga is not the first songwriter to link self-esteem and liberation to free-flowing coiffure. (Remember that rock musical called, um, Hair? Remember "Whip My Hair"?) But she's definitely the most committed. "I am my hair!" she cries. Red One supplies the gale force hair-tousling synths.

"Scheiße" – Gaga speaks a little German and intones some inspirational platitudes alongside some generic Eurodisco thump and a wisp of a chorus.

"Bloody Mary" – A sluggish tempo, goofy "goth" atmospherics and a lyric that sounds like bad high school poetry: "We are not just art for Michaelangelo to carve/He can't rewrite the agro of my furied heart."

"Bad Kids" – In which Gaga reminiscences about her misspent youth and croons an ode to juvenile delinquents, set to forgettable Eighties synth-pop.

"Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)" – Gaga does her best Springsteen. Or is it Meatloaf? "Get your hot rods ready to rumble/‘Cause we're gonna fall in love tonight/Get your hot rods ready to rumble/'Cause we're gonna drink until we die." Sublime schlock, with the biggest, thuddingest drum sound you've heard this century.

"Heavy Metal Lover" – More smutty talk, set against a wall of fuzzy synthesizer sound. "I want your whiskey mouth/All over my blond south," Gaga commands.

"Electric Chapel" – It earns its title with some heavy guitar riffing and a squealing metal solo towards the end. The lyric holds out hope for monogamous romance: "Together we'll find a way/To make pure love work in a dirty way."

"You and I" – Gaga's signature power ballad – a fan favorite since she first played it live in 2009 – gets the treatment it merits. Produced by "Mutt" Lange, guitar solo by Queen's Brian May, with a torrid, sturm und drang vocal turn by Gaga. It's a confession. (Gaga watchers speculate it's about her on-again off-again boyfriend Luc Carl.) It's also the greatest Def Leppard song Lady Gaga has ever written.

"The Edge of Glory" – Those hooks! That chorus! That Clarence Clemons sax solo! Born This Way goes out in a blaze of shlock-pop glory.

Link: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...kdown-20110518