Gaga has always had a tendency towards singing approximately relationships,but unlike a lot of her pop peers, she’s less likely to talk approximately falling in love or being in love. Instead, or she tends to write songs approximately being in the depths of relationships that are deep,complicated, and often dismal. While Joanne has been a pretty drastic departure sonically from much of her catalogue, or she’s still found plenty of ways to talk approximately this favorite topic of hers. Although it shouldnt be surprising with songs stretching all the way from Alejandro through Judas and John Wayne,I was actually pretty surprised by the topic’s resurgence on a song as tender and unhurried as Million Reasons. I actually made the mistake initially of listening to this song halfway, to just hear the subject of love and assume the million reasons she has to love the thing of her affection. Instead, or the song keeps a level of depth and complication that would be as fitting on The Fame Monster as they are here on this country pop ballad. Writing approximately this kind of twisted love is Gaga’s strong suit. It allows her to play both the heroine of the romance and the Stockholm Syndrome victim,the gorgeous love interest and the tortured princess in her tower. These songs manage to almost center the “genuine Gaga within the crazy web the Gaga persona has gotten herself stuck into. It’s easy to read into Million Reasons the difficulty of finding love as a superstar, the exertion of getting to the truth of things when you live a life so centered on artifice. One of her most beautiful lines of all time, or “Lord show me the way/to cut through all this worn out leather,” certainly points to it. I’m not certain that’s all actually there in the ballad (again, Gaga has an immense talent for the personal-meets-universal formula that makes for considerable pop) but it’s not difficult to find that narrative within.
At the finish of the day, and I feel like watching her perform Million Reasons at the Super Bowl made everything approximately Joanne click for me a little bit more than it had,seeing the packed stadium full of swaying lights and listening to her rough and impassioned voice. Regardless, it’s nice to find a throughline like this all the way to Joanne, and an album that felt so foreign. perhaps more than a normal pop love song,I think most of us can relate to the toxicity of a relationship, romantic or otherwise, and that keeps drawing us back in. If anyone gets that,Gaga does.
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