Review: Born This Way (Deluxe)
Lady Gaga performing on the Fame Ball tour in ...

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Lady Gaga continues to be awesome.  It’s good to know how some things can more or less stay the same, even though it’s only been a few years.  Born This Way is proof of this, and also might just be her best record yet.  Like The Fame, Born This Way acts as somewhat of the theme of the record as well.  I don’t know if I’d quite call it a concept album, but for a genre that’s almost entirely single-driven, the album as a whole holds together really well.

The Deluxe Version is the version I’m familiar with, which adds a few extra songs to the main album as well as an additional EP of remixes, including the “Country Road” version of the title track — though, I think Interscope could definitely do worse than to service a country remix of “Yoü and I” to radio, as that already sounds pretty close to the current country radio landscape, minus the electronic percussion and some of the synths.  The other remixes are pretty much straight-up club remixes — 12” mixes that probably haven’t actually been put on 12”s yet.

 

Almost all of the songs are very strong – about the only one I don’t care for is “Marry The Night”, which is, unfortunately, the first song on the album.  And that one’s not really bad, it’s just a weaker cut.  (Oddly enough, the second-weakest on the album is probably “Judas”, the second single, which has apparently begun its descent in the charts, taking the similar-sounding “Bad Romance” out of radio playlists with it.)

 

I’ve been spinning the album for almost a week now, and it only recently dawned on me that the album has a very Daft Punk feel — it’s very much clubbier than the The Fame and The Fame Monster, but quite a lot of the album sounds like Daft Punk with vocals — and since Gaga’s got good chops, that’s definitely a good thing.  There’re bubblings that a Gaga backlash might be on its way up — but a listen to the album should strike those down…. at least, assuming the backlash is based on the actual quality of her work, rather than that nebulous, free-floating feelings that can seemingly change overnight.  I’m looking forward to what Gaga’s going to do next — Born This Way is both a progression as an artist as well as a damn good record.

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