Album Review: Lady Gaga - Born This Way

BritEvents' Lucy Middleton takes a look at the second studio album, 'Born This Way', by Lady Gaga, the fastest-selling album of the year. Does it meet expectations or fall sadly short?

When Lady Gaga's Born This Way album was released on May 23rd, her 'Little Monster' fans crashed Amazon's website servers when they flocked en masse to purchase their Mother Monster's latest work.

That very day, 288,000 copies of the album were bought, making it the fastest selling album of this year. According to Forbes she's the most powerful celebrity in the world, ahead of the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Justin Bieber. With two impressive albums already under her belt, will Born This Way follow in its predecessors' footsteps or fall by the wayside?

If you have bought the CD version rather than the digital tracks, you will be greeted with the album art that caused a huge uproar on Twitter. Fans were in total disbelief that the roughly photoshopped image of Lady Gaga as a motorbike was the true artwork for the album they had been waiting over a year for.

Since the release, it has become one of the most criticised parts of the album however, if you bear in mind Gaga's obsession with metal and rebellion coupled with a healthy dose of human passion, the album cover seems quite fitting.

Judas, the second song released from the album, would possibly have been my favourite song on the album if it wasn't for two niggling things: the lyrics - "I'll bring him down... A king with no crown..." - are sung like she is suffering from a bunged up, snotty nose and the chorus which sounds more like that of one suited to a Vengaboys song than a raunchy Gaga original. Once these things are noticed, they cannot be ignored and the song was ruined for me.

Bloody Mary, with its heartily-plucked string sections blasted by dirty beats, is one of those songs where experimentation creates something that shouldn't work, yet it really does. The vocal style on this song, coupled with the theatrical vibe, reminds me in parts of the more raunchier tracks on the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.

After a few solid songs and the headache inducing irritants Highway Unicorn (Road to Love) and Electric Chapel, the album's energy is suddenly drawn out and replaced by raw emotion as You and I and The Edge of Glory bring the album to a close.

You and I is a Shania Twain-esque power ballad with electro driven through the melody. It is instantly loveable and something you would not expect from Gaga, but once again is an experiment gone right.

The Edge of Glory is a tender love song dedicated to her late grandfather and it is - without doubt - the strongest and most emotional electric pop ballad Gaga has created to date.

Having grown tired of reflecting on the issue of fame, as she has in the previous two albums, Gaga's main focus on Born This Way is exploring the topic of religion. Raised a catholic and having admitted to being confused about religion, Gaga sings about religious figures and imagery. Discussing strong, controversial issues such as religion and homosexuality in her songs does cause you to wonder whether it is to broaden the minds of the general public or a tactic exercised purely to attract more media attention.

Knowing exactly who she is and what she has set out to achieve, Gaga's message of encouraging people to feel confident about themselves and embrace their true being, while accepting others, is commendable.

It's refreshing, as mixed in with lyrics of drinking and asking John F Kennedy to put her hands on her, the strong self-empowering lyrics make it easy to see why she is idolised by millions of doting fans.

As admirable as her overall message may seem, it still does not take away from the fact that Born This Way is disappointing in comparison to her previous two albums.

The songs, an experiment to see how far she can push contemporary pop boundaries, will be seen as a dance revolution full of memorable hits to some. However for others it will be as though it had the potential, but the anticipation and hype surrounding the album's release created a large anti-climax.

Perhaps we're expecting too much of Mother Monster, but with songs such as Poker Face, Bad Romance and Telephone to show what she is capable of; the majority of the Born This Way songs simply fail to deliver.

With the album being just over an hour long stuffed with fillers rather than thrillers - the songs that wouldn't be strong enough to stand alone such as Government Hooker and Americano should probably have been left off the final version. However, where the madness has shown some method behind it in songs such as You and I, Bloody Mary and The Edge of Glory, you can't knock a girl for trying something new.  

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