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Posted by: Jαsє 28th May 2020, 06:46 PM

Post any reviews and scores in this thread!

Posted by: Jαsє 28th May 2020, 07:45 PM

Previous Studio Albums Metascore:

The Fame: 71

The Fame Monster: 78

Born This Way: 71

ARTPOP: 61

Joanne: 67

Posted by: Jαsє 28th May 2020, 07:47 PM

https://www.metacritic.com/music/chromatica/lady-gaga

The official Metacritic page for Chromatica is finally up!

Posted by: SKOB 28th May 2020, 08:04 PM

NOT ARTPOP having the lowest score

Posted by: LMLou 28th May 2020, 08:56 PM

I’m not surprised by ARTPOP having the worst score, it definitely doesn’t seem like the album that was made for critics and more for fans

Posted by: HausofGhibli 28th May 2020, 09:06 PM

Yeah the metacritic scores are about where I'd place them in terms of critical appeal tbh.

There's also

A STAR IS BORN [ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK] 78

Posted by: SKOB 29th May 2020, 09:23 AM

CLASH gives 8/10!!

"Across its sixteen tracks, ‘Chromatica’ is entirely over-the-top, but in the best possible way. Every song is an anthem of defiance and empowerment, turned up to 11 and genetically engineered for maximum danceability."

https://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/lady-gaga-chromatica

Posted by: Jay ☆ 29th May 2020, 09:31 AM

I have a good feeling that Chromatica could provide her with her best Metacritic score to date, but we'll see! I'll be amazed if this gets a mixed or negative response from some critics.

Posted by: SKOB 29th May 2020, 09:42 AM

Evening Standard gives 4/5 stars!

https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/music/lady-gaga-chromatica-review-new-album-a4454006.html

Posted by: *Callum 29th May 2020, 10:04 AM

I see a Metacritic score of somewhere between 79-84 for this, although it deserves a solid 95

Posted by: SKOB 29th May 2020, 10:18 AM

Solid 98/100 from me :DDDD

Posted by: :') 29th May 2020, 11:51 AM

musicOMH gave it 4 stars: https://www.musicomh.com/reviews/albums/lady-gaga-chromatica

The AV Club gave it a B: https://music.avclub.com/lady-gaga-returns-to-her-electro-pop-roots-and-channels-1843743622

These 2 and Clash count for Metacritic!

Posted by: :') 29th May 2020, 11:55 AM

4 stars from The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/lady-gaga-chromatica-album-review-stream-tracklist-ariana-grande-elton-john-a9538591.html

Also counts for Metacritic, not Future Nostalgia or Fiona Apple levels of praise but doing well so far

Posted by: HausofGhibli 29th May 2020, 11:57 AM

Amazing reviews so far! Keep them coming

Posted by: SKOB 29th May 2020, 12:41 PM

That AV Club review is something else I mean how one can do it THAT WRONG and still give a good score is beyond me.

Posted by: :') 29th May 2020, 12:50 PM

The Guardian have given it 4 stars: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/29/lady-gaga-chromatica-review-ariana-grande-elton-john

"The ludicrous Elton John collaboration Sine From Above – which, with its panpipe-inflected beat and unstoppable euphoric rush, would win Eurovision on any given year – digs deeper into this simple idea that music can soothe even the most damaged soul.

Sour Candy, a collaboration with K-pop girl band Blackpink, falls disappointingly flat: aiming for the sweaty throb of deep house, it ends up sounding like a dashed off, cheaply produced interlude. "

Posted by: Jαsє 29th May 2020, 03:58 PM

Posted by: Jαsє 29th May 2020, 03:59 PM

An entire Twitter thread full of reviews!

Posted by: HausofGhibli 29th May 2020, 04:00 PM

Current metacritic score of 82 DESERVED.

Posted by: Jαsє 29th May 2020, 04:01 PM

QUOTE(HausofGhibli @ May 29 2020, 05:00 PM)

Current metacritic score of 82 DESERVED.

Posted by: SKOB 29th May 2020, 07:04 PM

THE ONLY REVIEW THAT MATTERS!!!!

i.e. how do the Chromatica track compare to WHY DID YOU DO THAT!!!

https://slate.com/culture/2020/05/lady-gaga-chromatica-review-butt-song.html

Posted by: dandy* 29th May 2020, 07:19 PM

https://www.nme.com/reviews/lady-gaga-chromatica-album-review-2677590

4/5 from NME

Posted by: Jαsє 29th May 2020, 08:12 PM

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/9392858/lady-gaga-chromatica-songs-ranked?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Billboard's Chromatica rank

16, 15, 14. Chromatica I, Chromatica II, & Chromatica III
13. Free Woman
12. Fun Tonight
11. 1000 Doves
10. Plastic Doll
09. Babylon
08. Sour Candy (feat. BLACKPINK)
07. Sine From Above (feat. Elton John)
06. Alice
05. Stupid Love
04. Enigma
03. 911
02. Rain on Me (with Ariana Grande)
01. Replay

Posted by: LMLou 29th May 2020, 08:18 PM

Replay and Enigma getting the love they deserve, but Free Woman last

Posted by: Jαsє 29th May 2020, 08:27 PM

Sine only being 7th is...a choice!

Posted by: Jαsє 29th May 2020, 10:40 PM

Metacritic User Scores

The Fame - 8.4
The Fame Monster - 8.9
Born This Way - 8.2
ARTPOP - 7.6
Joanne - 8.0
A Star Is Born - 8.4
Chromatica - 9.3

Posted by: SKOB 30th May 2020, 07:35 AM

QUOTE(Jαsє @ May 29 2020, 09:12 PM)

Posted by: dandy* 30th May 2020, 07:40 AM

Replay is actually growing on me the most, I could see it becoming a single.

Plus agree with Billboard that Free Woman is the weakest link

Posted by: Tawdry Hepburn 30th May 2020, 08:40 AM

QUOTE(Jαsє @ May 29 2020, 09:12 PM)

Posted by: SKOB 30th May 2020, 08:59 AM

Now THIS is how you write an analysis. HATS OFF, what a pleasure to read (even if he criticizes the album but it's so well thought and not just ranking the track or saying that she sounds like Madonna at times). By FAR my fave text around the matter.

The Tame Monster: Lady Gaga’s ‘Chromatica’ Is the Pop Album for the Lost Summer of 2020

The singer’s sixth studio album is brash on the surface, but melancholic at its core
By Rob Harvilla May 29, 2020, 5:30pm EDT

The savvy Lady Gaga fan in 2020, when confronted with a new song called “Fun Tonight,” knows enough to flinch. Because it is a latter-day Lady Gaga song; because it is 2020. “I’m not having fun tonight,” goes the chorus to “Fun Tonight.” Right. Thought so.

The vibe is downbeat electro-pop. (If you’re still obsessed with Ally, her A Star Is Born character—and why wouldn’t you be—it’s caught halfway between the bubbly frivolity of “Why Did You Do That?” and the stern grandeur of “Shallow.”) The lyrics range from “Wish I could be what I know I am” to “I feel like I’m in a prison hell.” The song’s intended target, according to savvy Lady Gaga gossip hounds, is her ex-fiancé Christian Carino. (She is now reportedly dating a New York Times editor’s ex-boyfriend.) “You love the paparazzi, love the fame / Even though you know it causes me pain,” Gaga laments, evoking past glories, now drained of their glory, or at least their frivolity. Even her idea of a prison hell has changed dramatically since she recruited Beyoncé for the “Telephone” video.

Gaga launches the chorus of “Fun Tonight” with a lovely, anguished falsetto swoop, the words borderline nonsensical—“I’m feelin’ the way that I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ with you”—the anguish nonetheless palpable. The end result is neither the best nor the saddest song on Gaga’s sixth album, Chromatica, out Friday. The best song—and “Shallow” excepted, her best and hopefully biggest pop hit in nearly a decade—actually is the saddest. But dip anywhere into this record, even the fussy orchestral interludes somehow, and the bawling-on-the-dance-floor pathos will bowl you over the same way it bowled her over.

In touting Gaga’s glorious return to full-blown dance pop after the meta rockist provocations of 2018’s A Star Is Born and the minivan-ad turbo-Americana of 2016’s actually quite beguiling Joanne, the Chromatica rollout had a soothingly chaotic throwback quality to it. The goofy tweets. The wanton messiness. (The leak-plagued emergence of bombastic lead single “Stupid Love” was a saga unto itself.) The gaudy Grimes-before-Grimes sci-fi flamboyance of the early visuals, like the cutscenes in a Japanese RPG whose battle system you could never hope to understand. The COVID-borne release delay (which also nixed a planned Coachella sneak attack) was a disquieting new wrinkle, certainly, but it felt great, in a nostalgic future-shock sorta way, to be once again bewildered.

With reliably brash production from BloodPop, Burns, Skrillex, and other proud maximalists, the resulting record, which spreads 16 tracks across a relatively restrained 43 minutes, has a surface outrageousness you’ll certainly recognize, but a relatable bone-deep melancholy too. Unlike, say, Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia—a superior pop album but a far more discordant self-quarantine listen, given its raw yearning for communal dance-party release—Chromatica is the perfect summer album for the Lost Summer of 2020. “I’m completely lonely / Please don’t judge me,” she entreats us amid the trance-adjacent freedom-via-isolation jam “1000 Doves”; her idea of typical pop-star self-empowerment this time out is bellowing, “I’m still something if I don’t got a man / I’m a free woman,” on “Free Woman.” It’s unsettling that she even felt it necessary to point that out.

The flamboyance and the desolation—“Even when you feel 6 feet under, you can still fire on all cylinders,” Gaga told Zane Lowe in February, describing her studio mind-set as “I’m miserable, I’m sad, I’m depressed”—are productively at odds from the start. “I’m tired of screaming at the top of my lungs,” she announces on “Alice,” her voice ever-so-slightly robotic, the uptempo house chug evoking a Wonderland with little wonder in it. At times this restraint, this hint of steely resignation undercuts the wackiness, which is a shame: The blaring neo-disco of “Replay” could serve to be, let’s say, 50 percent wilder, and the understated “Sour Candy,” costarring the disruptive K-pop girl group Blackpink, could be, let’s say, 200 percent more disruptive. But when she gets the uppers vs. downers balance just right, look out.

The one-two punch of “911” (her monotone extra robotic, her mentality extra self-defeating) and “Plastic Doll” (her falsetto swoops extra anguished) is especially bruising. The self-medicating lyrics to “911” range from “Turnin’ up emotional faders / Keep repeating self-hating phrases” to “Wish I laughed and kept the good friendships”; the hushed bridge to “Plastic Doll” begins with her chanting, “Tell me, who dressed you? / Where’d you get that hat? / Why is she cryin’? / What’s the price tag?” There is a hint here—more than a hint, really—of the dehumanization that pop stardom demands, the disastrous private life that a boldface-celebrity lifestyle inevitably leaves in its wake. She sounds more sympathetic on this topic than Drake does, anyway.

But “Rain on Me,” a triumphant pop-star summit with Ariana Grande, is the peak that expertly doubles as a valley: “It’s coming down on me / Water like misery,” Gaga wails, before the monster hook kicks in. It’s anthemic but frightfully vulnerable, an instant pool-party classic with the troubled soul of a drained pool. It’s her best pop song since, what? “The Edge of Glory”? The hug she and Grande share at the end of the video is awkward in an awfully endearing way. Your first hug with someone you’re not currently living with, however many months from now that transpires, will look a lot like it.

Very little of this has that Gaga-specific WTF quality you’re likely craving: It’s the difference between chain-smoking and fashioning all your cigarettes into a pair of rad sunglasses. But “Sine From Above,” a late-album collaboration with Sir Elton John, gets closest to liftoff, emotional and otherwise. The theme is musical inspiration as the balm for personal devastation: “Then the signal split in two / The sound created stars like me and you,” the two divas sing to each other, consolingly. “Before there was love, there was silence.” It’s egotistical in an awfully unguarded way.

But the most jarring and empowering and weirdly thrilling moment in the song belongs to John alone: He thunders, “When I was young / I felt immortal!” with more ferocious catharsis than you’ll find in all of Rocketman. It would simply sound ridiculous if you didn’t totally believe him. “Sine From Above” wraps up with an abrupt, colossal breakbeat, and the disorientation is pleasurable indeed. There are lightning flashes of the classic, heedless, fearless Lady Gaga throughout Chromatica, and all the more thrilling for how brief they are, and all the sadder for their brevity.

https://www.theringer.com/music/2020/5/29/21275085/lady-gaga-chromatica-review

Posted by: Jαsє 30th May 2020, 12:06 PM

Metacritic score was 79 last night - now up to 81 which means "universal acclaim"

Posted by: *Callum 31st May 2020, 11:27 AM

QUOTE(*Callum @ May 29 2020, 11:04 AM)

Posted by: SKOB 31st May 2020, 11:33 AM

Watch Pitchfork giving 6.1 and making it below 80 again

Posted by: ✖ leww ✖ 1st June 2020, 05:49 AM

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lady-gaga-chromatica/

7.3 from Pitchfork!

Posted by: HausofGhibli 1st June 2020, 07:05 AM

That'll do!

Posted by: SKOB 1st June 2020, 07:38 AM

Hilarious that ASIB got better score but at least it's above 7. The reviewers don't decide the score there anyways, they are adapted to the "policy of the publication" (meaning that an ok rap/indie/experimental album can easily get 8.0 but pop album most likely never).

Posted by: :') 1st June 2020, 01:14 PM

What a shitty policy of publication. Apart from Lana I can't think of a pop album in recent years that was rated 8+ by them

Even Future Nostalgia got a 7.5, when nearly every other critic gave it an 8+ score

Posted by: :') 1st June 2020, 01:20 PM

Oop they gave Sweetner by Ariana a 8.1

Posted by: dandy* 1st June 2020, 09:48 PM

Melodrama got 8.8 too. Deservedly!

Posted by: HausofGhibli 1st June 2020, 09:58 PM

Rolling Stone have awarded the album 4/5 in the following review: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/lady-gaga-chromatica-review-1008302/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Posted by: kye 2nd June 2020, 09:16 AM

that pitchfork review reads like she loved it and gave it a 9 but then realised she couldn’t give it too much of a high score and forgot to change the review.

Posted by: Jαsє 3rd June 2020, 02:38 PM

Was down to 80 on Metacritic when I last checked, it's now back to 81

Posted by: Oricon 4th June 2020, 12:28 PM

This is down to 75/100 on Metacritic now

Posted by: LMLou 4th June 2020, 01:37 PM

Back up to 78 now. The New York Times gave it 50 which might have dragged it down

Posted by: JayYou'llBeThere 4th June 2020, 03:18 PM

QUOTE(LMLou @ Jun 4 2020, 02:37 PM)

Posted by: HausofGhibli 6th June 2020, 06:10 PM

79 on Metacritic now!

Posted by: Jαsє 6th June 2020, 07:22 PM

NYT can choke

Posted by: HausofGhibli 8th June 2020, 04:35 PM

Posted by: HausofGhibli 23rd June 2020, 07:52 PM

Posted by: SKOB 24th June 2020, 08:08 AM

QUOTE(kye @ Jun 2 2020, 10:16 AM)