Lady Gaga has officially kicked off the Joanne World Tour, named after her newest and floppiest album yet.
It turns out that Lady Gaga playing the halftime show at the Super Bowl, headlining Coachella, releasing surprise singles, and partnering with several other companies (Verizon, Urban Outfitters, etc.) for heavy promotion and ticket giveaways still doesn’t seem to be enough to make people care about this dud of an era.
Later on, he goes on to say that when she sits at the piano and sings, that's when she's at her best.
The Album:
Remember the days when everyone was calling ARTPOP a commercial failure? When everyone said that selling only 2,500,000* copies of the album worldwide made it a certified flop?
According to Lady Gaga’s wiki page, Joanne has only sold around 1,500,000* copies so far, and it’s almost been out for a year. Amazon deeply discounted the album on launch all the way down to $3.99 (only fifty cents above the minimum price to still be eligible for the charts), and even though it hit number one, that’s definitely not where it stayed.
The album and both singles released from it sunk the minute they hit the charts. The lead single, Perfect Illusion, debuted at number 15 and was only in the top 100 for six weeks, and the second single, Million Reasons, debuted at 76, left, then only re-entered and stuck around like a bad rash because of her performance of it at this year's Super Bowl back in February. The Cure was then released (the song is not on Joanne but is featured on the Joanne World Tour) and was a "one-off" type of single (according to collaborator DJ White Shadow) that was announced and played for the first time at Coachella. It, too, failed miserably on the charts, debuting at 39 and then falling to 62 the following week (and then, presumably, off the face of the Earth after that).
There doesn't seem to be another single planned.
The Tour:
It turns out that Lady Gaga playing the halftime show at the Super Bowl, headlining Coachella, releasing surprise singles, and partnering with several other companies (Verizon, Urban Outfitters, etc.) for heavy promotion and ticket giveaways still doesn’t seem to be enough to make people care about this dud of an era.
The show itself seems to be selling about as well as any other show she has (i.e. that everyone says it's sold out but somehow there are still tickets available officially and unofficially) and the reviews seem about the same (i.e. that her fans are drooling over her, but that actual reviewers are usually not as impressed).
One reviewer from the New York Times said of the Tacoma show that the songs from the actual Joanne album itself were the "least effective" (which isn't surprising, considering what a flop the album is). So, what does that say if the new songs are what took up most of the show? There were 9 (or 10 if you count The Cure) songs out of 22 played from Joanne. (And as a side note: only one song from ARTPOP)
He called one song "messy," one "drowsy," one "hokey," and one "awkwardly jaunty." He said the first half of the show was "disjointed" and that her attitude and style seemed to change at "random."
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| A Lady Gaga show? Disjointed and random? I'm shocked! |
Of course. We've been hearing that time and again since the start of her career, but it still doesn't seem to happen for more than ten or fifteen minutes in an hour and a half-long show. So what does that really say? Is she really such a talent if she can only captivate people for ten minutes at a time?
If you read a book and you only enjoyed three chapters of it, would you still say it was a good book?
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| I'd rather pull my hair out than listen to you too, Gaga. |
*note that the source of these numbers is her official wiki page, and could be incorrect/not updated at the time of this writing
