Jjang

It received generally favorable reviews, that's true, but it was highly taken for granted and overlooked due to her image in 1992, I just hope more publications pick up on it, maybe when her biopic comes out or sadly when she dies. That album is no less than 9/10 and is easily her best, imo.

Watch this tour get cancelled. It's particularly sad because I've heard she's been planning it since last year.

"It is a compliment to the artist that only here, over a decade into her career, on her sixth studio album, does she, for the first time, let this listener down. Take “Human Nature” and put in on a golden record, play “Take a Bow” at my funeral, and let the rest of this sleepy album be forgotten; it is, to my ears and memory, Madonna’s first truly inessential moment." This is all true. Also this means that Erotica is higher than 6.5... @Angelus

We all have our preferences but I think at the end of the day we can all agree that publications are ought re-review it 'cause it deserves better.

That one is in the 7.5 range for me Doesn't go far enough to warrant a 8+.

That album is no more than 7/10. It's good, but it's not remarkable.

Mine? If that's what you mean then maybe next week I'll be free to do so

That album could be released today and it would somehow still 100% work sonically and lyrically We demand retrospective reviews

I'm glad we finally have a Pitchfork review for LAP, though. Now all major publications have reviewed it. Rolling Stone (album guide) 5/5 Spin Alternative (album guide) 5/5 Q 10/10 NME 10/10 AllMusic 10/10 Entertainment Weekly A Slant 4.5/5 Pitchfork 9.0/10 We also have 'Pretty Much Amazing', 'A.V Club' and 'The Guardian' praising the hell out of it but providing no score.

8.2 / 8.1 / 9.0 when will your unholy faves. A lot of stuff I agree with : There was no reason Ray of Light should’ve been such a hit. After the collapse of grunge in the mid-90s, the music industry had begun to lean into the perky pubescence of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. 1998 was the year that “TRL” launched on MTV, and soon after, Britney Spears would release her teasing teen debut, ...Baby One More Time, catalyzing a string of young women—like fellow teens Christina Aguilera and Mandy Moore—to overrun the charts with coy love songs. But in the eye of this gathering storm of adolescence, Madonna, then 39 years old, released Ray of Light—and it became the best selling studio album of her career since Nielsen began tracking retail, a record it still holds. How did a monastic and austere album about emotional and spiritual maturity by a woman and new mother strike such a chord? Reinvention, thanks to the template that Madonna set, is almost a cliché ritual in pop, like a motion that must be gone through for every star who needs a hook upon which to hang their new album. So too is self-discovery: How many times have you heard an artist claim that this album, the newest one, is her or his “most personal one yet”? But on Ray of Light, Madonna is so all-in committed to her metamorphosis that it’s hard not to believe her. The windswept textures of “Oh Father”—loping pianos, drooping strings—give Madonna’s voice room to move. It swoops and swerves in a childlike voice as she sings of an ambivalent father-daughter relationship. Madonna’s mezzo, which wobbled on low notes and sometimes felt stretched in its upper registers, was often tsk-tsked by her critics, but her vulnerable vocal on “Oh Father” also shows why her music was so beloved; even if she’s singing of characters, as she claimed to Vogue, her gasps and shivers gave voice to the complex dynamic so many children have with their parents—whether biological, by marriage, adoptive, or spiritual. “What I do is total commercialism, but it’s also art.” Like a Prayer straddles those two ideals with gusto, with even its less satisfying moments adding to the heat given off by the MTV era’s brightest star.

But I don't think that MR did that Like I said, the song's success wasn't due to a newly developed fascination for this genre by the GP sparked by Lady Gaga, it was due to the SB and otherwise it would have stayed at 30-40m AI. I don't see a correlation in terms of commercial success here. All of these songs would have found success with or without Gaga. I mean, come on, Thinking Out Loud? Like I'm Gonna Lose You? 7 years? Hello? Love Yourself? Take Me to Church? Hold Back The River? Ed Sheeran's album? All of these acts have their own natural star power (except for Kesha, which is a clear result of the post - legal battles fiasco) that lead to their songs being successful. Like I said, why didn't they need Gaga's help internationally if she supposedly helped shed a light on the genre they're investing in in their own homeland? It just doesn't make sense and the only conclusion I can make is that it's a paid article. I mean, this could have been a thread / article about Miley being totally inspired by Joanne and I would have agreed with that assumption, but whoever pushes these articles always has to make sure that Gaga's influence transcends that mere -artists don't work in a vaccum- sentiment in order to prove that Gaga's still somehow setting trends (as in she's making an industrial impact). It's just ridiculous to me.

I wonder what her reaction would be if someone told her that she's obligated to pay reparations then, or if someone confronted her about Hilary's wicked doings. I mean, it's one thing to promote the state of being kind to one another, but it's completely cynical to believe that you're going to change an entire system and the political climate by doing so. This "Pop star agenda" is a complete joke.

Delusional. We're not even in an acoustic era, it's not even the second or third most dominating genre right now so how is it a current trend? Of course, lol. Why not? We've already had tons of acoustic smashes (note, smashes, not hits) in 2014, late 2015 / early 2016, what makes you think the same can't be repeated a short amount of time later? I don't know, these type of articles just seem paid to me, for any artist, not just Gaga. Why make such grand statements if you're not going to do a slight research? Rainbow was already finished by October of 2016, the writing began in 2014. The 1D members are all doing good due to their massive fan base and Malibu is Miley's much anticipated new single, despite the fact that it could have been very well inspired by Gaga's era, that has nothing to do with Malibu being played on the radio, come on I mean, the only reason why MR did well there is because of the SB anyway. Otherwise, how would you explain Miley's international success? Did gaga's non - existent success there inspire the presence of those songs there too?

@Kuba Update? 'Feels' will probably end up being her most streamed song ever, yikes.