Lady Gaga - Born This Way
2011

Standard Edition - 14 Tracks


Deluxe Edition - 17 Tracks + 5 Remixes




Hey MKO!
Hope everyone's doing well.

Have any of you guys checked out Lady Gaga's new album? It was just released on Monday and I've been listening to it non-stop. I think that this is quite a piece of work she's come up with!

There are 14 tracks on the standard edition and 17+5 bonus tracks on the deluxe edition and I think that they're all really great!

If you guy's know Lady Gaga, you may know that her debut album "The Fame" demonstrated the life of the rich and famous, repeating topics such as money, vanity, and glamour. The follow up to "The Fame" was the EP known as "The Fame Monster" which maintained the idea that fame kills; the aftermath of what happens to those who become rich and famous.

Now, Lady Gaga's sophomore album, "Born This Way" covers a brand new theme for the pop star, and that's self-acceptance. Her debut single, also the title track of the album, was basically an overview of the idea of the album itself. "Born This Way" the song very openly embraces people to themselves for who they are because they were born that way.

The best thing about this album and Lady Gaga is that it showed that the pop diva is capable of evolving. Every single artist much have the ability to experiment with different styles of music and make it work with their persona. Lady Gaga already pulled off fame-obsessed diva and victim of the media in her debut album and EP follow up, but now she is trying to make preacher for the troubled work and I think that she nailed it right on the spot!

Her sophomore album is very different from The Fame, in term of the music and the message. Regardless of whether you were a fan of hers or not, that could change with Born This Way (unless of course you just have a soft spot for pop music).

My favorite thing about Born This Way is that every single track has an underlying theme. almost every track also has at least one memorable line which really demonstrated Lady Gaga's talent as a songwriter or a really infectious beat which shows her talents in her production debut (Lady Gaga wrote every song in the album along with song help from writers like Fernando Garibay, Redone, Jeppe Laursen, and others, and she also helped produce every track with returned from "the Fame" such as Redone, Fernando Garibay, and DJ white Shadow)


The Tracks:

-Marry The Night is a song about how sometimes even the rich and famous want to return to the beauty than is their former life. Upon her return to New York City, she sometimes wants to remain forever apart of the nightlife of her old home town. The opening track starts of with a very powerful dramatic instrumental and immediate vocals and then transcends into a very upbeat and still-powerfully dramatic lyrical masterpiece.

-Born This Way I'm sure most of you have heard it, but it is a very straight forward empowerment track. It's self-explanatory based on the title.

-Government Hooker is a killer track with an epic chorus instrumental. It's a song about how the women who have had affair with the most powerful men in the world must have felt. Lady Gaga says, "I could be anything, I could be everything, just touch me baby." It's like the entire song is really a hook in itself (pun intended), I don't think I've every heard anything like it in the pop world!

-Judas is Lady Gaga's second single off the album. Using references from the bible, Lady Gaga describes a relationship where she keeps on returning to the same man even though he constantly betrays her. Lady Gaga feels that sometimes, in order to to be able to step into the light, you have to forgive yourself for past mistakes. The song is very upbeat, it sounds very much like Bad Romance!

-Americano one of my personal favorites on the track is about the treatment of second-class citizens in America. It mainly revolves around immigrants, homosexuals, and non-christians, that just because they are not of nation's majority, it does not mean they have not cried for and they would not die for their country.

-Hair is my favorite track on the album. It's absolutely beautiful. The inspiration in this track is overwhelming! It's about being able to be who you want to be by expressing yourself through your hair style. And it's just the acapella that really gets me, the way she sings "I just wanna be myself and I want you to love me for who I am." and "I'm not a freak..." is so touching because it makes you realize that she can still be hurt by what people say about her, even though she is this big superstar, she is still just as human as us.

-Scheisse is my second favorite track, this one has the most INFECTIOUS beat on the album! The German hook is just so addictive! when I heard the remix at the Mugler Fashion show, I NEVER would have expected this to be a female empowerment track. But I feel like this is at Poker Face and Bad Romance's level commercially.

-Bloody Mary is a song about the dead of Jesus from the perspective of Mary Magdalene. Some of the lyrics in this song are very memorable, "We are not just art for Michelangelo to carve, he can't rewrite the agro of my furious heart."

-Black Jesus Amen Fashion is probably the closest song to "The Fame". It's about how being about to change your spirit is as simple as putting on new fashion. The chorus is very upbeat and easy to dance to and the bridge is some very powerful hooks.

-Bad Kids is another empowering song for people who are deemed "bad" by society but still have very pure heart. Lady Gaga sees the light in fans who have shared stories of their rough lives and made a song jsut for them.

-Fashion of His Love is very classic Gaga. It sounds very pre-fame and bubble-gum poppish. It's a tribute to Alexander McQueen who committed suicide in 2010.

-Highway Unicorn (Road To Love) is one of the best recieved tracks on the album and is very well known for the acapella. Lady Gaga shows of her impressive vocal skills in the chorus and bridge of the song. One of my top favorites.

-Heavy Metal Lovers is a very chill song and also extremely well recieved by the fan base. She has a very risque opener: "I want your whiskey mouth all over my blond south." and only continues in epicness from there. It is mostly the oo-oo-oo's that give the song definition, and the bridge opener provides a great hook and again proves Lady Gaga as a talented vocalist.

-Electric Chapel as defined by Lady Gaga: "I created the Monster Ball so my fans would have a place to go... a safe place... an ELECTRIC CHAPEL" The song speaks for itself as one of the more chilled out tracks on the album and a good follow up to Heavy Metal Lovers.

-The Queen is a song soley for the fans. A video hit the internet of LAdy Gaga crying because sometimes she feels like a loser and only wants to be "The Queen" that her fans want her to be. In the song she sings, "Tonight I will return the fame and riches earned, with you I'll watch them all be burned." Some of the most beautiful lyrics are in this song.

-You and I is a song produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange. It's the power ballad of the album and has been constantly reused as a promotional song for the album. It's a great lead up to the closer of the album.

-The Edge of Glory is an up tempo, club record but it’s sort of got a Bruce Springsteen vibe to it and she actually had Clarence Clemon (of Bruce Springsteen's E street band) play saxophone on this record. It's a song about a person's final moments on Earth before they die. the song is also the third single of this era.



Well, that's my take on the album. I want to see what some of the Gaga fans here have to say about the album, and I hope the rest of you give it a chance!