【UK】

Lady Gaga has authenticity on UKher mind. Not her authenticity, which she's pretty cool with, but everyone else's.

"Every John is just the same. I'm sick of their city games," she belts over an electro-country track. "I crave a real wild man. I'm strung out on John Wayne!"

Women in pop music are always damned if they do, damned if they don't and there's no pressure cooker quite like a comeback album. On Joanne, she fires back, just like John Wayne would have.

Joanneis a Gaga album, "without makeup" as she told Zane Lowe on Thursday. But she also said, "Life is a dog fight, for a lot of people. And you gotta be a pit bull."

On the lead single, her vocals bend theatrically even by Lady Gaga standards calling out a smoke and mirrors romance, "It wasn't luuhahuuuuhf, it was a perfect illusion."

Stefani Germanotta has taken a break from being the Lady Gaga we first met back in 2008 since her fairly disastrous 2013 album, Artpop. Public consensus generally shifted towards calling out Gaga for being too much -- too ambitious, too fake, too much of everything pop is supposed to be.

The real problem was that Lady Gaga's catapult into fame relied on two things: writing great pop songs and shocking the general public, and Artpopdidn't do much in the way of either. So Gaga took time to retool.

Gaga's spent the time since compartmentalizing her talents. The drama was relegated to the acceptably over-the-top world of Ryan Murphy's frantic American Horror Story. Gaga flashed her show business chops duetting with Tony Bennet. Her chilling ballad, "Till It Happens To You," about her own experience as a sexual assault survivor was nominated for an Oscar.

But now, she's back in the saddle, and bringing BloodPop, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, Mark Ronson, Josh Homme and Father John Misty along for the ride. (P.S. Why does Josh Tillman get a free pass for his persona?)

The ideal situation for listening to the resulting mix of songs would probably be Britney Spears' Crossroadsroad trip, singing along.

That movie, written by Shonda Rhimes, has more twists and turns than you probably remember. Britney breaks away from her choir-girl innocence performing "I Love Rock and Roll" in a weird night club/bar, wearing in a studded black crop top emblazoned with the word "freedom." Her victory is tarnished when a man gropes her on the dance floor later that night. Taryn Manning's character became pregnant with her rapist's baby and never told anyone because she never thought anyone would believe a girl from a trailer park with a few beers in her system. That asshole turns out to be Zoe Saldana's boyfriend, because of course he is. The point is that the three estranged friends turn to each other -- and Shania Twain sings along -- on the open road.

Gaga's voice is raspy and world-weary as the album opens, "Some asshole broke me in / Wrecked all my innocence / I'll just keep go-go'n / And this dance is on you." But since defeat is not an option, she figures out a way to power through and gets by with a little help from her friends.

The importance of female solidarity runs through Joanne, including the title track, which is also Gaga's middle name. The song is a lonely lullaby tribute to her aunt, who died before Gaga was born and who she always felt a spiritual connection to. Dolly Parton and Jenny Lewis -- two songwriters who have dealt with fame's underbelly and leapt back out of it with sparkling pop gems -- feel like Gaga's guardian angels, offering a sequins and a middle finger.

However, "Hey Girl," her duet with Florence Welch, is a letdown -- directly against the song's message of lifting each other up, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. "Come to Mama" is a livelier call to action for peace and love.

Gaga has been promoting the album on a dive bar tour as a nod to her roots as a singer songwriter trying to make her way. But, you know, with a Bud Light sponsorship this time around.

Long before fame and The Fame Monster, Lady Gaga paid her dues in New York City, running in the same circles as Lizzy Grant, who went on to become another woman whose authenticity has been challenged constantly by critics. At the time, and when the pair first each found their own success, they traded jabs in a series of diss tracks, but now Lana del Rey just wants to get high by the beach and Gaga would rather smoke a pack than look at herself in the reflection of a Jeff Koons sculpture.

But if Gaga wants to go back to rolling up to the Grammys in egg vessels and bleeding on stage, that's cool. Being the right amount of real for someone else is such a drag.