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But the best skit didnt employ her impressively interchangeable pop-star skill set.
I was ahead of the curve on gay marriage, Sarah Sherman shouted, and thats where it stopped.
It was a lived-in self-burn.
Shes tapping her geological and chronological points of origin more than usual.
Five years ago,Chromatica, the previous mainline Gaga album, implied she was from space.
Four years before that,Joanneapplied for country-jukebox immortality.
But the constituency will always yearn for a return to the club banger.
You suspect the obligation wears on her sometimes.
Mother Monster is another oddball capable of playing it arrestingly straight.
Gaga is a textbook Manhattan overachiever, beholden to conflicting but deeply held passions.
Mayhemcenters Gagas raucous beginnings in its sound and promotion, prodding layers of artifice and performance.
Its both a commercial nostalgia initiative and one of the tighter pieces in the pool of self-evaluative millennial pop.
A handful ofMayhemtunes lands like acorns that rolled downhill from another albums tree and took root.
The self-referential tracks carry a hint ofDavid Bowie checking back in on Major Tom.
As noise tapers off after Perfect Celebrity,Mayhemblasts across time.
ButMayhemretreats into the precocious bookishness of mid-2010s Swift, where melodies make their way toward cloyingly sunny resolutions.
In these songs,Mayhems restlessness feels a touch self-conscious.
Still, you’re able to smell the business moves.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the year Born This Way was released.
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