The big news of the day: Cheek to Cheek is out now worldwide. Is it going to make it to number one, or will it fall flat on its ass?
Billboard, one of Gaga's biggest sources of hype, has given the album a decent review but only 3/5 stars. They love Bennett's performance, but of course, the whole article is about Gaga. Although they hype her quite a bit, they do throw a few digs at her too. Right at the beginning they state that the Great American Songbook "just might save her career", which is interesting because, like Gaga, they usually spend quite a lot of time and effort trying to deny that her career is struggling.
Billboard also admits that "Gaga definitely needed Bennett more than he needed her", but suggest that both will benefit from the pairing because, get this, they had fun recording together. Seriously. There was no other mention of how this duet benefits Tony Bennett at all aside from "they had a blast". Odd, right? Not really - the whole world knew she needed him, not the other way around, but it's interesting to see that even Billboard is admitting it.
As for the actual music, they go on to say, nicely, that she completely overdoes it on most of the album. Their words exactly are "Gaga thrives on spectacle", though if you actually read through the review you'll also see things like Gaga "verges on overpowering", has a "mighty vocal surge", she's "singing right over poor Tony"... they even call her "histrionic" at one point.
Read the review HERE.
From what I have heard so far, there's an awful lot of yelling going on in this album. I don't think Billboard is too far off the mark when they give the album 3/5 stars, but I feel like the only reason it even ranked that high was due to Bennett's voice, the music, and the fact that all of the songs included on the album are jazz standards and not anything Gaga wrote herself.
What are your thoughts on the album?
UPDATE:
It seems Billboard lowered their review from 3.5 stars to 3 stars on the day of release. Wonder what that means?
