Lady Gaga – Born This Way (2xLP)

"Lady Gaga certainly wasn't born this way, but she's making a convincing case that she's evolving into our most surreally brilliant pop star." — Spin, May 2011

Born This Way is the highly anticipated full-length follow-up to Lady GaGa's breakthrough debut, The Fame. The album's preceding eponymous lead single, "Born This Way" became her third No. 1 in the U.S. and broke several digital sales and radio records in the process. The song also debuted within the Top 5 in more than 23 countries, making it to No. 1 in 15 of them.

"It was inevitable that Born This Way would be an escalation of The Fame, it was inevitable that Gaga would go where others feared to tread, it was inevitable that it would be bigger than any other record thrown down in 2011, both in its scale and success. This drumbeat, pulsating as insistently as Eurodisco, is so persistent that there is an inevitable feeling of anticlimax upon hearing Born This Way for the first time and realizing that Lady Gaga has channeled her grand ambitions into her message, and not her music. Gaga has taken it upon herself to filter out whatever personal details remain in her songs so she can write anthems for her Little Monsters, that ragtag group of queers, misfits, outcasts, and rough kids who she calls her own. ... Gaga's true gift is her considerable dexterity at delivering the basics. Unlike so many of her peers, she does not cut and paste her tracks digitally, she constructs from the chords up, then accessorizes at will. She doesn't abandon this sensibility on Born This Way ... She serves up the expected, which can be quite satisfying: 'Marry the Night' glistens with a neon pulse, 'Born This Way' has a giddiness to its self-importance, 'Judas' turns 'Alejandro' into towering gothic disco, she achieves her metal-disco fusion on 'Bad Kids,' and she even shows vulnerability on 'Yoü and I.' All well and good, and all very entertaining." — AllMusic.com