 "Joanne" was "NME" magazine's 20th-best album of the year, with the publication highlighting how it hearkened back to the stripped-down sound employed by Gaga in her early years as an artist.For "Rolling Stone", the album was the seventh-best release of 2016, with a writer from the magazine feeling that, "Gaga's soft-rock transformation takes the pop star into a new direction without losing her flair for the dramatic and penchant for the kitschy.