Lady Gaga on 'Carpool Karaoke': Do critics like Gaga's 'Joanne'?

Lady Gaga will be the latest star to carpool with late-night host James Corden. Her appearance comes on the heels of the release of her new album, which is a musical departure for the star and which is receiving mixed reviews from critics.

Ms. Gaga is scheduled to be on the Tuesday Oct. 25 episode of Mr. Corden’s CBS program “The Late Late Show.” The program’s “Carpool Karaoke” segment, in which Corden appears with celebrities and sings along to music, has become quite popular, with a segment involving Adele, for example, drawing more than 130 million views on YouTube. 

Gaga has released such albums as 2009’s “The Fame Monster” and 2013’s “Artpop.” Her most recent work, “Joanne,” was released on Oct. 21.

So far, the new album is garnering mixed reviews from critics. The publication NME was among the most positive, with reviewer Emily Mackay giving Gaga's latest four stars out of five:

Weirdness and wonder abound … if the tracklist is wide-ranging, it’s admirably concise … There is a real raw heart to ‘Joanne,’ too: the title track … is a leavetaking song of great, simple beauty, more tenderly affecting than anything Gaga’s done before … The rest of the album too, rings with urges for us to take care of each other in a cruel world … It’s a simple, warm and vital message.”

Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield found the work to be “Lady Gaga’s best album in five years”:

With Joanne, Gaga starts over with music that feels stripped-down, restrained, modest and other adjectives that you wouldn't usually associate with her. It's an old-school Nineties soft-rock album, heavy on the acoustic guitar: Meet Lilith Gaga, who goes for both the incense-and-patchouli hippie vibe of Sarah McLachlan and the cowgirl glitter of Shania Twain. And for anyone out there who might carry a torch for Paula Cole, there's "John Wayne," where Gaga wonders where all the cowboys have gone. 

Mr. Sheffield goes on to write that the song “Sinner’s Prayer” is a “hands-down highlight.” “For all of its hits and misses, ‘Joanne’ is a welcome reminder of why the world needs her around.” 

Yet Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times wrote that there are “some gorgeous pieces” but that “if she’s acting, as usual, then what’s the message of the play? … other songs, for all their vivid sonic color, lack strong stories. ‘A-Yo,’ ‘John Wayne,’ and ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ feel like mere stylistic exercises in a way that Gaga’s earlier stuff never did.”