In the months of promotion leading up to the release of Lady Gaga's second full-length album, the pop superstar repeatedly insisted that Born This Way would be nothing short of epic: “The album is my absolute greatest work I’ve ever done and I’m so excited about it,” she told RWD Magazine.
Gaga was confident that the album—relentlessly dominated with messages of self-acceptance—would change the world. The critics seem to think otherwise, however, with several music editors noting that Gaga may have sacrificed musical innovation for the sake of her message.
James Reed of the Boston Globe called it "the most deflated moment in pop music this year," noting, "the songwriting feels thin, especially when buried under the layers of bombast." Randall Roberts of the LA Times echoed those sentiments, writing, "If Gaga had only spent as much time on pushing musical boundaries as she has social ones, "Born This Way" would have been a lot more successful.
Still, the album has garnered plenty of positive responses, most notably from Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield (who called it "disarmingly great") and BBC Music's Ian Wade (he gushingly referred to it as "high-concept pop brilliance"). And thanks to the collective power of Gaga's beloved Little Monsters, Born This Way will dominate the Billboard 200 for many months to come, despite the fact that none of its singles have failed to take hold in the way of "Just Dance" or "Poker Face."