Dear God, Please Let This Be the End of the Joanne Era

At tonight's Grammy Awards ceremony, I believe that without a shadow of a doubt, Lady Gaga will triumph, winning the Best Pop Solo Performance award for "Million Reasons," off the inexplicably successful Joanne -- which, by the way, was released in 2016, so this whole situation is a carry. I have absolute faith that Gaga will win at least one Grammy, literally just to spite me. She is so dark sided!

Believe it or not, I am a ride or die Gaga stan, and that's why I resent this era so much. While I don't hate myself enough to own the title of Little Monster, I have loved Gaga since the first time I heard "Poker Face." I've seen her live multiple times, have purchased all of her albums, even once enjoyed a beer beside her at a dive bar on the Lower East Side (the day the "Alejandro" video was released!). But I have had serious issues with the Joanne era. Loving an artist doesn't have to mean blindly worshipping their every creation, it can mean challenging them to be better, being frustrated with their decisions, and ultimately being critical of their work.

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Don't get me wrong, I admire the stunt Miss Germonatta pulled: with her career at an all-time low after Artpop flopped, she invoked the spirit of her dead aunt and made an album that pandered to straight America, securing herself the Superbowl Half Time Show, a sold-out world tour and now, two Grammy nominations. But in doing so, Gaga proved that she was willing to do whatever she needed to in order to stay relevant, even if in doing so she turned her back on all the freaks and weirdos she once claimed to champion. She was, after the meat dress and "Born This Way" and having someone vomit on her during a live show, just a regular girl.

My issue with Joanne is that it's not bad, it's wrong. Of course Gaga has the right to evolve as an artist, to show us different facets of herself, but Joanne and especially her Netflix documentary, Gaga: Five Foot Two, showed us a rich white woman surrounded not by queer creators as she once had been, but buttressed by an entourage of Regular Girls(tm) ready and waiting to blindly affirm her every impulse.

If Gaga triumphs at the Grammys, where I have no doubt she'll be performing the new piano version of "Joanne," hopefully she will lay the spirit of her dearly departed aunt to rest once and for all -- and ditch that damn pink hat. Maybe, one day, Miss Germonatta will take up the mantle of Mother Monster again -- but I'm not holding my breath that it'll be anytime soon. I will always love Lady Gaga, but like Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird, I won't always like her.