Has Lady Gaga lost her spunk?

The 'Queen of Crazy'—Lady Gaga—released the music video for her new song Perfect Illusion in September. While her fans, and haters, expected an avant garde video with over-the-top outfits, Gaga did the opposite. She traded her extravagant outfits for a casual ripped tee and hot pants. She traded in her wigs for natural hair, ditched choreography for a mosh pit party.

Not only was the whole reveal strange, it wasn't normal by Gaga's standards. Her new album Joanne feels stripped-down, restrained, and low-key. It's like someone pulled the plug on the fun one would associate the pop star with. Stefani Germanotta's (yes, that's her name) three other solo albums have done tremendously well. But, her latest offering is a damp squip. While some critics believe Joanne is her best album yet, others believe she's losing the plot. Her anthems of social conscience land somewhat flat, while the more friskier numbers feel like she's trying too hard.

Now that Gaga's contemporaries have caught up to her visual provocations, most notably Beyonce, she seems like a less audacious pioneer of the sound, and look, she became famous for.

Here's the surprising bit. Joanne has earned Gaga her fourth number one album on the Billboard 200 albums chart, moving 201,000 equivalent units to peak at number four. While Gaga experiments with country and folk in her latest offering, it doesn't sound authentic. She has always been in her element belting out brawny, rich pop songs in high heels. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Gaga said something poignant: "It's an endless cycle of proving myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star." Does this mean the 'Glam Queen' will be ditching her weird outfits for something sombre in the future? Only time, and the Billboard charts, will tell.