I didn't ask for a free ride.

I only asked you to show me a real good time.

I never asked for the rainbow.

At least I showed up, you showed me the thing.

Welcome to the New York Times Pop cast,

your purposeful pop of music news and criticism. I am your guest host Karen Gantz.

John Caramonica is on vacation so it is I his editor stepping in to

Woman the pop cast this week and I am pleased to welcome Lindsay Zolads. Hello there

Hi and we are going to be talking about something that many

listeners have been tweeting at us asking us to talk about. Lady Gaga and

Katie Perry together again on the podcast.

As most of you know, both of them have put out albums

in the past few months.

Lady Gaga Chromatica, Katie Perry's smile.

And when you start digging into these two they actually have a lot more in

common than I realized career-wise so this is the sixth album for both of them

they are 34 and 35 years old respectively starting with Lady Gaga.

Both of these albums have been seen as return to form records,

you know, hearkening back to the sounds of their past.

Both of them are coming out of period of depression that they have said were

connected directly to their success. They're both coming off albums that were

received slightly less well critically last time. Well that might just be my Joanne bias but we'll get there

...