After much teasing and some cryptic Instagram posts, Lady Gaga has revealed she is dropping an entire album in mere days.
The Just Dance hitmaker is releasing a companion record to coincide with the release of Joker: Folie à Deux, titled Harlequin.
In a shock Instagram post, Gaga, 38, revealed the secret album will be released on September 27, ahead of the film’s cinematic release.
‘Harlequin. September 27. A companion album to Joker: Folie à Deux,’ she simply captioned the album artwork.
Fans knew she had been preparing to release LG7 next year, with a single dropping in October, but had no clue about the Harlequin record.
Gaga did not offer up any further details about the new music, which will be her first studio release since 2020’s Chromatica.
As Vogue’s October cover star, the Applause hitmaker revealed she had been working away on both a new album and a secret project this year — which appears to be Harlequin.
She confirmed that LG7 will drop in February but kept this extra music tightly under wraps.
Other posts shared by the American Horror Story star had shown that she was back in the studio with her familiar collaborator Benjamin Rice.
‘Just me in the studio – happy as ever making music,’ Gaga wrote on one post. ‘Feel so grateful, heart is peaceful.
‘It’s like meditation. I can’t wait for you to hear what I’m working on.’
Lady Gaga Harlequin album tracklist
Along with the announcement, Gaga revealed the tracklist for Harlequin.
- Good Morning
- Get Happy (2024)
- Oh, When the Saints
- World on a String
- If My Friends Could See Me Now
- That’s Entertainment
- Smile
- The Joker
- Folie á Deux
- Gonna Build a Mountain
- Close to You
- Happy Mistake
- That’s Life
Gaga did release a song with Bruno Mars earlier this year called Die With A Smile but it’s not believed this will feature on her album.
Harlequin is named after her character in Joker 2, which she stars in alongside Joaquin Phoenix who returns as leading man Arthur Fleck.
In this version of the beloved DC Comics character, Harlequin is actually going by the name Harley ‘Lee’ Quinn and crosses paths with the on-trial Fleck.
The film has a musical element, no doubt aided by Gaga’s vocal talents, but the cast has been careful not to call it an outright musical.
‘I wouldn’t necessarily say that this is actually a musical in a lot of ways. It’s very different,’ she previously said at the Venice Film Festival, according to Variety.
‘The way that music is used is to really give the characters a way to express what they needed to say because saying it is not enough.’
Meanwhile, director Todd Phillips shared a similar sentiment, stating ‘most of the music in the movie is really just dialogue.’
He told Variety: ‘It’s just Arthur not having the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead. I just don’t want people to think that it’s like In the Heights, where the lady in the bodega starts to sing and they take it out onto the street, and the police are dancing.’
The director then added: ‘No disrespect, because I loved In the Heights.’