After a quick side-quest as the co-star of Joker: Folie à Deux, Lady Gaga is back in pop star mode. The musician made her return last month with “Die With a Smile,” the unsurprisingly perfect pop duet with Bruno Mars that was a reminder of how easy she makes this all look. But it hasn’t been entirely uncomplicated behind the scenes — and it was her journey out of the darkness and into the light that she says informed her upcoming seventh studio album, set for release in February.
The first single from the currently untitled record, commonly referred to as LG7, will arrive in October, Gaga revealed in a recent interview with Vogue. The new album marks her first since Chromatica arrived during the early months of pandemic lockdowns. That release featured the certified quarantine classic “Rain on Me” with Ariana Grande but also darkened beneath the clouds of a personal storm the singer was weathering. “That album was about an absolutely horrible time for me with my mental health,” she said. “I was in a really dark place.”
She added: “I feel like this new album, in a lot of ways, is about that time but from a place of happiness instead of misery.”
Her most recent tour, the Chromatica Ball, felt worlds away from what she had become used to feeling, but in a good way. She wasn’t in any of the chronic pain she had endured on previous tours, stopped smoking weed, and spent the time on the road with her now-fiancé Michael Polansky — and we have him to thank for her pivot back to the kind of pop music on Gaga could make.
“Michael is the person who told me to make a new pop record. He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music,’” she said. It was watching her on the Chromatica tour that pushed him to push her. “Like anyone would do for the person they love, I encouraged her to lean in to the joy of it. On the Chromatica tour, I saw a fire in her,” Polansky added. “I wanted to help her keep that alive all the time and just start making music that made her happy.”
Gaga recorded her seventh album at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La recording studio in Malibu. According to Vogue, she’s spent most of the year working not only on the upcoming pop album but also a “surprise project” that has been similarly scarcely detailed.
“There’s a lot of pain associated with this adventure, and when I start to explore that pain, it can bring out another side to my artistry,” Gaga explained about her creative process at the moment. “When I’m here at this studio, I’m relaxed, and I am able to face my demons, and what’s remarkable is… that’s the music. I’m able to hear it back.”
With her capital-P return to pop, Gaga is returning to the arena in the company of some of her favorite musicians. Speaking about the genre-disrupting it-girls Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and Billie Eilish, she shared: “I mean, I really love them. I go on the internet and, like, cry.” She’s also backing Taylor Swift and Kesha on their respective musical journeys. “I’m not only cheering them on, I want them to know that my heart is in it with them,” Gaga added. “And I want them all to feel really happy.”
