Lady Gaga‘s fiancé Michael Polansky is her partner in life — and now in the recording studio!
On Friday, Sept. 27, the “Bad Romance” singer released her latest studio album, Harlequin, which serves as a companion album to the upcoming film Joker: Folie à Deux.
Polansky, 41, served as a co-executive producer on the album with Gaga, and the pair are both credited as co-writers on four tracks: “Good Morning,” “Get Happy,” “On When the Saints” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now.”
The entire album is made up of covers, aside from “Happy Mistake,” the one original track written by Gaga, 38, and her longtime collaborator Bloodpop. Meanwhile, the songs that she collaborated on with Polansky are standards and show tunes that they updated sonically and lyrically.
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The “Alejandro” singer announced the album earlier this week following a series of cryptic social media posts and billboards.
Gaga has embodied her role of Lee (a version of Harley Quinn) in Folie à Deux, out Oct. 4, for the marketing of the new album.
Still, she assured fans that original Gaga music is still on the way with a cheeky billboard that dubbed Harlequin as “6.5” — and “LG7” is still set to arrive early next year, following a new single in October.
On Sept. 26, Gaga sat down with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 and opened up about the inspiration behind the album.
“This idea of dual identities was always something that was a part of my music making. I was always creating characters in my music and when I made Lee for Joker, she just really had this profound effect on me,” she said. “I kind of had this deep experience with the character and she just didn’t really leave me creatively and I decided I wanted to make a whole album inspired by her.”
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Gaga added, “She’s a really complex woman and I think, particularly as a woman in music and a female producer, it was really fun to go, ‘This album will be and I will be what I want, when I decide, whenever I feel like it. If I want it to be blues, it’ll be blues. If I want it to be funk, it’ll be funk. If I want it to be soul, it’ll be soul.’”
That same day, the pop star and actress made her red carpet debut Polansky at the London premiere of the film.
Speaking to Buzzfeed Canada, Gaga was asked what she hopes to manifest for herself in the next 15 years.
“You know, I’m so happy to be in love and I’m so excited to have a family,” Gaga responded of Polansky, who she was first linked to in 2020. “So that’s definitely number one.”
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As for the upcoming “LG7” album, Gaga recently told Vogue that it was Polanksy’s idea.
“Michael is the person who told me to make a new pop record,” she told the fashion magazine. “He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music.’ ”
In the same cover story, Polansky added: “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; I wanted to help her keep that alive all the time and just start making music that made her happy.”
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