Lady Gaga has unleashed “Disease,” the lead single from her forthcoming seventh studio album, due out early next year. The song is the artist’s first solo single since 2022’s “Hold My Hand,” and comes just one month after Harlequin, the companion album to Joker: Folie à Deux, quietly came and went amid the film’s tepid performance at the box office.
Just in time for Halloween, “Disease” finds Gaga falling back on some of the tricks from her early heyday—namely the macabre imagery and brash EDM stylings of 2009’s The Fame Monster and 2011’s Born This Way. Produced by Gaga, Cirkut, and Andrew Watt, the track is driven by a heavy industrial beat and squelchy bassline with enough heft to support Gaga’s characteristically bombastic performance.
The song’s lyrics rely heavily on cliché, echoing similar themes as “Bad Romance” and “The Cure”: “Screamin’ for me, baby/Like you’re gonna die/Poison on the inside/I could be your antidote tonight.” Like “Teeth” and “Born This Way,” though, the track’s dungeon-deep production proves satisfying enough to withstand even a line like “I can smell your sickness.”
Watch the music video for “Disease” below:
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It could be much better, under the banner of creation music, it’s just loud music. Don’t like it…