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Lady Gaga releases new single ‘Disease’, ahead of the seventh album

Vaseline October 22, 2024

Shortly after unexpectedly releasing her latest album ‘Harlequin’, Lady Gaga is returning to, well, Gaga mode with the announcement of the lead single from her upcoming seventh album, ‘Disease’, due out on October 25th.

Gaga revealed the single’s upcoming release after her parent label Universal Music posted pre-saves for “Disease” on a pop-up site last night, with links to Spotify and Apple Music. Fans suspected earlier this week that the song might in fact be titled “Disease” after noticing that the capitalization of letters for some of her songs on streaming had changed from high to low and vice versa, and when rearranged the first letters of seven numbers spelled ‘disease’.

Just a few hours before Universal’s pop-up site became popular, Gaga published a playlist on her Spotify account, ranking the above songs in the order in which “Gaga Disease” was spelled. Fans who went to gagadisease.com were taken to a series of websites that appeared to reveal some of the song’s lyrics.

Gaga herself had previously hinted at an October release date for the lead single from her seventh album. In September, she posted an itinerary noting “XX October: LG7 first single,” alongside notable dates in her “Joker: Folie à Deux” press run.

The singer is fresh off starring in “Joker: Folie à Deux,” which was critically panned and underperformed at the box office. Although studio sources said the film would break even, it could potentially lose $150 to $200 million after bombing on the big screen.

Just before the film’s release, Gaga surprisingly released a new album, ‘Harlequin’, inspired by her character in the film. The project consisted of almost all the classic American Songbook favorites such as ‘Get Happy’, ‘That’s Life’ and ‘That’s Entertainment’, with the exception of a few original songs. It was reminiscent of the two albums she made with the late Tony Bennett, the Grammy-nominated “Cheek to Cheek” and “Love for Sale.” The album became her lowest full-length debut on the Billboard 200, where it bowed at number 20.

Although the album has not been universally successful, Gaga is benefiting from the success of ‘Die With a Smile’, her duet with Bruno Mars that was released in August. That song was a commercial bright spot for Gaga, debuting at No. 3 on the Hot 100 and racking up hundreds of millions of streams.

Gaga last released a true studio album in 2020, when “Chromatica” arrived at the start of the pandemic. That effort was a runaway success for the singer, debuting at No. 1 on the charts and spawning the Hot 100 chart-topper “Rain on Me” featuring Ariana Grande.