On Tuesday, September 24, Lady Gaga surprised fans by announcing that she is releasing a new album, Harlequin, coming out on September 27, one week ahead of the Joker film.
The surprise release will be a “companion album” to her upcoming film, Joker: Folie à Deux where she plays Harley Quinn, the dazzling bisexual comic book icon who is a patient at the Arkham State Hospital.
Gaga revealed the album name and cover art in an Instagram post. In the first image, she is standing in a shower wearing a lifejacket and clown makeup resembling her Harley Quinn character. The second slide features a mysterious image of a Gayle Valley Farms milk carton reading: “All the cream left in.”
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In yesterday’s announcement, Gaga revealed the album’s tracklist which consists of 13 songs including ‘Good Morning’, ‘Get Happy’, ‘Smile’, ‘The Joker’, and the film’s name, ‘Folie à Deux’, which translates to “madness shared by two people”, referencing a psychiatric syndrome where two people experience a shared delusional state.
Joker: Folie à Deux is a musical sequel to the 2019 film Joker which earned 11 Oscars nominations. In the film, Lady Gaga stars alongside actor Joaquin Phoenix who plays Arthur Fleck, also known as The Joker. The sequel will pick up where the first film ended with Arthur in Arkham Asylum, and he is expected to embark on an intense relationship with Harley Quinn.
Joaquin Phoenix recently made headlines for abruptly dropping out of an erotic queer drama. Rumours suggest that Phoenix abandoned the project due to the film’s intimate gay sex scenes, even though the actor originally pitched the idea to director Todd Haynes.
The unnamed film had already been sold to international distributors and entire sets had already been built in Guadalajara, Mexico. His decision to leave the production cost the whole crew their jobs.
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In addition to this upcoming album, fans can expect more new music from Lady Gaga in the near future since her seventh solo album, a pop record tentatively called LG7, will be released in February.
Lady Gaga recently shared an old Facebook group made by her New York University classmates that mocked her aspirations to become a singer and claimed she would “never be famous”. She used it as an opportunity to encourage young people not to give up on their dreams.
Just three years after dropping out of college, Gaga released her debut album The Fame which included global hits like ‘Just Dance’ and ‘Poker Face’. Now, the 13-time Grammy winner has successfully transitioned into a Hollywood star, winning an Academy Award in 2019 for singing ‘Shallow’ in A Star is Born.
Harlequin will be available to stream from September 27, with a physical release to follow on October 11. Joker: Folie à Deux, which also stars Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, will open in Irish cinemas on October 4.
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