Album mode, movie-star mode — get you a woman who can do both. Lady Gaga took the Lido for the Venice premiere of Joker: Folie à Deux, and from her Italian hotel room, she also dropped the first hints at her seventh album. Now, thanks to a Vogue cover story, we have some more info: LG7 is coming next February, with a first single in October, as she noted on social media. Per Vogue, one new song sounds “intense and ominous — an old-school Gaga banger, unsettling but also buoyant.†And we have her (confirmed!) fiancé, Michael Polansky, to thank for that. “He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music,’†Gaga said. But no, he’s not (just) a Little Monster. “Like anyone would do for the person they love, I encouraged her to lean in to the joy of it,†Polansky told Vogue. “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.â€
Gaga recorded the new music at Shangri-La, Rick Rubin’s Malibu studio where she also made 2016’s Joanne and the 2018 A Star Is Born soundtrack. And not just LG7 either — Vogue also mentions “a surprise project†Gaga has been working on there. (She popped over to Bruno Mars’s studio one night to finish “Die With a Smile,†their recent retro duet.) “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,†she said. “I’m able to hear it back.†And now, we wait not-so-patiently to hear it.