Yahoo Lifestyle Lady Gaga Made “A Whole Album” Inspired By Her “Joker: Folie À Deux” Character After Filming Ended, And Here's Why
Lady Gaga’s new album dropped today, and, in true Gaga style, it’s something a little different.
Harlequin features 11 covers and two original songs. Notably, Gaga does not entirely classify this as her next studio album but rather the “companion album” to her new movie Joker: Folie à Deux, in which she plays Lee, aka Harley Quinn.
Lee is the love interest of Arthur Fleck, aka the Joker, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin won an Oscar for his portrayal of the iconic villain in the first Joker movie, which came out in 2019.
So, Harlequin can best be understood as a fusion between Gaga and Lee. And in a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, the “Shallow” singer explained the decision to “make a whole album inspired” by her character.
Noting that the “idea of dual identities” has always been a massive part of her music-making process, Gaga said: “I was always creating characters in my music, and when I made Lee for Joker, she just really had this profound effect on me.”
Unlike the first Joker movie, Joker: Folie à Deux has musical elements. Speaking to Zane, Gaga explained that this aspect of the film helped her build an even deeper connection with Lee, which compelled her to continue their relationship through more music after shooting wrapped.
“The film had so much music in it, so much music that I love, and I was able to discover the character through the story, through the music that we did live every day as well as dance and the costumes and the makeup,” she said.
“So I kind of had this deep experience with the character,” she added. “She just didn’t really leave me creatively, and I decided I wanted to make a whole album inspired by her.”
Notably, it’s tricky to assign Harlequin to one musical genre compared to Gaga's previous albums, and she implied that this reflects her character’s “complex” nature.
“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,’” she said.
She echoed these comments in another new interview with Rolling Stone, in which she said that the “meta-modernism” of Joker: Folie à Deux shaped the accompanying album.
“We talked a lot about [Lee] being somebody that you can’t clarify, because she is too unpredictable and rare,” she explained. “[We] used genre as a way to express that something is rare — by not adhering to one and going heavily into the avant-garde.”
“I had such a deep relationship with Lee,” she emphasized. “And when I was done filming the movie, I wasn’t done with her.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time Gaga has gone deep with one of her movie characters. While filming House of Gucci, she “lived” as Patrizia Reggiani for a year and a half and eventually became so intertwined with the character that she had to have a “psychiatric nurse” accompany her on set.
“I was always Patrizia. I always spoke in my accent. And even if I was speaking about things that weren’t related to the movie… I was still living my life. I just lived it as her,” she told Variety in 2021. “I brought the darkness with me home because her life was dark.”
Never change, Gaga. You can find her conversation with Zane Lowe here, and this is where you can read her interview with Rolling Stone.
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