Think of splashing the Great American Songbook with blood. It’s the perfect way for Lady Gaga to make a grand appearance, something she succeeds in doing on Harlequin, the companion album to the film Joker: Folie à Deux, in which she stars as the unpredictable Harley Quinn.
On the album she has opted for 11 classic gems and two new tunes to put on display a tsunami of a voice. It’s an album that her musical partner and mentor, the late Tony Bennett would have been proud of.
One of the best examples of her versatility is the track The Joker, a number from the 1964 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd. There is a theatrical quality to it, thanks to the slight growl in her voice.
“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 make-up. So I kind of had this deep experience with the character and she just didn’t really leave me creatively and I decided I wanted to make a whole album inspired by her. She’s a really complex woman and 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’,” the singer told The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music 1. Lowe is, of course, the Oprah Winfrey of the music world — he can make musicians open up.
Lady Gaga plays Harleen “Lee” Quinzel / Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie à Deux Picture: Apple Music 1
Changing her voice
Harlequin is the first album in which she covers standards without the help of Bennett, who died last year. After two collaborative albums of standards — Cheek to Cheek and Love for Sale — this time she’s adding the personality of Joker to the genre.
“I am super ready for people to see the movie. I think I’m even more nervous for Harlequin to come out because it’s all the music from the film, but it’s all my versions and it’s a completely original production. I put so much of my heart and soul into it and so many different genres. Navigating my way around some jazz-inspired tunes... that was my first time doing it without Tony… and that was really cool. So I’m just excited for everyone to hear it,” she has told Apple Music 1.
In the film she plays Harleen “Lee” Quinzel / Harley Quinn and a few changes were necessary to slip into the character. “I did a lot of different kinds of work to create her and one of the things that I did was change my voice in the film. I don’t sing differently the whole movie, but a lot of the movie... I sing very differently. But it’s Lee’s voice and it’s really raw and it’s really naked and it’s very untrained and not proper breathing or any of the tricks that would feel natural to you to perform,” Gaga has said.
Broken characters
The companion album can also be considered a natural progression of her recent Vegas residency, Jazz & Piano. The opener Good Morning is a cover of the 1939 Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney classic, and her voice is as playful as ever. Equally impressive is her delivery of World on a String, recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Jermaine Jackson. The voice simply glides when she sings “Can’t you see I’m in love?” It’s a reminder that her fiance, Michael Polansky, serves as executive producer on the album.
The high point of the album is the original song Happy Mistake. “BloodPop and I had written this together and then I kind of took it to the next place. It was all in the image of the character, but also kind of at the very core of her soul, which is really just me. Every character I play, it has me as the gravity. I am wrestling, on that record, with a lot of feelings about so much that I’ve been through as an artiste, everything I went through growing up in the public eye, and the industry since I was a teenager. One of the lyrics is: I’m acting in this play of comedy with tragic words. The audience was smiling, cheering on a scene, absurd. I was thinking about when women play these broken characters in music or in films or theatre, the audience loves it and they just cheer us on... they cheer on the image of the pain. It’s super confusing when the audience is going crazy and the artiste is messed up. So that song is in a lot of ways about that,” the 38-year-old told Apple Music 1.
Finding light in dark places
Harlequin is an album that will please fans of jazz standards. Gaga sounds in her element as she skips between Harley Quinn’s various moods. And she has only the kindest of words for her co-star Joaquin Phoenix (plays Arthur Fleck / Joker), who stars in the film releasing October 4. “He’s an amazing, amazing actor, collaborator. He’s an amazing singer in the movie. It was a really, really soulful experience and I’m excited for people to see it. It’s like these two people find love in this really dark place and it brings them all the light.”
Coming back to the album, it’s a refreshing take on classic numbers. And she believes that Bennett is her guiding spirit. In an earlier interview, Gaga said: “No matter how much you may drift from the classic old-school approach that these songs can take, as long as there were moments where we returned to the study and discipline of jazz, it kind of anchors the whole record.”
Gaga with her mentor and friend, the late Tony Bennett
Gaga has also finished a studio album, which will be out in February; her first since 2020’s Chromatica, which featured the Grammy-winning song Rain on Me with Ariana Grande.
“I’m finished with that record,” she said. Gaga is simply excited to get into the studio and collaborate with people she “loves and respects”.
This is the same singer who released Born This Way, the 2011 song which was an instant hit and an instant LGBTQ anthem. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100, and Elton John called it “the new gay anthem”. “Born this way”, as a slogan, was a cultural success. We are also hoping that her February studio album will be in a similar mould.
