Get ready for the Autumn of Gaga.
In an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1, Lady Gaga revealed that her new album will be called Joanne, and it’s out October 21 via Streamline/Interscope. Gaga spoke to Lowe straight from the studio, where she admitted the follow-up to 2013’s Artpop isn’t even finished yet — but likely will be within the next 48 hours. Listen to the interview below.
Gaga also took to Twitter to share the album’s cover art, a side profile shot of the singer wearing a pink hat.
The album’s title is a reference not only to Gaga’s middle name, but also her late aunt, who died from lupus when the performer was 19. “As I returned to my home life and spending time with my friends and family and getting out of the mainstream limelight for a minute, the experiences of our family and our challenges that make us who we are,” Gaga says. “It’s everything about Joanne… it’s all the toughness of the pain of losing her that made us all strong and made us who we are. She is the woman of my past who is becoming and helping me bring more of my honest woman self into the future.”
Gaga also revealed that Father John Misty is featured on a track called “Sinner’s Prayer”, and Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal’s Josh Homme plays guitar on a song called “John Wayne”, which she says explores “my incessant need to run after wild men and somehow I get bored of the same old John.” As Rolling Stone notes, Gaga says the album will include some Bollywood and country influences.
The LP’s lead single, “Perfect Illusion,” dropped last week. Read Vanyaland writer Victoria Wasylak’s take on it here.
LADY GAGA / JOANNE
NEW ALBUM
OCT 21 pic.twitter.com/YzKQbtVEZO— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) September 15, 2016