Lady Gaga on Apple Music: Talks Creating ‘Harlequin,’ working with Joaquin Phoenix, And More

Lady Gaga tells Apple Music how she feels about finally releasing Joker: Folie à Deux and ‘Harlequin’

I am super ready for people to see the movie. I’m so excited that it’s going to be out on the fourth. 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 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 as well, and that was really cool. So I’m just excited for everyone to hear it.

Lady Gaga tells Apple Music about her approach when creating ‘Harlequin’

Zane Lowe: I’d love to talk to you about how you approached ‘Harlequin.’ Because the way I think it’s being positioned, at least to me, it’s LG 6.5, so it feels like it’s half Gaga and half Lee. And what is the balance here within the performance and the creative aspect of this album between character and you?

Lady Gaga: I think that for me, this idea of dual identities was always something that was a part of my music making. I was always creating characters in my music and when I made Lee for Joker, she just really had this profound effect on me. 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. 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.”
Zane Lowe: It sounds really free. I mean it sounds really, really fun as well. I can hear you performing on this album at such a high level and loving every take.
Lady Gaga: Yeah, it was really fun. It was completely freeing because calling it LG 6.5, it’s kind of not beholden to pop music or pop culture in the same way that some of my other releases might be. And it kind of gave it a freedom in that way.
Lady Gaga tells Apple Music about the changes she made to become Lee Quinzel

Lady Gaga: 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.
Zane Lowe: How do you unlearn that stuff? You’ve been performing at the highest level for so long, how do you reverse engineer what you know?
Lady Gaga: It took exploration and letting go and noticing when I just sink into my craft or my discipline and then remembering she wouldn’t do that. She doesn’t have that, don’t go there. And then I would just stay where I was and navigate within, I guess, a more narrow playing field. Sometimes I would even say that Lee to me sounds like a little girl out of recital, like an 11-year-old in school, but she’s in her thirties, so it’s super awkward.
Lady Gaga tells Apple Music how Tony Bennett might’ve reacted to ‘Harlequin’

Zane Lowe: There’s a sense of him being present throughout this and it must be really amazing to be able to continue in the legacy of this beautiful relationship you had with him, but do it kind of differently and do it just your way in a different way.

Lady Gaga: Yeah, I mean we did so much that Tony would never have been cool with.

Zane Lowe: That’s what I’m saying, in a roundabout way…what’s Tony saying, right now?

Lady Gaga: I mean the reality is that when rock and roll happened, like Tony, he told me he was like, there was three chords now on the ring and he said that it destroyed jazz on the radio.

Lady Gaga tells Apple Music about writing “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 just 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 artist, 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 theater, 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 artist is messed up. So that song is in a lot of ways about that.
Lady Gaga tells Apple Music about her character Lee and working with Joaquin Phoenix

Zane Lowe: Will she ever fully leave you? I mean, is this just such a profound experience that you’ll carry it forever?

Lady Gaga: ​​I mean, I think I’ll always have it in my heart in some kind of way. I wonder if I’ll continue to create with her in my mind, but she’s not stuck in my body in a weird way, I guess.

Zane Lowe: I think it’s a fair question to ask though, because I’ve seen the trailer and you and Joaquin, I mean, it is pretty amazing how deep you, obviously both of you went in this film. I cannot wait to see it.

Lady Gaga: Thank you so much for saying that. 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.