Music meteorology: predicting the next wave of megahits and earworms with the tracks they’re teasing and releasing now.
Gaga is back, she’s not doing jazz, and she knows exactly what pop music needs.
Words: Dan Harrison.
Lady Gaga has always been pop’s most committed method actor. While her contemporaries dabble in reinvention, switching sound or finding a new aesthetic, Gaga transforms herself with the dedication of Daniel Day-Lewis preparing for war. From meat dresses to jazz standards, from Oscar-worthy film performances to complete persona shifts, each era arrives fully formed, meticulously crafted, and executed with unwavering conviction.
Which makes her latest single all the more fascinating. ‘Disease’ lands with the subtlety of a diamante brick through a stained glass window, marking not just a return to pop but a gleeful demolition of the careful artifice she’s constructed since ‘Chromatica’ and its bombastic brilliance. Gone are the jazz standards and theatrical flourishes. In their place: throbbing industrial beats, gothic synthesisers, and a chorus that sounds like ‘Bad Romance’ getting bashed over the head by a baseball bat embedded with Nine Inch Nails.
The track, produced by Andrew Watt and Henry “Cirkut” Walter, clocks in at a perfectly-poptastic 3 minutes and 51 seconds – practically a prog-rock epic by modern streaming standards, but firmly in the sweet spot for great pop. It’s a statement of intent that suggests Gaga isn’t particularly interested in playing by 2024’s new rules – she’s beyond pandering to the algorithms. The production is thick and maximalist, layering distorted beats beneath vocals that swing between banshee wails and eerily processed whispers.
It’s a song that understands that there’s a need for danger. That pop music needs to have stars with teeth bared – both in sound and subject matter. The lyrics paint love as a particularly virulent strain of Stockholm syndrome, with Gaga casting herself as both disease vector and cure. “Bring me your desire, I can cure your disease,” she purrs in the opening verse before the track erupts into a chorus that manages to reference both religious salvation and medical malpractice in the same breath.
It’s territory Gaga has explored before, but never with quite this level of industrial menace. The track feels like a deliberate callback to her ‘Born This Way’ era, filtered through a decade of electronic music evolution and personal transformation. The result lands somewhere between cyber-goth revival meeting and avant-garde sex club – exactly the sort of beautifully unhinged combination that made us fall for Gaga in the first place.
It comes at an interesting point for the star. ‘Harlequin’ – a companion album to her co-starring role in Joker: Folie à Deux – topped the Billboard Jazz chart but barely cracked the Top 20 on the Billboard 200. Meanwhile, her Bruno Mars collab ‘Die With a Smile’ has dominated the Billboard Global 200 for eight consecutive weeks, amassing over a billion streams and cementing her position as one of only five artists ever to reach 100 million monthly Spotify listeners.
In that landscape, ‘Disease’ feels like a calculated return with just enough risk to feel properly dangerous. It’s too weird to be a cynical grab for radio play, too aggressive for easy playlist placement, and far too long for TikTok virality. Instead, it plays like an artist rediscovering their first love: making pop music that refuses to behave itself. It’s in the moment, but also entirely unbothered by anyone else’s bullshit. This is Gaga unchained.
The track serves as the first single from her seventh studio album, due in spring 2025. If ‘Disease’ is any indication, LG7 sounds like a queen returning to take her throne – Gaga staking her claim as the A-list’s great disruptor. As much pop becomes increasingly sanitised – even when it’s trying to suggest it’s anything but – there’s something thrilling about watching pop’s most committed chaos agent return to the fray.
Charli xcx already showed us that a believable touch of hedonism could catch fire in a sea of focus-grouped sure bets, but while it might have been a brilliant Brat summer, Gaga’s rules are less a rebellion and more a full-on riot. Each reinvention has maintained her position as pop’s most fascinating shapeshifter, even when the commercial results have varied. She’s an act that zigs when others zag. This time, she’s snaking her way right back to the circus.
Pop needs its monsters. It needs its weirdos and its freaks. Otherwise, what’s the point? Gaga has spent 15 years backing up her wildest swings with equally outlandish execution. Perhaps, given the title of her latest single, she’s offering a diagnosis of what we’ve been missing.
LINKS IN BIO
THE NEW BOPS AND BANGERS THEY’RE TEASING FOR IMMINENT RELEASE
INHALER – ‘YOUR HOUSE’
Release date: 29th October 2024
If you’re going to road-test new material, you might as well do it properly. Inhaler have spent the past few weeks treating their North American audiences to not one but two fresh cuts – ‘Your House’ and ‘Open Wide’ emerging as setlist staples faster than you can say “phone footage goes viral”. Now, as they hit the West Coast leg of their current tour, the Dublin four-piece are finally ready to unleash the former properly.
There’s nothing quite like releasing new music when you’re already on stage every night, ready to blast it through increasingly sizeable PA systems. If those fan-captured clips are anything to go by, ‘Your House’ might just be yet another skip forward. Their first new material since 2023’s ‘Cuts & Bruises’, it suggests a band who’ve found their swagger and aren’t afraid to use it. Expect news on their third album ‘soon’, we’d reckon.
LUVCAT – ‘DINNER @ BRASSERIE ZEDEL’
Release date: 31st October 2024
There’s something deliciously appropriate about Luvcat following up a murder ballad about arsenic-laced domestic bliss with a track named after a swanky brasserie. Since breaking through with ‘Matador’ earlier this year, she’s her releases into their own theatrical production – Tim Burton aesthetics one minute, Parisian noir the next.
With three upcoming headline shows selling out faster than you can say “Paper Dress Vintage” (which, helpfully, is where they’re at) and Radio 1’s Greg James and Huw Stephens already firmly on board, her particular brand of darkly theatrical alt-pop is clearly striking a chord. Though given her backstory involves running away with the circus and a Parisian adventure that ended in police custody, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised she knows how to put on a show.
FICKLE FRIENDS – ‘FERAL’
Release date: 31st October 2024
When Fickle Friends pressed pause after 2021’s ‘Weird Years’ project, it wasn’t your typical “we need a break” scenario. This was more “let’s completely reset and rebuild from the ground up” territory. Now they’re back with ‘FERAL’, a title that feels particularly apt for a band who’ve clearly spent a decent chunk of their hiatus quietly plotting their next move.
Frontwoman Natti Shiner’s updates have been teasing something that builds on their electronic-tinged indie pop foundations while pushing into bold new territory. Given this is the band who turned their Top 10 debut into an ever-expanding creative universe, we’re betting ‘FERAL’ lives up to its name.
ETHEL CAIN – ‘PUNISH’
Release date: 1st November 2024
When your debut album lands on Obama’s year-end playlist while simultaneously exploring the darkest corners of American Gothic storytelling, you know you’re getting attention. Two years after ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ redefined what ambitious narrative albums could be, Ethel Cain returns with ‘Punish’ – the first glimpse of second album ‘Perverts’ (landing 8th January 2025).
The stark black-and-white artwork suggests she hasn’t lost her knack for religious imagery. But those cryptic social media posts (think grainy photos captioned with words like “Apathy” and “Disruption”) hint at new territory being explored – something she’s keen for us to all discuss on its artistic merits, rather than just tweet bad jokes at her. When you’ve already crafted one of alternative music’s most compelling universes, the only way forward is deeper into the darkness.
TATE MCRAE – ‘2 HANDS’
Release date: TBA
Here’s a fun game – try keeping track of how many venues Tate McRae has had to upgrade on her current Think Later World Tour. (Spoiler: you’ll need more than two hands.) As her evolution from viral sensation to pop force continues at breakneck speed, she’s dropping ‘2 Hands’ just to keep us all on our toes. Recent shows have seen her blend contemporary choreography with emotional storytelling in a way that suggests she’s not just found her confidence – she’s bottled it, branded it, and is selling it by the arena-load. Expect another absolute bop.
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