At the recent London premiere of twisted musical love story Joker: Folie à Deux, Lady Gaga, who stars as Harleen “Lee” Quinzel/Harley Quinn, was asked about her relationship to the character. Having studied method acting for a decade in her teens, and become highly adept on chaotically entertaining press tours for House of Gucci and A Star Is Born, Gaga described “a complex woman that wants to be whoever she wants to be at any given moment”. If the fusion between Harley Quinn and herself wasn’t already abundantly clear, she added: “And will not let anyone pin her down.”
And so it is that after having teased a forthcoming seventh album of pop bangers for early next year, and with its first single apparently due next month, Gaga now drops what has been teased on billboards as “LG6.5”, a jazz-tinged, 40-minute big band curio made up of 13 songs. Harlequin is being billed as a “companion album” to the Joker sequel, rather than a proper Lady Gaga release, and features a clutch of covers alongside two originals. Within the context of Gaga’s discography it sits more alongside Cheek to Cheek and Love for Sale, her two albums of jazz standards with Tony Bennett, than it does her last album, 2020’s cyberpunk influenced electropop opus, Chromatica.
In fact, it’s basically Gaga’s recent glitzy Vegas residency, Jazz & Piano, turned into an album. Opener Good Morning, a cover of the 1939 Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney classic, sets the scene, all brass chirrups, jaunty piano and barrelling double bass. Gaga sounds totally in control, skipping around the song with a flourish, but there’s a strong whiff of big band week on The X Factor that’s hard to shift. It’s not helped by the obviousness of the song choices, which you imagine make more sense in the context of the film, but do we really need more versions of Get Happy, That’s Entertainment or closer That’s Life? Also, do we need yet more evidence that yes Gaga can really sing and yes she does come from a jazz background thank you very much?
Much better is the more laid-back World on a String, recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Jermaine Jackson, which is built on a tightly wound guitar figure that soon relaxes into a warm swell of organ and echoey drums. There’s a lightness to the way Gaga glides around the melody, specifically when she sings “can’t you see I’m in love?” (Her fiance, Michael Polansky, serves as executive producer on the album.)
Having teased fans on social media with photos of her near electric guitars in recent weeks, it’s a relief to hear them on her full-blooded, ragged take on The Joker (last heard as the theme tune to Australian sitcom and enduring meme creator, Kath & Kim), which sounds as if it could have slotted nicely on to 2016’s country-rock opus, Joanne. When she lets rip with a big growling “the Joker is MEEEE” towards the end, you wish there had been a bit more of this energy throughout. Oh, When the Saints, however, undoes the amnesty on pop stars and guitars with a truly unpleasant solo that reeks of fretboard fingering.
A curio rather than a classic, Harlequin will please fans of immaculately covered jazz standards, the big band apologists and Gaga fans who felt as if she had lost some of her enthusiasm for music during Chromatica’s protracted gestation. Here, she sounds fully engaged, happy, and completely in her element as she skips between Harley Quinn’s various moods. Tellingly, on original Happy Mistake, which offers an insight into Quinn/Gaga’s psyche amid acoustic guitar and wisps of electronic static, she sings: “I can try to hide behind the makeup but the show must go on.” Nevertheless, it’s a show that feels like the prelude to a slightly more interesting next act.
