Lady Gaga has released her new album Harlequin, a companion piece to the upcoming film Joker: Folie à Deux. Stream it below.

Marking her first album since 2020’s Chromatica, Harlequin finds the accomplished pop star and actress covering a host of well-known jazz standards, including cuts like “Get Happy,” “That’s Life,” “Oh, When the Saints,” and Frank Sinatra’s “I’ve Got the World On a String.” Additionally, the record boasts several original songs from the artist.

According to Gaga herself in a new interview with the Associated Press, “This album was made with grace and a lot of focus and real love and dedication for Harley Quinn,” reflected in the boldness of its genre-bending, jazz-for-the-modern-world approach. “It’s also a deep love and respect for all the musicians and people that were in the studio with us every single day,” she added.

Also having a strong influence on Harlequin is Gaga’s late collaborator, Tony Bennett, whose taste for musicianship and passion for “what jazz can mean today” can be heard throughout the album.

“Tony is the anchor in a lot of ways,” 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.”

Prior to the announcement of Harlequin, Gaga had shared plans to release a new album of original material in 2025. That project is still on the way, as Gaga has been referring to Harlequin as LG6.5 on social media to distinguish it from the future release.

Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters worldwide on October 4th. The sequel to the massively successful Joker, the film finds Gaga starring opposite Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck / the Joker as Harley Quinn. Many of the songs found on Harlequin are set to be in the film, as the Todd Phillips-directed project has been described as a jukebox musical.

Back in August, she teamed up with Bruno Mars for the standalone single, “Die With a Smile.”  Her aforementioned seventh studio album is slated for release in February 2025.

Harlequin Artwork:

Harlequin Tracklist:
01. Good Morning
02. Get Happy (2024)
03. Oh, When the Saints
04. World On a String
05. If My Friends Could See Me Now
06. That’s Entertainment
07. Smile
08. The Joker
09. Folie à Deux
10. Gonna Build a Mountain
11. Close to You
12. Happy Mistake
13. That’s Life