FEATURE:
Aces and Jokers
Inside Lady Gaga’s Harlequin
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I do love a surprise album…
as it means we do not have to go through the normal promotional cycle and all that predictable build-up. This one comes Lady Gaga. A companion piece to the new film she appears in, Joker: Folie à Deux, I am interested in the reviews for the album. How there is some mixed reception. People saying Lady Gaga’s vocals are phenomenal and she is a natural when it comes to covering standards. Others feeling that there are a few weaker tracks in the pack. I really love the album and feel it is important and really strong. I just love artists tackling standards and older songs. Immersing themselves in that world. More should do it. I will end with a couple of reviews for Harlequin. Prior to that, I am featuring an interview from Rolling Stone, where Lady Gaga spoke about the new album. It is interesting reading what she had to say:
“When Lady Gaga wrapped her third movie — the upcoming Joker sequel, Folie à Deux — she realized she wasn’t ready to move on from her character, Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, a.k.a. Harley Quinn. “I had such a deep relationship with Lee,” she tells Rolling Stone. “And when I was done filming the movie, I wasn’t done with her.”
With the help of her fiancé, Michael Polansky, the superstar recorded Harlequin, a companion record to the film that mostly contains sparkling renditions of standards — her first time doing so since the death of her collaborator Tony Bennett. Over 13 tracks, she interprets classics that include “Get Happy” (made famous by Judy Garland) and “That’s Life” (Frank Sinatra) while putting a modern spin on them. Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s 1932 song “I’ve Got the World on a String” is transformed into a seductive rocker — ideal for introducing it to younger generations. On a Zoom call from London, Gaga spoke to us about Harlequin, defying genres, and what fans can expect on her upcoming pop album.
What were your goals going in to this album?
We decided we wanted to create an album that celebrated her complexity through the lens of a lot of the music in the film, as well as originals, that would touch on the breadth of her as a woman — her darkness, her chaos, her vibrancy, her manic nature — and create a modern take on vintage pop.
You describe the album as “LG 6.5.” Do you view this more as a Harley album, or solely a Gaga record?
I view this as both, actually. That’s kind of the way that I see all of this. It is my record. It’s a Lady Gaga record, but it’s also inspired by my character and my vision of what a woman can be. It’s why the album does not adhere to one genre. I called it “6.5” because it’s not my next studio album that’s a pop record, but it is somewhere in between, and it’s blurring the lines of pop music. As you know, my collaborator Tony Bennett, who’s no longer alive, was young singing this music. It was just pop music. And I thought it was so interesting, the songs that were chosen to create this film. I wanted to explore what this music could mean today through the lens of her.
You described Joker as meta-modern, and how you can’t really pin it down to one genre. That’s how I see this album, too. Jazz is at the forefront, but there’s so many different sounds.
Thank you. I would say that that meta-modernism actually played a real role in how we approached this in the studio. I co-produced this album with Ben Rice. Michael also had a very heavy hand in the music. We talked a lot about her being somebody that you can’t clarify, because she is too unpredictable and rare. [We] used genre as a way to express that something is rare — by not adhering to one and going heavily into the avant-garde. I’m basically saying, “As a woman, I choose to be whatever and whoever I want to be at any given moment, no matter how I feel. And no matter what you want from me, I will be myself. Thank you. Love, Harlequin” [laughs].
You basically had to unlearn singing and tone down your technique while shooting the film. What about here? Were you just being Gaga and not holding back?
I did both on this record. There’s moments where I definitely tap into Lee’s voice and her childlike immaturity with song. She has this naivete. You imagine that she heard the song two times and she’s humming by herself, because she’s uncomfortable and wants to soothe herself. That made it in there. For example, the opening of “That’s Entertainment” almost sounds like a 13-year-old at a school play. In the context of a 38-year-old woman, it’s kind of unsettling. But then, “That’s Entertainment” launches into a much softer vocal that is extremely nostalgic. And I worked on that as well.
Vocally, I played with using my voice in a way that I also didn’t use ever with Tony. So this was a bit of Lee’s voice, and a new voice for me with some of the more jazz-inspired records. And then exploring — how would I sing over surf punk? How would I sing over a waltz? How could we create a version of “Smile” that feels inherent to the film? And then with “Happy Mistake,” there’s this raw fragility that’s totally Gaga, but it’s also maybe me singing on a record in a way that I never have before. So I would say that for as genre-defying as the album is, the vocal is, too. The vocal’s kind of schizophrenic, but that makes sense for Harley Quinn. And that was part of the joy of making it — the freedom of it all.
This your first time recording standards without Tony. Was he in your mind at all? I’m sure it was emotional.
Yeah. This was my first time without Tony, and it wasn’t emotional probably in the way you’re thinking. It wasn’t sad. It was actually like he was with us all the time. And also, in a funny way, if I had put rock & roll chords over production in a record that I did with Tony years ago, I don’t know how he would’ve felt about that. Tony didn’t love rock & roll. But he would’ve said, “Wow, that’s amazing.” He was somebody who loved how risk-taking and different I am, and I always thought that was so cool. He was 60 years older than me, and he would flinch less than young people that I would meet. People that would be like, “Why is she dressed that way? Why is she singing that way? Why is her stage performance so theatrical?” Tony, he just never even flinched. He was just a really compassionate, inclusive person. So he was definitely with us [in the studio], but he was mostly inside of me.
As a female producer and singer, I feel that I’ve earned my ability to show my way around this music. And that was exciting for me, because that’s also something I love to share with young people that are listening to these songs. Some of these songs are from the Thirties. It’s nice to be able to show how these things can be reimagined beyond just the notes and the style of the way they were written. Rather… what if you just tore up the book and lit it on fire and did it in a completely new way? I wanted it to be fun”.
Before wrapping things up, I want to come to a couple of reviews for Harlequin. The surprise of the album coming out. I love Lady Gaga’s work and this is her embracing and exploring her full vocal range. It is a fascinating collection of songs that is much more than a side project or lesser work. I am interested in different takes on Harlequin. I am going to end with another review in a minute. First, this is how Consequence approached the stunning Harlequin:
“The story begins, for example, with a slightly updated version of “Good Morning,” originally performed by Judy Garland and further popularized by its inclusion in Singin’ in the Rain. And while nothing can ever top the sheer joy of Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds dancing around a Los Angeles set piece in the wee hours of the morning, Gaga takes it out for a cheeky spin with a handful of references to inmates, wardens, and other plot elements waiting in Joker: Folie à Deux. When it comes to sifting through the many classic tracks she could have chosen for this collection, Gaga’s instincts are, overall, fantastic. She pulls heavily from beloved Technicolor musicals, mining Sweet Charity for “If My Friends Could See Me Now” and The Band Wagon for “That’s Entertainment.”
“That’s Entertainment,” in particular, feels like a turning point for the story Gaga is telling. Regardless of how Lee’s arc will play out in the movie, Dr. Harleen Quinzel is a character who canonically finds herself consumed by the charismatic Crown Prince of Crime to the point that she sheds most of her own identity to step into the role of Harley Quinn. She wants so desperately to be loved and affirmed by him that she’ll let her life fall to pieces in order to get his approval. All the world’s a stage, and “That’s Entertainment” feels like the moment she accepts her role.
The one glaring miss immediately follows with “The Joker,” which Gaga pulled for obvious reasons from the little-seen 1965 production The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd. It comes across as too heavy-handed to mesh evenly with everything else happening here. The other tracks feel peppered with dark irony or devil-may-care awareness in a way that feels self-aware, while the references in “The Joker” to “the lonely clown” as the ultimate “loser in the game” are just a bit too on the nose to work. Even so, “The Joker” is clearly the point where our narrator — Gaga, Lee, Harley, or any mix of the three — takes the turn for the worse, which makes the tender “Smile” a powerful emotional centerpiece.
Harlequin then offers the first of two original tracks, “Folie à Deux,” written solely by Gaga. “Folie à Deux” is a trippy, cartoonish waltz with a haunting background vocals and explosive piano that feels entirely in line with her narrative. The other original, “Happy Mistake,” emerges in the final third as a reserved guitar ballad that wouldn’t have felt out of place on 2016’s Joanne, one of the first times Gaga began to peel back the layers of protection offered by her chameleonic stage persona.
This idea of exposure is present throughout Harlequin, too. “Playing a strung-out girl my whole career was a way for me to split off from my true self, but, it’s all me,” she told Entertainment Weekly of “Happy Mistake.” “That song says if I was ever going to find joy or happiness in my life, it would probably feel like an accident…My dedicated fans know this about me, that playing a persona had a price, and it has a price for Lee and her love of Joker. There’s definitely a way that I address that on this record.”
While Lady Gaga isn’t quite a method actor, she certainly intertwines her characters with her own DNA, a concept she’s reinforced throughout the press cycle for the film. “This idea of dual identities was always something that was a part of my music-making,” she noted on a recent episode of The Zane Lowe Show. “I was always creating characters in my music, and when I made Lee for Joker, she just really had this profound effect on me.” She’s obviously far from the first to undertake this type of project, one that uses a film as its launchpad, but there are few creators out there as committed as Gaga.
We already know that Lady Gaga can absolutely body a jazz track, which she does frequently throughout Harlequin. Her vocal prowess remains undeniable; she jumps the octave in “Gonna Build a Mountain” with such ease that Sammy Davis Jr. himself would approve. The transition between “Folie à Deux” and the determined “Gonna Build a Mountain” positions itself as that final narrative turning point, and the closing third of the project brings the storyline home. There’s certainly no happy bow, and following the thread of a toxic relationship takes us to this line in album’s closing track: “I thought of quittin’, but my heart just won’t buy it.”
The arrangements throughout the LP demonstrate the clear reverence and care she has for these standards, and the tweaks she makes and lyrical additions she adds feel playful, not flippant. She is listed as a producer on every song on Harlequin, with Benjamin Rice as her lone co-producer for most of the album. Rice has worked with Lady Gaga throughout the majority of her career, including, crucially, on the soundtrack for A Star Is Born. He has a clear and deep understanding of her vision here.
In recent days, Lady Gaga has been referring to Harlequin as “LG6.5,” placing it as a “half” project ahead of her seventh studio album. It’s a description that feels correct; Harlequin is interesting and stylistically excellent, but at the same time, it probably won’t float to the top in conversations around Lady Gaga’s best work”.
Although there have been some more mixed reviews for Harlequin, I do find it fascinating. A terrific and solid work from Lady Gaga, it does lead me to think that more artists should cover standards. It may seem tried and tired, yet Lady Gaga has revealed new sides to her with this album. Whether Harlequin is a palette cleanser or a stepping stone to a new album, it is compelling in its own right. I will end with a couple of reviews for Harlequin. This is what The Arts Desk wrote about an album that people should really check out:
“Lady Gaga has made clear this is not her official new artist album. It’s a side project, inspired by Harley Quinn, the nom-de-chaos of the Arkham Asylum inmate she plays in Todd Phillips’ much-anticipated sequel Joker: Folie à Deux. The original Joker, deep-dipped in Seventies Scorcese aesthetics, saw DC Studios demonstrate they could take superhero fictions to exciting new places. Setting the bar higher, the new film is a musical.
Judging from this album, it’s going to boast a whole heap of swingin’ jazz energy.
As a stand-alone album, it’s very much in the vein of her two albums with Tony Bennett, rather than her usual stadium cyber-pop. It contains songs featured in the film and a few that aren’t. Two of the 13-track set are Gaga originals. The rest are mostly well-known standards. The territory has been relentlessly trampled over the decades - everyone from Sinead O’Connor to Robbie Williams to Rod Stewart has had a go – but Gaga acquits herself with aplomb. Partly this is because she has a stunning voice, whether foghorn belting, gospel diva-ing or deep cabaret playful.
Sure, there are throwaway bits; Charlie Chaplin’s schmaltzy old “Smile”, a predictable easy-listening “Close to You", and a so-so “Oh, When the Saints”. None are horrid and they may well work onscreen, but they don’t show off Gaga’s unique character. Happily there’s plenty that does, notably the rockin’ Cher-goes-burlesque of “The Joker” (the Anthony Newley one, not the Steve Miller Band one!), the Gene Krupa-ish “If My Friends Could See Me Now”, the showbiz explosion of “That’s Life” and a smokey, Winehouse-y take on Dixieland gem “I’ve Got the World on a String”.
Her own songs sit easily next to well-worn classics. One is the lush waltz-time slowie “Folie à Deux”, which sounds as if it hails from a long-ago Disney princess film (albeit spiked with deliberately off-key notes), and the other is a strummed melancholic torch song, “Happy Mistake”. Lady Gaga is one of pop’s true one-off’s, often magificently so, and this outing is sprinkled with enough of her stardust”.
Whether you prefer Lady Gaga’s studio albums and her more traditional sound or do like when she takes on classic and older tracks, Harlequin offers both worlds. It is a wonderful set that will please Lady Gaga fans and those who might not have truly discovered her work. With very few jokers in the pack, Harlequin offers up…
PLENTY of aces.