The pop star has returned with a bombastic new song, the first single from her upcoming sixth album, harking back to her origins. But it also chimes with the current musical landscape. As a general rule, great pop stars set trends, whereas slightly less great pop stars chase them.
But Lady Gaga's supremely satisfying new single Disease, which was released today as the first taster from her upcoming sixth album, highlights a notable exception to his rule. Sometimes great pop stars disregard trends and concentrate on doing what made them great in the first place. The Guardian has hailed Disease as a "return to form and to her classic sound", while The Independent declared it Gaga's "best in a long while" because it offers "a potent dose of dungeon-dark electro-pop".
Clocking in at three minutes and 51 seconds, Disease is unfashionably long for a pop single in the TikTok and streaming era. Today's professional songwriters are acutely aware that shorter tracks are less likely to be skipped on Spotify – something the platform's algorithm is primed to pick up on – and more likely to be synced with slick video content on TikTok. For this reason, there's a real sense of shoulder-shrugging confidence to Disease, a song that makes no attempt whatsoever to rein itself in.
Really, who wants Lady Gaga, an artist who built her name on avant garde fashion choices and truly audacious performances, to behave like everyone else? Actually, Disease's appeal is predicated on the way it harks .
