Lady Gaga wants to heal your “Disease.” The pop superstar dropped a music video for her latest single on Tuesday (Oct. 29).
“I think a lot about the relationship I have with my own inner demons. It’s never been easy for me to face how I get seduced by chaos and turmoil. It makes me feel claustrophobic,” she wrote on Instagram following the release of the clip to accompany the dark dance-pop track. “Disease is about facing that fear, facing myself and my inner darkness, and realizing that sometimes I can’t win or escape the parts of myself that scare me. That I can try and run from them but they are still part of me and I can run and run but eventually I’ll meet that part of myself again, even if only for a moment.”
She continued, “Dancing, morphing, running, purging. Again and again, back with myself. This integration is ultimately beautiful to me because it’s mine and I’ve learned to handle it. I am the conductor of my own symphony. I am every actor in the plays that are my art and my life. No matter how scary the question, the answers are inside of me. Essential, inextricable parts of what makes me me. I save myself by keeping going. I am the whole me, I am strong, and I am up for the challenge. Happy Halloween.”
“Disease” marks the first taste of the 13-time Grammy winner’s highly anticipated seventh album. In late September, Gaga dropped Harlequin, a companion album that coincided with Joker: Folie à Deux; the project debuted at No. 20 on the Billboard 200 and marked her third No. 1 on the Billboard jazz charts. LG7 is expected to arrive in February.
In addition to the “Disease” music video, Gaga told fans that the drop was a “double feature” on social media, as she also released “Die With a Smile (Live in Las Vegas)” at the exact same time. The Bruno Mars collaboration spent eight weeks atop both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts. “If the world was ending, I’d wanna be next to you/ If the party was over, and our time on Earth was through,” Mars and Gaga sing on the 1970s-inspired track. “I’d wanna hold you just for a while/ And die with a smile.”
Watch the “Disease” music video below.