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Physician! Physician! Lady Gaga is back and she has found a cure! “Disease,” the pop star’s first new solo release since 2020, emerges from obscurity to reveal reinvigorated artist Stefani Germanotta, tightly bonded. It's their best in a long time: a heavy dose of dungeon-dark electropop.

“Disease” arrives less than a month after the release of Harlequin, the accompanying album to the musical sequel by Todd Phillips Joker: Folie à Deux, in which she starred alongside Joaquin Phoenix. The film, widely derided by critics and disappointed fans, has since disappeared from public consciousness harlequin Things didn't get much better. We all know that Gaga can hold her own when it comes to the Great American Songbook and sing along with the best in the shows. The problem was that few of these covers captured the dark and twisted character she portrays in the film; Most of the arrangements were far too polite to sound dangerous.

“Illness” has no such reservations. This is the first look at Gaga's upcoming seventh album and the predictions seem to be excellent. Ironically, it sounds like something Gaga might have written while filming Slide for two: Beneath the clanging of chains and crackling of electricity, a distorted, fantastic heart beats.

There are echoes of George Michael's “Freeek!” in the smacking synth line and the way it growls and snarls with glorious abandon. This is maximalist in the extreme, and the latest sign that pop culture's temperature is rising (remember that). Brat, think Rivals). Restraint be damned; we want excess, and lots of it.

“I could play the doctor, I can cure your illness. If you were a sinner, I could make you believe,” she bellows in the chorus. Sure, it's not Shakespeare – because on Miley Cyrus' medical-tinged Pharrell Williams collaboration “Work It Out,” released earlier this year, Gaga relies heavily on lyrical clichés. But that's okay, especially as she sings her way through a maze of thumping EDM and techno-heavy beats, grungy guitars and menacing, layered harmonies.

With typical dramatic flair, she reduces everything to desolate piano notes and her transparent falsetto in the final chorus, before growling again and delivering a final, thunderous volley. “Illness” is like a defibrillator in the chest that snaps us out of our daze. Welcome back, Mother Monster.