In keeping with the motif of the world’s inevitable apocalypse (at the rate things are going), Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars have seen fit to release a song befitting of such a foregone conclusion. Called “Die With A Smile,” the track is a mawkish love song that finds each singer professing that, “If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you” (too bad the single wasn’t out when Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was released in 2012—you know, the year the world really ended). It would be sweet if it wasn’t so utterly depressing. Not just because it seems to take the world “ending” for people to fully understand what they mean to one another, but because, more and more, people seem to be surrendering to the world’s end (for humans, anyway) rather than doing anything that might combat it (like, say, ceasing to support businesses such as Shein).
Nor does anyone appear to want to combat the “trend” of country taking hold of 2024. For, in what marks yet another instance of the music industry “going country” (as Lana Del Rey decreed earlier this year), the accompanying video, co-directed by Daniel Ramos and Bruno Mars, finds the duo attired in Western wear. While the song itself isn’t exactly country apart from its Patsy Cline-esque sentiments, the aesthetic borrows heavily from the genre, right down to stylizing the video as a “performance” on a 1960s-looking variety show. Sort of like what Lily Allen already did in 2009’s “Not Fair” video (granted, “Not Fair” had a much twangier musical sound to warrant having a country theme for its visual).
Here, too, Gaga and Mars sing as though before a live studio audience (though there’s no audience to be seen), with Mars opening the track by painting the picture, “I, I just woke up from a dream/Where you and I had to say goodbye/And I don’t know what it all means/But since I survived, I realized/Wherever you go, that’s where I’ll follow.” That last line, of course, is a familiar one, said (in some variation or another) in everything from Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him” to The Calling’s “Wherever You Will Go.”
As for whether or not this is “Bruno Mars’” song or “Lady Gaga’s” song (with both rumored to have new albums coming out imminently) depends on who the listener is a fan of. On the one hand, Lady Gaga gets top billing with her name put before Mars’, but, on the other, Mars sings the majority of the verses. Not only that, but he’s standing front and center with the microphone in the video, while Gaga sits off to the side on her piano, looking like Natasha Lyonne (complete with a stoic expression) with a cigarette protruding from her mouth.
To boot (no cowboy pun intended), Gaga never gets to sing any of the verses without Mars. In some ways, though, it actually does feel more like a Gaga endeavor, not just tone-wise and in terms of Gaga constantly flip-flopping her musical styles with each new “era,” but also based on the single’s release date. For it’s on-brand that Lady G would choose to sanction a new song being put out on Madonna’s birthday, August 16th—though that might not necessarily be a good omen for her (especially as it’s Madonna’s “Satan year”). It’s almost as dick swinging as Britney Spears sporting an updated version of her Versace butterfly dress after Blake Lively wore the original version to the It Ends With Us movie premiere.
In any case, Gaga only deigns to get up from her piano during the guitar breakdown of the song toward the three-minute mark, swaying to and fro as she parades the full extent of her very obvious wig styled into a beehive—and yes, the overall effect, cigarette and all, makes one remember why Gaga chose to dye her hair blonde in the early days of her career: so as to avoid comparisons to Amy Winehouse.
Indeed, apart from still harboring makeup-inspired traces of Harley Quinn (being fresh off her Joker: Folie à Deux stint), Gaga majorly channels Winehouse’s (not Dolly Parton’s) look in this video (perhaps the next time another biopic is made, she can be the one to occupy the lead role—for it couldn’t be any worse than Back to Black). Unfortunately, the channeling only comes from a visual standpoint. For, although the song is all about yearning and burning for a loved one (but only in the event of an apocalyptic situation, mind you), it doesn’t convey even one iota of the same emotions expressed in any Winehouse song.
In fact, Winehouse was unapologetic about genuinely wearing her heart on her sleeve when it came to the lyrics she wrote, famously stating, “So much music nowadays is so like, ‘You don’t know me, I don’t need you’ and all the music then [in the 60s] was kinda like, ‘I don’t care if you don’t love me. I will lie down in the road, pull my heart out and show it to you.’ You know what I mean?” Clearly, many musicians of the moment do not. This extends not just to Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga, but also the often ersatz emotionalism of, say, Taylor Swift. Then there is the penchant for outright froth from the likes of Miley Cyrus, Sabrina Carpenter and, oy vey, Katy Perry (currently trying to stage a very catastrophic “comeback”). Things on the rap/hip hop front aren’t much better of late either, with both Megan Thee Stallion and Ice Spice continuing to promote “money is the anthem” messages with the highest degree of grotesqueness.
In effect, when a musician does say something that at least sounds meaningful in a song, it’s very easy for listeners to be taken in by it. To practically swoon over it. Which is precisely what seems to be happening with “Die With A Smile.” Especially with the maudlin chorus, “If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you/If the party was over/And our time on Earth was through/I’d wanna hold you just for a while/And die with a smile/If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you.” While it might come across as romantic to some, to others, it simply reads like it would take a cataclysm to treat someone with the sort of effusive romanticness they deserve every day. Not just with the threat of imminent death. So no, not exactly “dying” over “Die With A Smile.”
