Lady Gaga Focuses on Shaking the “Disease” of “Lee Quinzel”

It doesn’t seem coincidental that Lady Gaga would opt to release a new single soon after the critical and commercial failure of Joker: Folie à Deux. Even if it was by no means as remotely affronting as House of Gucci. In fact, Joker: Folie a Deux seems grossly misunderstood…and this is coming from someone who generally loathes Lady Gaga performances in film (and possibly in general). Regardless, it’s easy to discount one’s own internal voice when the negativity of others is so loud. Thus, it would appear that, despite how she might have originally felt about the role—being so effusive in interviews promoting both the film and the accompanying record she made for it—Gaga’s confidence has given way to all-out embarrassment. An embarrassment that has called for the immediate signaling of yet another new “era,” with some “insiders” positing that the failure of Joker’s second installment made Gaga see the light in terms of realizing she’s better suited to focusing on the pop star avenue.

Another “assist” in terms of coming to that realization was her fiancé, Michael Polansky, who Gaga cites as the person that convinced her to pivot back more fully to pop. Per Gaga, “Michael is the person who told me to make a new pop record. He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music.’” Perhaps that’s part of the reason Gaga entrusted him to help her co-write “Disease,” the first single from what will be LG7 (for those who count Harlequin as LG6.5). And yes, apparently enough time has passed since the pandemic for such a track to come out. However, ostensibly not wanting to take any chances on whether or not she had a hit, Gaga tapped Cirkut and Watt to co-produce the moody, “Judas”-like music. And, speaking of that 2011 single, the “ah-ahhhs” she repeats are pointedly similar to the ones in “Judas.” Again, no coincidence, for she’s well-aware that everyone has been clamoring for her to return to, at the bare minimum, “Born This Way-era Gaga”—though many would prefer that she returned all the way back to The Fame.

And that she has, with the “dark pop” sound also recalling a single like 2010’s “Dance in the Dark.” But this song in particular bears lyrical traces of Depeche Mode and sonic ones that sound more like an Atticus Ross/Trent Reznor production. The Depeche Mode correlation isn’t difficult to find seeing as how they have a song called “Shake the Disease.” Released in 1985, it felt like a pointed time to wield such a title when taking into account the AIDS epidemic. Even if Depeche Mode was merely creating a “love metaphor” with the chorus, “Here is a plea from my heart to you/Nobody knows me as well as you do/You know how hard it is for me to shake the disease/That takes hold of my tongue in situations like these.”

Just as Lady Gaga is creating her own love metaphor with the “Disease” chorus, “I could play the doctor, I can cure your disease/If you were a sinner, I could make you believe/Lay you down like one, two, three/Eyes roll back in ecstasy/I can smell your sickness, I can cure ya/Cure your disease.” And cure it with what else but love, of course. A metaphor she already made use of on 2017’s “The Cure” (alas, not an homage to the band). Complete with lyrics like, “If I can’t find the cure, I’ll/I’ll fix you with my love/No matter what you know, I’ll/I’ll fix you with my love.” Things get decidedly non-consensual when she also adds, “And if you say you’re okay/I’m gonna heal you anyway.” With “Disease,” too, Gaga paints herself as something of an everyday superhero and her love a superpower—or at least a panacea.

So it is that she sings, “Screamin’ for me, baby (ah-ah)/Like you’re gonna die (ah-ah)/Poison on the inside/I could be your antidote tonight.” At least this time she uses the language “could be your antidote” instead of essentially foisting a potentially unwanted “cure” on the object of her affection. At the outset of the song, she assures, in a somewhat Ariana Grande fashion (read: “Ain’t got no tears left to cry”), “There are no more tears to cry/I heard you beggin’ for life/Runnin’ out of medicine/You’re worse than you’ve ever been.” But if the “medicine” has been Gaga all along, then how could he have ever run out considering her enthusiasm for administering the antidote?

As for medicine as metaphor, Jennifer Lopez also made use of it in her 2019 song, “Medicine” (obviously). But instead of presenting it as a “love injection” analogy, Lopez warns, “Think you need some medicine/I could be your medicine, yeah/Think you need some medicine/Give you a taste of what you give out.” Gaga, instead, prefers the romantic use of the allegory, continuing to insist, “I can cure your disease” (something Isabella “He put his disease in me” Rossellini would have been grateful for in Blue Velvet). One wonders, of course, which lyrics might be attributable to Polansky. Perhaps he was the one who thought to paint a picture of “Stefani” sleeping at night with the lines, “You’re so tortured when you sleep [sounds like Billie Eilish]/Plagued with all your memories/You reach out, and no one’s there/Like a god without a prayer.” Unsurprisingly, there had to be just a touch of Madonna in the lyricism (#likeaprayer).

But what is decidedly not Madonna-like in terms of Lady G’s music is the fact that her albums, for quite some time, have left most people disappointed when comparing them to her first two releases. With Madonna, it took arguably until her fifth studio album, Erotica, for people to be truly disappointed by her musical output (and that was largely due to the puritanism of the early 90s in America). With Gaga, by album three (Artpop), things were taking a dive.

And while “Disease” is being universally praised (a.k.a. most are just grateful Gaga isn’t putting out still more show tunes), it’s never a good sign when people say the phrase “return to form” in that it entails one has been out of step for a while in terms of “giving the people what they want.” Incidentally, something Lee tells Joker they should do. And it seems Gaga has taken Lee’s advice, even while in the process of shaking the “disease” that role turned out to be for her.