‘I Wasn’t Done With Her’: How Lady Gaga Channeled Harley Quinn on Her New Album

When Lady Gaga wrapped her third movie — the upcoming Joker sequel, Folie à Deux — she realized she wasn’t ready to move on from her character, Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, a.k.a. Harley Quinn. “I had such a deep relationship with Lee,” she tells Rolling Stone. “And when I was done filming the movie, I wasn’t done with her.”

With the help of her fiancé, Michael Polansky, the superstar recorded Harlequin, a companion record to the film that mostly contains sparkling renditions of standards — her first time doing so since the death of her collaborator Tony Bennett. Over 13 tracks, she interprets classics that include “Get Happy” (made famous by Judy Garland) and “That’s Life” (Frank Sinatra) while putting a modern spin on them. Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s 1932 song “I’ve Got the World on a String” is transformed into a seductive rocker — ideal for introducing it to younger generations. On a Zoom call from London, Gaga spoke to us about Harlequin, defying genres, and what fans can expect on her upcoming pop album.

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What were your goals going in to this album?
We decided we wanted to create an album that celebrated her complexity through the lens of a lot of the music in the film, as well as originals, that would touch on the breadth of her as a woman — her darkness, her chaos, her vibrancy, her manic nature — and create a modern take on vintage pop.

You describe the album as “LG 6.5.” Do you view this more as a Harley album, or solely a Gaga record?
I view this as both, actually. That’s kind of the way that I see all of this. It is my record. It’s a Lady Gaga record, but it’s also inspired by my character and my vision of what a woman can be. It’s why the album does not adhere to one genre. I called it “6.5” because it’s not my next studio album that’s a pop record, but it is somewhere in between, and it’s blurring the lines of pop music. As you know, my collaborator Tony Bennett, who’s no longer alive, was young singing this music. It was just pop music. And I thought it was so interesting, the songs that were chosen to create this film. I wanted to explore what this music could mean today through the lens of her.
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You described Joker as meta-modern, and how you can’t really pin it down to one genre. That’s how I see this album, too. Jazz is at the forefront, but there’s so many different sounds.
Thank you. I would say that that meta-modernism actually played a real role in how we approached this in the studio. I co-produced this album with Ben Rice. Michael also had a very heavy hand in the music. We talked a lot about her being somebody that you can’t clarify, because she is too unpredictable and rare. [We] used genre as a way to express that something is rare — by not adhering to one and going heavily into the avant-garde. I’m basically saying, “As a woman, I choose to be whatever and whoever I want to be at any given moment, no matter how I feel. And no matter what you want from me, I will be myself. Thank you. Love, Harlequin” [laughs].

You basically had to unlearn singing and tone down your technique while shooting the film. What about here? Were you just being Gaga and not holding back?
I did both on this record. There’s moments where I definitely tap into Lee’s voice and her childlike immaturity with song. She has this naivete. You imagine that she heard the song two times and she’s humming by herself, because she’s uncomfortable and wants to soothe herself. That made it in there. For example, the opening of “That’s Entertainment” almost sounds like a 13-year-old at a school play. In the context of a 38-year-old woman, it’s kind of unsettling. But then, “That’s Entertainment” launches into a much softer vocal that is extremely nostalgic. And I worked on that as well.

Vocally, I played with using my voice in a way that I also didn’t use ever with Tony. So this was a bit of Lee’s voice, and a new voice for me with some of the more jazz-inspired records. And then exploring — how would I sing over surf punk? How would I sing over a waltz? How could we create a version of “Smile” that feels inherent to the film? And then with “Happy Mistake,” there’s this raw fragility that’s totally Gaga, but it’s also maybe me singing on a record in a way that I never have before. So I would say that for as genre-defying as the album is, the vocal is, too. The vocal’s kind of schizophrenic, but that makes sense for Harley Quinn. And that was part of the joy of making it — the freedom of it all.

This your first time recording standards without Tony. Was he in your mind at all? I’m sure it was emotional.
Yeah. This was my first time without Tony, and it wasn’t emotional probably in the way you’re thinking. It wasn’t sad. It was actually like he was with us all the time. And also, in a funny way, if I had put rock & roll chords over production in a record that I did with Tony years ago, I don’t know how he would’ve felt about that. Tony didn’t love rock & roll. But he would’ve said, “Wow, that’s amazing.” He was somebody who loved how risk-taking and different I am, and I always thought that was so cool. He was 60 years older than me, and he would flinch less than young people that I would meet. People that would be like, “Why is she dressed that way? Why is she singing that way? Why is her stage performance so theatrical?” Tony, he just never even flinched. He was just a really compassionate, inclusive person. So he was definitely with us [in the studio], but he was mostly inside of me.

As a female producer and singer, I feel that I’ve earned my ability to show my way around this music. And that was exciting for me, because that’s also something I love to share with young people that are listening to these songs. Some of these songs are from the Thirties. It’s nice to be able to show how these things can be reimagined beyond just the notes and the style of the way they were written. Rather… what if you just tore up the book and lit it on fire and did it in a completely new way? I wanted it to be fun.

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The record will be really nice to hear at home. I want to make a beautiful meal to it.
I always say, Michael and I are [here] for all your crazy dinner parties.

Your pop album arrives in February. Can you tell me how it’s different than Chromatica, and what can fans expect?
The pop album is nothing like Chromatica. It’s a completely different record. I don’t know that I’m even ready to talk about it yet, but I recognize that it’s coming out soon, and I will. What I would say is, it’s all for me. It’s meant to be ingested as a time in my life. And I’m also really excited about this idea that I don’t have to adhere to an era if I don’t want to. I can have a few going at once. That feels unhinged [laughs] and more like me or Harley. Or whoever.