Lady Gaga Details New Album ‘Joanne’

Lady Gaga will release her new album, Joanne, October 21st via Streamline/Interscope.

The pop star announced the LP during an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1, during which she said she was still in the studio and hoped to have the follow-up to 2013’s Artpop finished in the next 48 hours.

Gaga also said that Joanne was named for her late aunt, whose death from lupus at age 19 left a lasting wound on the singer’s father’s family (Gaga’s middle name is also Joanne). Gaga called the album’s title track “the true heart and soul of the record” and of the album as a whole added, “As I returned to my home life and spending time with my friends and family and getting out of the mainstream limelight for a minute, the experiences of our family and our challenges that make us who we are. It’s everything about Joanne … it’s all the toughness of the pain of losing her that made us all strong and made us who we are. She is the woman of my past who is becoming and helping me bring more of my honest woman self into the future.”

The singer also detailed a few tracks on Joanne, including one song called “John Wayne” that features Josh Homme on guitar and explores “my incessant need to run after wild men and somehow I get bored of the same old John.” Meanwhile, “Sinner’s Prayer” features Father John Misty and Gaga said, “This song is about singing to a man just telling him, ‘Look I just don’t want to break the heart of any other man but you, but I know that I’m a sinner.'” Gaga also teased some Bollywood influences on Joanne, as well as country music, noting the contributions from Nashville songwriter Hillary Lindsey (“Girl Crush,” “Jesus Take the Wheel”).

Last week, Lady Gaga released the first single from Joanne, “Perfect Illusion,” which she co-produced with Mark Ronson, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and BloodPop (formerly known as Blood Diamonds). While Joanne marks Lady Gaga’s first solo album since Artpop, it also follows her 2014 duet album with Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek. Gaga has primarily been flexing her acting chops between music projects; she won a Golden Globe for her performance in American Horror Story.