Little monsters rejoice. Lady Gaga announced on Apple Radio’s Beats 1 that new fifth album, Joanne, will be out Oct. 21.
Gaga, who released the collection’s first track “Perfect Illusion” last week, told Beats 1’s Zane Lowe that the album is “actually going to be done in the next 48 hours.” Gaga says she has been collaborating with producer Mark Ronson and tinkering on the final track and will “[spend] the last 48 hours meditating with it.”
Though Gaga has revealed few details about the album — see a detailed explainer on everything we know here — she’s already spoken about a few collaborators, Ronson, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, and Florence Welch. During her interview, she added another name to the list: Hillary Lindsey, who notably wrote Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush” and Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel.”
Gaga admits, “there’s definitely a bittersweetness to [finishing the album],” but acknowledges “this isn’t the end just the end of this moment. It’s also the beginning of this moment.”
The album is named after Gaga’s father’s late sister. “When Mark and I wrote it, the decision to name the album that was in tribute to my father’s sister who died when she was 19,” she said. “He was younger than her. She was very sick with lupus. The death of her in his family and life left a scar that never healed. 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, which also happens to be my middle name (i was named after her) 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.”
Hear Gaga’s full interview with Lowe.
Later in the day, Gaga debuted the album cover art.
