‘Perfect Illusion': Lady Gaga Kicks Off Her New Era, Announces Video Premiere
Update, 9/16: Lady Gaga and Ryan Murphy's fruitful partnership continues, as the "Perfect Illusion" video will premiere during the Scream Queens premiere on September 20!
Why Scream Queens and not American Horror Story, you might be wondering? The answer is likely two words — network TV, meaning more eyeballs than can access FX.
Watch a "Perfect Illusion" video preview, which looks like...well, Coachella, below.
Paws up, Little Monsters. Mother's back — and she's ready to rock.
Nearly eight years to the day after making her disco stick-wielding electro-pop debut with The Fame, three years after her last solo studio album, the Reverse Warholian Experience known as ARTPOP and two years after her jazzy side project with Tony Bennett, Cheek To Cheek, Lady Gaga returns to the pop sphere at last today (September 9) with the start of something new.
"Perfect Illusion," co-written and produced alongside BloodPop, Tame Impala's Kevin Parker and Mark Ronson is the first taste of Gaga's upcoming fifth studio album (code name: #LG5), and a rock-rooted reintroduction for a superstar who's been absent from Top 40 radio for the past few years.
"Perfect Illusion" is "a big rock song that makes you want to dance," BloodPop teased in the days leading up to the song's release. "They started at noon and wrote into the night. Every few days, a lyric would change and it would get better and better."
"I don't need eyes to see / I felt you touchin' me / High like amphetamine / Maybe you're just a dream," she sings. "It wasn't love / It was a perfect illusion."
The accompanying music video was shot in the desert outside LA and styled by longtime collaborator Brandon Maxwell, according to Page Six.
Listen to "Perfect Illusion" above.
Podcast: A Deep-Dive Into "Perfect Illusion"