All 7 of Lady Gaga’s lead singles ranked, including brand new track ‘Disease’
All 7 of Lady Gaga’s lead singles ranked, from “Just Dance” to “Disease”. (YouTube/Lady Gaga)
In honour of the release of “Disease”, the lead single from Lady Gaga’s upcoming ‘LG7’ album, we rank all seven of the pop icon’s lead singles to date.
Pop stars release singles all the time, but when Lady Gaga releases one – particularly one opening up a brand new era – it feels like an event not be missed, like a solar eclipse or the Olympics.
Over the years, she’s managed to maintain such mystique over what her new era will bring (despite several of her lead singles leaking prior to their release) that the lead up period feels magical in a way few music stars have been able to replicate.
This is a woman who has dabbled in straight-up pop excellence, then avant-garde freak-pop, then low-fi stadium rock, then German-inspired Euro House, and then pop excellence again. You’re never quite sure what’s on offer, and it’s exciting.
Add in the pop culture lore that seems to cling to all of Gaga’s lead releases – Madonna comparisons, pandemic woes, intense chart battles, decade-defining music videos – and it’s not tricky to understand why Mother Monster is still, after 16 years, one of the industry’s most untouchable stars.
Here are Gaga’s seven lead singles, including LG7’s first single “Disease”, ranked from great to greatest.
7. “Stupid Love” (2020)
Gaga’s first foray into Max Martin’s pop music empire (he co-wrote the song) is by no means bad. In fact, following on from 2016’s stripped-back soft-rock effort Joanne and her mammoth success with 2018’s A Star Is Born crowdpleaser “Shallow”, “Stupid Love” was a welcome return to the vibrant, sledgehammer dance-pop of her early career.
Yet the circumstances that surround it – a leaker posting it online a month before its release, a somewhat-lacking music video filmed on an iPhone, 2020-related pandemonium preventing it from being promoted live, it being followed up by the far superior “Rain On Me” – dim this otherwise neon-tinged slab of pop foolishness.
6. “Perfect Illusion” (2016)
In being one of Gaga’s most understated singles, “Perfect Illusion” also manages to be one of her most left-field, as she made the decision to move away from the trippy electro-pop bombast of Artpop and embrace simple, stadium pop-rock.
It signalled a shift of gear in Gaga’s career, as she did away with the eccentricities that had defined her to-date, welcomed in a stream of new, straight-laced collaborators including Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and Mark Ronson, and attempted to prove herself as more than a meat dress-laden gimmick. There were patchy results, but “Perfect Illusion” had just enough high drama to keep the train on the tracks.
5. “Just Dance” (2008)
The singer who released a song about just wanting to dance is virtually unrecognisable from the star who would go onto sneer about killing someone and leaving their body on Santa Monica’s Highway 10. That said, “Just Dance” was the hit that managed to launch Gaga to superstardom status literally overnight, and came to define the late noughties’ era of dance-pop debauchery. Not bad for a song apparently written in ten minutes.
In the 16-plus(!) years since “Just Dance” hit the iTunes store, Gaga’s creative output has become exceptionally more outlandish, then more muted, then more outlandish again, than any of us could’ve predicted on the back of her debut smash. Yet those stilted opening synths remain an unquestionable part of her legacy, as is that half psychotic, sick hypnotic breakdown towards the end.
4. “Disease” (2024)
Gaga is at her very best when she’s dark and delirious; think “Heavy Metal Lover” and “Monster”. Thankfully, new track “Disease” is her most macabre lead offering since 2009’s “Bad Romance. Thematically it’s the sordid sister to 2017’s offshoot single “The Cure”, but whereas that song is all pillowy production and feathered vocals, “Disease” is an out-and-out headbanger styled with Gaga’s screams.
It features some of Gaga’s most interesting collaborators to date, with her fiancé Michael Polansky – who encouraged her to go back to her roots for her upcoming record – listed as a co-writer, and Cirkut and Andrew Watt on production duties. Watt has worked across the board, teaming up with the likes of Miley Cyrus, Charli XCX, The Rolling Stones and Ozzy Osbourne, which is fitting, as “Disease” plays like a feverish love child of all four; all blistering electric guitar and propulsive EDM.
Sure, it’s not her biggest lyrical masterpiece – “If you were a sinner, I could make you believe, lay you down like one, two, three,” – but it’s the balls-to-the-wall return to form fans have been waiting for.
3. “Born This Way” (2011)
“Born This Way” has all the subtlety of arriving at the Grammy Awards in an egg, but it’s all the better for it. Where “Just Dance” was Gaga’s proclamation that she could be a pop star, “Born This Way” was her declaration of the type of pop star she wanted to be: one with a point of view and a soapbox to stand on. It worked too, considering the song was labelled the the most “inspirational” LGBTQ+ song of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023.
The song’s message – being gay is OK! – is a simple one (unsurprisingly so, given it’s another Gaga hit bashed out in 10 minutes), but the song itself is like a rainbow-coloured onion; made up of layers, surprisingly complex, and infinitely interesting. From the reverberating hum of the first line, “It doesn’t matter if you love him, or capital H-I-M”, to the cacophony of synths buzzing around that anthemic chorus, to the hand clap-backed rap about being trans and Lebanese, “Born This Way” is weird, wonderful, and a forever Pride classic.
2. “Applause” (2013)
The entirety of the Artpop era can be summarised in the first 30 seconds of its lead single: frenetic, almost entirely unrelatable, but a hell of a lot of fun. Ironically written about her need for fan approval, “Applause” spearheaded what would become a definitive yet depressing period in her career, where applause for the star softened into a slow clap. The single was pitted against Katy Perry’s “Roar” in a chart battle, and ultimately lost, while the subsequent rollout of Artpop was marred by music videos and spin-off albums that never materialised, a collaboration with a notorious abuser, and endless comparisons to Gaga’s previous work.
That said, “Applause” is quintessential Gaga: inherently camp yet cool, cheesy yet slick. With a little help from Gaga’s frequent collaborator at the time, DJ White Shadow, “Applause” jitters forward through bizarre eurodance verses into a modern glam-rock pre-chorus, before the chorus – the most raucous in Gaga’s catalogue – explodes in your ears. We’ll probably never know what “I guess sir, if you say so, some of us just like to read,” really means, but we don’t need to, either.
1. “Bad Romance” (2009)
A pop star’s sophomore album is a volatile thing at the best of times, but particularly when said pop star’s debut has catapulted them into an arena alongside Madonna, Britney, Beyoncé and Rihanna. Instead of trying to replicate the crispy synths and starry-eyed excess that characterised The Fame and led to her ascension, Gaga decided to upend it all, and whack her career on dark mode.
The result was “Bad Romance”, the most audacious pop single of the noughties. Opening with the unmistakeable “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh…” the beginning of “Bad Romance” sounds like a call to arms, or a pop deity to-be rising from underneath the weight of the expectations put upon her.
From then on, it’s all gothic histrionics, growling vocals, and gleefully twisted lyrics about craving a romance at its most warped. Gaga groans, whispers and howls her way through pleas for love that is ugly, sick, diseased – a fairly accurate description of the kind of relationship that her level of fame brings. Gaga’s OG producer RedOne matches her frenzied energy with a concoction that layers haunting metronome over fist-pumping club beats and searing synths, and it’s all topped off with a dollop of French. Oh, and an Alexander McQueen tribute via spoken word bridge. Oh, and Gaga’s most trademarkable line to-date: “I’m a free b***ch, baby!”
On second albums, pop stars are often encouraged to keep colouring within the lines. But with “Bad Romance”, Gaga tore the page out the book, set it on fire, and danced in the ashes.
“Disease” is streaming now.
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