Welcome back, Mother Monster. Lady Gaga just released the music video for “Disease,” the lead single off her upcoming album LG7, that channeled the twisted, dark pop spirit of her The Fame Monster days like never before.
The macabre visual opens with a barely-recognizable Gaga, wearing a leather gimp mask and dagger-like nails, sitting behind the driver’s seat of an old-fashioned car. Almost as if “Telephone” had a very, very gothic makeover.
The camera quickly pans to another Gaga confronting the masked version of herself from the car’s windshield. “I think a lot about the relationship I have with my own inner demons,” Gaga said of the inspiration behind the video. “It’s never been easy for me to face how I get seduced by chaos and turmoil. It makes me feel claustrophobic.”
Gaga continues to battle with her demons as the one woman show progresses. Two Gagas—one blonde, one with black hair—are seen fighting and rolling around on the streets of a picturesque suburb. Towards the end of the video, the gimp figure is revealed to be Gaga (not like we couldn’t tell) and she begins to cough up some sort of black tar as another Gaga is sprawled on the street below her. They dramatically embrace each other before Gaga manically dances about to finish the video.
The cinematic, almost theater-like experience is reminiscent of Gaga’s The Fame Monster era and videos like “Alejandro” and “Bad Romance.” It’s an energy that will most certainly culminate in Gaga’s seventh studio album which, per rumors, is a return to the artist’s dance-heavy, dark pop sound.
“‘Disease’ is about facing that fear, facing myself and my inner darkness, and realizing that sometimes I can’t win or escape the parts of myself that scare me,” Gaga wrote on Instagram. “That I can try and run from them but they are still part of me and I can run and run but eventually I’ll meet that part of myself again, even if only for a moment.”
She continued “Dancing, morphing, running, purging. Again and again, back with myself. This integration is ultimately beautiful to me because it’s mine and I’ve learned to handle it. I am the conductor of my own symphony. I am every actor in the plays that are my art and my life. No matter how scary the question, the answers are inside of me.”
