Lady Gaga – Die With A Smile

Finished between midnight and morning in Los Angeles

On 16 August 2024, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars released Die With A Smile on Interscope. It runs 4 minutes and 11 seconds. It was a single on its own. Mars had started the song in 2021 with Dernst Emile II, known as D’Mile, and the writer James Fauntleroy. Three years later he played it to Gaga. They finished the writing and the recording the same night, at Mars’s studio, Shampoo Press & Curl, in Los Angeles. The finished song is credited to Gaga, Mars, D’Mile, Andrew Watt and Fauntleroy. Gaga, Mars, D’Mile and Watt produced it. Watt played lead guitar. D’Mile played bass and drums. Gaga played piano. Mars played guitar. Mars and Daniel Ramos directed the video, which came out the same day.

Gaga said she was in Malibu, finishing her own album, when Mars asked her over after a long day. She arrived around midnight. They wrote the second verse together and recorded until morning. Mars guided her vocal toward the sound he already had in mind. She said they wanted the harmonies to feel like the 1970s, and that they were thinking of Carole King and James Taylor singing together. The chorus is the two of them on the same line: if the world was ending, they would want to be next to each other. They trade the verses. The pace is slow. Piano and guitar carry it. There is no rap section and no dance break.

The night before the release, 15 August 2024, they sang it live for the first time at Mars’s show at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. The video puts them in light blue western suits against a blue curtain. Mars plays a red electric guitar. Gaga sits at an electric piano. Another musician stands behind them with a second guitar. They had shared a stage before, at a Victoria’s Secret show in 2016. This was their first duet on a record.