{"id":327682,"date":"2025-12-05T19:55:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T19:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/327682\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T19:55:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T19:55:15","slug":"bruno-mars-almost-scrapped-die-with-a-smile-until-learning-that-lady-gaga-was-starring-in-joker-folie-a-deux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/327682\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruno Mars almost scrapped ‘Die With A Smile’ until learning that Lady Gaga was starring in \u2018Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bruno Mars<\/a> was close to scrapping his hit Lady Gaga<\/a> collab \u2018Die With A Smile\u2019, but changed his mind after learning that she was working on Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux.<\/p>\n

Read More:\u00a0\u2018Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux\u2019 review: Lady Gaga shines in a provocative prison musical<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday (Thursday December 4), the track was named Spotify\u2019s top song globally for the year after garnering more than 1.7billion streams<\/a>, but, as Mars\u2019 collaborators told Variety<\/a>, it was relegated to the demos pile at one stage and close to being abandoned entirely.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d been working with James Fauntleroy (Beyonc\u00e9, Justin Timberlake) and Dernst \u201cD\u2019Mile\u201d Emile II (Mary J. Blige, Janet Jackson) on the beginnings of the song, which was all but scrapped until they learned of Gaga\u2019s role in the sequel to 2019\u2019s hugely successful\u00a0Joker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Released at the end of last year, Gaga starred alongside Joaquin Phoenix<\/a>, with Mars\u2019 logic being that the song was a good pitch for either that project or her accompanying \u2018Harlequin<\/a>\u2018 album.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was such a genius for pulling that out of the back of his subconscious memory because of the timing of that movie, which is also how Lady Gaga came into his mind as a collaborator,\u201d Fauntleroy said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThen when we found out that wasn\u2019t gonna be a thing, he had already kind of started the ball rolling because the power of Bruno compels you,\u201d Fauntleroy added.<\/p>\n

They later connecting with Andrew Watt, who was at the time working with Gaga on her sixth album \u2018Mayhem<\/a>\u2018. Mars invited them to all to come to his Malibu studio, where Gaga set about working on the song immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was like, \u2018Let\u2019s go to the piano,\u2019\u201d says Fauntleroy. \u201cI knew she could play the piano, but watching her actually sit down like a musician and learn the chords, so much so that she actually asked for a pen and paper and wrote the chords down\u2026 This is unheard of. She learned the fucking song, dude, right there.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they were performing, singing it together. And that\u2019s when I should have known it was going to be something special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking about the fast-paced nature of their work, Watt compared it to \u201csome Quincy-Michael shit,\u201d saying: \u201cBruno jumping in the booth, then her jumping in the booth and going back and forth. There was a point where we were all on guitars and she was on the piano. It was like being in Fleetwood Mac<\/a> or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gaga previously told the L.A. Times<\/a> the track felt like the \u201cmissing piece\u201d to \u2018Mayhem\u2019, and when asked if the track connected to Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux and companion album \u2018Harlequin<\/a>\u2019, replied: \u201cI don\u2019t think so. I mean, this was not meant to be for that. But that was happening in my life at the time we wrote it and made it, so it\u2019s hard to say no entirely because these things always ricochet off each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Mayhem\u2019 landed at Number 19 on NME\u2018s 50 Best Songs of 2025<\/a>: \u201cBefore releasing \u2018Mayhem\u2019, Lady Gaga expressed apprehension about returning to the sound her fans first fell in love with.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaturally, the record was a return to form so assured that all those anxieties dissolved, the self-doubt probed and ultimately drowned out by a flurry of edgy, theatric synth-pop bangers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruno Mars was close to scrapping his hit Lady Gaga collab \u2018Die With A Smile\u2019, but changed his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341,2742],"class_list":{"0":"post-327682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-pop"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}