Famous in fashion ever since dressing in an ensemble assembled from pieces of raw beef in 2010, New York singer and pianist Lady Gaga also wears a harlequin costume for her musical creations, perhaps not content with her status as dance-pop queen acquired with the phenomenal success of two of her first albums, The Fame (2008) and Born This Way (2011).
As a convincing partner to late crooner Tony Bennett (1926-2023), she thus earlier expressed her love for jazz in her following two albums (Cheek to Cheek in 2014 and Love for Sale in 2021), before triumphing on screen alongside filmmaker-actor Bradley Cooper with the country-pop adaptation of A Star Is Born in 2018.
As a result, the role of Harley Quinn, the music therapist so disturbed that she falls head over heels for the Joker, was a natural fit for her third appearance at the top of a movie poster. Lady Gaga so enjoyed playing the female character, who first appeared in DC Comics in the 1990s, that it inspired the Harlequin album, released on Friday, September 27, ahead of the Wednesday, October 2 theatrical release of Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie à deux.
This project - Joker face after "Poker Face" - is curious, to say the least, since it is not an original soundtrack, combining classic American songs with a score entrusted - as for the first part - to Icelandic composer and cellist Hildur Gudnadottir. It does, however, include tunes from the film, such as "That's Entertainment" (from Vincente Minnelli's Tous en scène), the delightful "Close to You," co-written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and popularized by The Carpenters in 1970, and Charles Chaplin's "Smile," performed here in a piano-bar version for chic restaurants.
If she isn't going to revolutionize the cover version, which is already saturating the pop market, Lady Gaga is more at home - from "Good Morning" and "Get Happy" onwards - in Judy Garland's repertoire than in that of Zizi Jeanmaire, whose "Mon truc en Plumes" she sang for the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on July 26. In the apparent continuity of albums with Tony Bennett, Harlequin nevertheless lacks a clear musical direction, hesitating between the expected big band New Orleans fanfare and the fervor escaped from a gospel temple with its Hammond organ. There are few surprises, apart from "Oh When The Saints" on a rockabilly rhythm, or "World on a String," a song written for the Cotton Club's opening night and revisited as a 1950s romance with a big guitar vibrato.
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