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Inside the Revival of Gaga and Bruno Mars’ Shelved Demo That Became 2025’s Top Global Song

Mars revived the forgotten idea after hearing of Gaga’s Joker casting, sparking a rapid studio session that shaped the duet.

Overview

  • New reporting this week from Variety, Billboard and others details how a nearly abandoned Bruno Mars demo resurfaced after he learned Lady Gaga would star in Joker: Folie à Deux.
  • In early 2024 at Mars’ Malibu studio, Gaga went straight to the piano, wrote out the chords, and she and Mars built verses live with James Fauntleroy, D’Mile and Andrew Watt.
  • The team initially considered a tie-in with the film or Gaga’s companion project Harlequin, but the finished track ultimately appeared on her Mayhem album via Interscope.
  • Since its August 2024 release, the duet spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, 18 weeks atop the Global 200, and became the fastest song to hit 1 billion Spotify streams.
  • Spotify named it 2025’s top global song with more than 1.7 billion streams, and it won the Grammy for best pop duo/group performance.