In a pleasantly surprising move, Lady Gaga revealed this week that she would release a Harley Quinn-themed concept album to accompany the imminent opening of Joker: Folie à Deux.

The album, titled Harlequin, is out on the streaming services now. It was known that Gaga was working on a new musical something to precede her seventh full studio album, but it wasn’t clear until this week what it was. (Although, knowing that Lady Gaga plays “Lee Quinzel” in a Joker film full of musical numbers, it’s not like it was completely out of the blue.)

Harlequin is mainly comprised of American songbook standards and some stage/movie musical rarities, with several interspersed original Gaga compositions. For the familiar standards like “Smile,” “That’s Entertainment,” “That’s Life,” Gaga favors big band arrangements in the vein of her recent Las Vegas residency concerts, which were titled simply Jazz and Piano. I went to see the show at the Park MGM in June, and found it a first-rate set. Her enthusiasm for the material is infectious, and her own hits, e.g. “Poker Face,” adapt winningly to a stripped-down arrangement. 

(The tracklist doesn’t include Gaga’s recent collaboration with Bruno Mars, “Die With A Smile,” which seems by title and subject matter to fit right into the Joker ethos. I guess that was one of those stays-in-Vegas concoctions.)

There are a few tracks from what I consider truly obscure musicals, including “The Joker” from 1964’s The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd… which, I gather, is featured in the upcoming film. I’m not familiar with how the songs are incorporated into the film narrative (outside of reading NOC colleague Mike’s review) but I guess we’ll all see soon enough.

The new songs on Harlequin are “Folie à Deux” and “Happy Mistake.” “Folie à Deux” is a gentle sad waltz that somewhat evokes “La Vie En Rose.” It sounds like a clown’s dream, with looping carousel instrumentation, and Gaga very much sells it with her powerful-yet-fragile vocals. “Happy Mistake” sounds more intended to be the pop chart hit, an enigmatic ballad that inhabits a relatable but recognizably Harley Quinn-ish mindstate. Moody guitar sets up Gaga’s trademark shouty part, entwined with a graceful, haunted melody. “How’d I get so addicted,” she asks, “To the love of the whole world?”

The enticing fusion of massive pop star presence to highly-anticipated comic-book movie recalls Kendrick Lamar’s Black Panther album, and, further back, Madonna’s Dick Tracy concept album I’m Breathless and Prince’s 1989 Batman soundtrack (featuring, among other gems, the immortal Batdance.) Harley Quinn is a character deeply rooted in music: In her very first incarnation, in Batman: The Animated Series of the 1990s, the red-and-black-suited Harley famously took the stage to sing the 1940s chestnut “Say That We’re Sweethearts Again” (in Ab, for those keeping track) and much later but in same classic costume, Blondie’s “Hanging on the Telephone.”

At the risk of incanting a pop song folie à deux, I’ve some personal experience with Harley Quinn-intensive pop songs with my music group 12 Valentines. So I may be a bit biased to applaud Lady Gaga’s effort here. She’s in very fine voice through the whole collection, and seems to be having a ball. So while I may quibble with aspects of the Joker movies on the whole, I’d get happy from hearing her sing in the Harley-esque persona all day.

Why, indeed, so serious?