Slate: Why Gaga & Bruno Needed Each Other For #1

[RAMROD 111,828]

Throughout chart history, there’s a special breed of duet by two recording artists so illustrious I can abbreviate each name with a mononym, and you know who I’m talking about and probably even the song. In many cases, you might even start singing the chorus from memory—from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” to Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine.” On paper, each duet is a summit of superstars, with both artists contributing a roughly equal measure of fame and lung power to the equation.

But the reality is often subtler than that—career-wise, each superstar needed something from the other. Often, one act is a bit thirstier than the other. When you encounter one of these mega-duets, you should ask yourself, Who needed this more?

Which brings us to this week’s Hot 100, and our new No. 1 song—actually a months-old song. The first chart-topper of 2025 is a power ballad that arrived in the late summer of ’24 on a wave of hype, seemed destined to peter out, and yet proved stickier than expected. Like many of the duets above—both the classics and the curios—it’s an event more than a mere song, a testament to the persistence of a pair of stars entering middle age. These two, in fact, scored their first hits during Obama’s first term and are topping the charts once again just in time for Trump 2.0. So … mononym fans, I give you: Bruno and Gaga.

“Die With a Smile,” the first-ever collaboration between Peter Gene Hernandez, aka Bruno Mars, and Stefani Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga, takes over the Hot 100 as the annual onslaught of Christmas music recedes. The first full week of January always brings about the evaporation of Mariah Carey’s and Brenda Lee’s holiday perennials, at which time whatever nonseasonal song is closest to the penthouse takes up residence there. That could just as easily have been Shaboozey’s record-tying “A Bar Song (Tipsy),”or any one of the hit tracks from Kendrick Lamar’s still-fairly-new album GNX. But over the holidays, Bruno and Gaga’s 5-month-old ditty quietly held its own, hovering just below all the merry-season fodder. This week, as the Christmas songs melt away, it soars from No. 17 to No. 1, having emerged as radio’s consensus hit over the holiday season.

As uninspiring as that sounds, “consensus hit” really is the best way to describe “Die With a Smile.” It’s not an innovative song—nothing that will set any novelty-seeking pop fan’s heart aflutter. It’s a decent piece of craftsmanship by a pair of veterans and their respective song doctors. Both Mars and Gaga have produced better hits before. Hell, they’ve each generated better duets before—among my personal favorites are Mars teaming up with Cardi B on his “Finesse” remix (No. 3, 2018) and with Anderson .Paak on the Silk Sonic smash “Leave the Door Open” (No. 1, 2021), and Gaga teaming with, among her many vocal partners, Beyoncé on “Telephone” (No. 3, 2010) and, famously, actor-director Bradley Cooper on “Shallow” (No. 1, 2019). But “Die With a Smile” turned out to be a grower—a song that was instantly familiar on first listen, easy to forget in its early weeks, and ultimately comfort food as we made our way past Election Day and the holidays. It is soothing pablum as we worry about our future and watch the world burn. Especially considering that this song was recorded in Malibu, the line, “If the world was ending, I’d wanna be next to you” sounds queasily apt this week in particular.

Musically, “Die With a Smile” distills sounds both artists have pursued before—his brand of loverman pop-and-B crossed with her variety of baby-grand balladry. (There’s a slight whiff of country in there, but more on that in a moment.) Mars and Gaga have both always been magpies, absorbing styles as part of their chart conquest. And these two have been at the pop game long enough that it’s hard to say there’s any one “Bruno sound” or “Gaga sound”; you’re not going to find any of her art-damaged dance pop à la “Poker Face” or “Bad Romance” in here, nor does he traffic in the ’80s style-jacking of “Locked Out of Heaven” or “Uptown Funk!” By 21st-century songwriting standards—modern pop hits can have a dozen or more collaborators—the two kept their circle relatively tight. Mars leaned on his frequent collaborators Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II and James Fauntleroy, and Gaga brought in journeyman rock producer Andrew Watt, who was working on her forthcoming album. Together, the five of them crafted a song that’s painfully earnest, really quite square.

If I had to assign a percentage (much the way you can tell when a Lennon-McCartney song is more John or more Paul), I’d say Mars had the upper hand. “Smile” comes closer to Bruno’s brand of retro-R&B—if he’d recorded it with Anderson .Paak and made it 25 percent more ’70s-plush, it could easily have been issued as a Silk Sonic record. But with Gaga on board, the song is less winky and more heart-on-sleeve, recalling the piano ballads she’s sprinkled throughout her career, like “Speechless” or “Million Reasons.” On the whole, “Die With a Smile” is what you get when two kitschy performers try to turn down the kitsch.

Another country duo Mars and Gaga may be invoking, however indirectly, is Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, one of the legendary pairings I cited above. (Gaga’s hair, in particular—in both the video and on the single’s cover art—is definitely giving Dolly.) Back in 1983, when Rogers and Parton recorded the Bee Gees–penned smash “Islands in the Stream,” they were entering middle age—Kenny was 44 at the time, Dolly 37—and trying to reignite their pop-crossover careers. Both remained galactically famous but had veered back toward the country charts after dalliances with pop at the turn of the ’80s. Weirdly, Rogers and Parton had never duetted on a record before—they’d only ever sung together on a Parton TV variety show in 1976—and both happened to be in neighboring studios in ’83 when producer Barry Gibb suggested that Parton sing on Rogers’ single. “Islands” was a happy bit of happenstance, and they would work together countless times in the years after “Islands.”

Mars and Gaga are at a roughly analogous life juncture and similarly trying to give their careers some giddy up after a decade and a half apiece of hitmaking. Like Kenny and Dolly, they had only crossed paths on a variety special, singing at a Victoria’s Secret fashion showcase in 2016. They admired each other’s work and even traded off residencies in Las Vegas, where they pledged to perform together. Both were coming off relatively fallow periods on the charts: Mars hadn’t cracked the Top 40 in about three years, Gaga more than four. Joining forces in the studio last summer was a career-rejuvenating insurance policy for both of them.

The stakes seem higher for Lady Gaga. Arguably, she needs this more than Mars does. Not only is she weeks away from releasing a new album—and has promised that “Die with a Smile” will be on it, ensuring it will come preloaded with a No. 1 hit—she is also trying to clear off the stink of a couple of recent projects. These include her much-hyped movie role in the Joker musical sequel Folie à Deux, an instantly notorious flop; and the companion album Harlequin, a jazzy pseudo-soundtrack “inspired by” Joker 2 that spent just one week on the Billboard 200 album chart last fall at No. 20 before plummeting. As Katy Perry learned the hard way last year, the pop audience can be unforgiving to women in their late 30s, particularly those who, like Perry or Gaga, give off try-hard energy. Reverting to what worked in the past is no guarantee—in November, Gaga released her new solo single, “Disease,” a return to the buzzing electropop sound of her cybernetic Born This Way–ARTPOP era. The song was musically deft and critically acclaimed, but audiences collectively shrugged: “Disease” debuted and peaked at No. 27 on the Hot 100 and is already out of the Top 40. It was supposed to be the new Gaga album’s first single but has effectively been replaced by “Die with a Smile,” a Bruno Mars side project that has taken on outsize importance in Gaga’s comeback.

For Mars, meanwhile, the stakes seem considerably less precipitous. As I chronicled on a 2023 Hit Parade podcast episode about his career, Bruno is remarkably nimble shapeshifter whom audiences seem to welcome back even after yearslong breaks.

If you need further evidence that Bruno is not only bulletproof but can bring back any retro style and make it a hit, just scan this week’s Hot 100, where he is not only No. 1 with Lady Gaga but also cracking the Top Five in another duet with K-pop superstar Rosé, of girl group Blackpink. Their teamup “APT.”—an Anglicization of the Korean term apateu and a play on the English abbreviation for apartment—is a reboot of vintage Toni Basil with a soupçon of ’00s indie-pop à la the Ting Tings. The duet already made history in the fall when it debuted on the Hot 100 at No. 8, instantly making Rosé the first K-pop female soloist to crack the U.S. Top 10. Bruno really can get anyone a hit.

Pop careers were never really meant to last this long—decades ago, we accepted that the Beatles, Bee Gees, Prince, and Madonna would do their prime hitmaking for about a decade, then slow their roll in the years that followed. (What just happened to Katy Perry is closer to the norm.) But if there’s one theme that’s run through the biggest music careers of the 21st century, it’s that once we have invested in a name-brand mononym, from Beyoncé to Drake to Taylor, we’re willing to follow them through decades of pop byways and genre dabbling. And if two of those mononyms want to join forces on one über-single? Well, then … as Bruno and Gaga might say, nobody’s promised tomorrow, but the party’s not over.

https://slate.com/culture/2025/01/bruno-mars-lady-gaga-die-with-a-smile-apt-billboard.html#

[emili0 1,507]

[Mr S 8,778]

The title is nice.... But the rest of reads like a polite version of what the haters have been saying

[Bradley 59,690]

3 minutes ago, Mr S said:

The title is nice.... But the rest of reads like a polite version of what the haters have been saying

Tbf it's not wrong.

[RAMROD 111,828]

3 minutes ago, Mr S said:

The title is nice.... But the rest of reads like a polite version of what the haters have been saying

Indeed is. 

[buzzkill 5,157]

Did an OGH wrote this? Lol i dont love the song but this article is something else

[Jill 30,488]

I think given all of these facts, Gaga should stick to jazz or pop jazz for the rest of her musical career, often doing some American Songbook albums or maybe Broadway re-recordings like Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand, who were very succesful in that regard.

[SpadesToStart 3,626]

Critic gives Gaga a compliment without it being a backhanded one - Challenge Level: Impossible 

[Bronco 14,707]

5 minutes ago, Mr S said:

The title is nice.... But the rest of reads like a polite version of what the haters have been saying

Agreed. Its conclusion is bizarre though.

Paragraphs of "Bruno & Gaga are old and needed a hit before their career died".

Conclusion "old singers in the 21st century don't have fall off windows"

And like saying we expect singers to only be successful for a decade like Madonna? Sorry what? Madonna who after 40 years just did her biggest ever attended concert?

 

[PoshLife 17,005]

It's an interesting article, a bit hard on Gaga but not dishonestly so.

I disagree with the headline, though (that they needed each other) - I think it's fairer to say that, in terms of getting a #1 hit, Gaga probably needed Bruno. The proof isn't only in Disease's disappointing chart performance, but also in the fact that Rose's solo singles have been performing poorly as well. Bruno is the common factor here. I think that in both cases the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so it's not that I'm not giving Gaga or Rose any credit, but I think it's pretty clear whose star power is more responsible for Apt and DWAS becoming hits.

[Mr S 8,778]

9 minutes ago, Bradley said:

Tbf it's not wrong.

Maybe not, but you won't see articles like this about Beyonce for example who, if anyone remembers, had her collab era in the late 2010s.

[bionic 50,107]

7 minutes ago, Jill said:

I think given all of these facts, Gaga should stick to jazz or pop jazz for the rest of her musical career, often doing some American Songbook albums or maybe Broadway re-recordings like Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand, who were very succesful in that regard.

I agree. I would also suggest that she should remove her pop/dance albums from streaming/sale to reduce the risk of people coming for jazz, finding the pop and leaving. The customer is always right and Gaga should make it easy for them to access the music they wanat

Edited January 12 by bionic

[Jill 30,488]

Just now, bionic said:

I agree. I would also suggest that she should remove her pop/dance albums from streaming/sale to reduce the risk of people coming for jazz, finding the pop and leaving. 

I'm just talking about alternatives given that she likes doing that and it seems to me that pop comes with a lot of pressure for success. The way this article completely negates Harlequin, which is an amazing album, is unbelievable. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't be mad.

[Monstermilo 5,156]

gaga and bruno could get solo number ones if they tried and released a super undeniable song of their own, but blending the two fan bases is smart and clearly paid off. 

idc if gaga needs collabs to get number one hits cuz she has nothing to prove, shes one of the best out there and if anything she should be the top female considering her level of talent, so no i dont mind her using collabs to chart well

[tyler k 5,330]

1 hour ago, RAMROD said:

As Katy Perry learned the hard way last year, the pop audience can be unforgiving to women in their late 30s, particularly those who, like Perry or Gaga, give off try-hard energy.

genuinely hate this comparison