Everything’s coming up Gaga! This summer La Lady released her Chromatica Ball film, performed at the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony, announced her engagement via her press agent the Prime Minister of France, and will soon be premiering Joker: Folie à Deux at the Venice Film Festival. And all that while weightlifting an 8-carat diamond ring! But in the background of all these moments has been the drip drip drip of info about when we’ll get her next album. It wasn’t lost on Little Monsters when Mother bleached her eyebrows, signaling the hour was near. Now this musical/follicle update: Gaga debuted brunette hair (but the eyebrows are still bleached!) this week, seen out and about town and on Instagram. Not only that, but a post on Tuesday showed the newly-brunette Lady at the piano clad in a Bruno Mars t-shirt. Needless to say, these seismic events whetted fans’ appetites even more for LG7.

The pop icon stepped out for a romantic evening with her fiance, entrepreneur Michael Polansky, at Soho House in Malibu on Aug. 13, but it wasn’t her massive engagement ring that stole the show. For the dinner outing, she sported a look that stood in stark contrast to her signature style.

Instead of her blonde locks, Gaga rocked brunette hair that fell past her shoulders. The “Shallow” singer, 38, rounded out the darker ‘do by wearing large dark sunglasses, a short sleeve black top, black shorts and sheer black tights.

…The A Star Is Born actress first debuted her new hair in an Aug. 13 Instagram post, pairing her dark locks with a Bruno Mars T-shirt during a music session. In the video, she played a few chords while sitting at a white piano before flashing a peace sign with her hand.

While Gaga has recently been sharing more evidence of herself in the recording studio, some seemed to think her latest clip hinted at something more.

Many fans speculated that the post revealing her brunette hair was also a taste of an upcoming collaboration between Gaga and Bruno Mars, thanks to her T-shirt depicting the “Locked Out of Heaven” singer.

“She made sure we saw the shirt,” one user noted, while another commented, “Oh we’re so ready for that collab.” A third said, “I SEE YOU BRUNO. Omg can’t wait.”

[From E! Online]

So I was all done drafting my thoughts along the lines of, “Come on, she’s just wearing a t-shirt. There’s no coded message, this isn’t Taylor Swift,” when Gaga officially announced that she and Bruno Mars were indeed dropping new music, “Die With A Smile,” in a post captioned “While you wait till LG7,” and showed Gaga and Bruno in outfits best described as technicolor country. There’s no confirmation (as of this writing) whether the song is for Joker 2, but The Hollywood Reporter did get statements from both artists:

Rumors regarding a Gaga-Mars collab have circled the internet for several days, and the two singers confirmed the news with a post on social media earlier Thursday

In her announcement, Gaga said the song was for fans “while you wait for LG7,” her hotly anticipated new album which does not yet have a release date…

“Bruno and I have a lot of mutual respect for each other and were talking about collaborating,” Gaga said in a press release. “I was finishing up my own album in Malibu and one night after a long day he asked me to come to his studio to hear something he was working on. It was around midnight when I got there and I was blown away when I heard what he had started making. We stayed up all night and finished writing and recording the song. Bruno’s talent is beyond explanation. His musicianship and vision is next level. There’s no one like him.”

Mars added, “Getting to work with Gaga has been an honor. She’s an icon and she makes this song magical. I’m so excited for everyone to hear it.”

[From THR]

The song and music video for “Die With A Smile” are out now — I liked them both a lot! Despite the gettups, the song is not all that country, but more a rollicking, dreamy ballad equal measures sweet and wistful. Thematically I’d buy that it’s for Joker 2, so we’ll see. And I can’t help it, I love how Gaga goes all in with the quirky, weirdo vibe in her styling. Although I must note — her wig in the video is not brunette! Does that not matter, in hair-color-to-music-release prognostications? Is it merely the act of changing up the hair that signals music to come? A rubric would be very helpful here, s’all I’m sayin’. Like, eyebrows mean a single is about to drop, hair color for an album, and curliness of hair (or lack thereof) can speak to a genre of pop, rock, jazz, etc. Just because we’re rock stars doesn’t mean we can’t have some systems of organization.