How Lady Gaga Inspired Bruno Mars to Keep ‘Die With a Smile’ Alive
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This year, “Die With a Smile” featuring Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars dominated the Billboard Hot 100, securing the top spot for five consecutive weeks and earning a Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. Remarkably, the song nearly went unreleased.
In an interview with Variety published on December 4, producers James Fauntleroy and Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II revealed that after they initially composed parts of the track three years ago, Mars abandoned the project—until he discovered that Gaga would star alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie a Deux, prompting him to revive the forgotten ballad.
“He was such a genius for pulling that out of the back of his subconscious memory because of the timing of that movie, which is also how Lady Gaga came into his mind as a collaborator,” Fauntleroy told the publication.
The creative team initially envisioned “Die With a Smile” as a potential fit for the movie or for Gaga’s accompanying concept album, Harlequin. However, it ultimately found its place on her Billboard 200-topping album Mayhem. “When we found out that wasn’t gonna be a thing, he had already kind of started the ball rolling, because the power of Bruno compels you,” Fauntleroy noted.
Gaga expressed her admiration for “Die With a Smile” as soon as she heard it. “I knew she could play the piano, but watching her actually sit down like a musician and learn the chords, so much so that she actually asked for a pen and paper and wrote the chords down … This is unheard of,” Fauntleroy remarked to Variety. “She learned the f–king song, dude, right there. And they were performing, singing it together. And that’s when I should have known it was going to be something special.”
In addition to its success on the Hot 100, “Die With a Smile” astonishingly spent 18 weeks at the top of the Billboard Global 200. Gaga is now in contention for several Grammy awards, including Album of the Year for Mayhem.
However, in a 2024 interview with Billboard, producer Andrew Watt—who also contributed to the track—revealed that commercial success was not the motivating factor for Gaga and Mars when they entered the studio together. “This was a pure, organic thing that both these artists who respect each other so much wanted to do together,” Watt explained. “This was about the love of making great music.”
Reflecting on a surprise performance of the duet at Mars’ concert in Los Angeles that August, Watt noted, “It was this wow factor of ‘Holy crap, [they’re] like the Avengers of music.’”
