A couple days ago, Lady Gaga teased something new related to Joanne, her latest album, on Twitter, and now we know what she’s talking about. Today, she’s shared a new stripped down piano version of the album’s title track, “Joanne (Where Do You Think You’re Goin’?).”
She also shared a video for the new recording, and it begins by displaying the text, “Joanne was my father’s sister who died at the age of 19 from the auto-immune disease lupus. My father was only 15 when she passed away.” From there, she belts out the emotional ballad, and there are at least a couple teary moments between the colorful outdoorsy clips and black-and-white performance footage.
Gaga previously told Zane Lowe how inspirational Joanne is to the album and to her personally, saying that her strength has helped make her a more tough and complete person:
“When Mark [Ronson] and I wrote it, the decision to name the album that was in tribute to my father’s sister who died when she was 19. He was younger than her. She was very sick with lupus. The death of her in his family and life left a scar that never healed. As I returned to my home life and spending time with my friends and family and getting out of the mainstream limelight for a minute, the experiences of our family and our challenges that make us who we are. It’s everything about Joanne, which also happens to be my middle name (I was named after her). It’s all the toughness of the pain of losing her that made us all strong and made us who we are. She is the woman of my past who is becoming and helping me bring more of my honest woman self into the future.”
Watch the video for the “Joanne (Where Do You Think You’re Goin’?)” piano version above.
