Songfacts®:

• In "Disease," Lady Gaga plays the part of a temptress preying on her lover with a promise to cure their metaphorical disease and lay them down in ecstasy. This Lady has bad intentions and is very dangerous because she knows where her target is vulnerable and is willing to exploit that.
  
  The song isn't about what it sounds like on the surface: It's actually a very personal song where Gaga's dark side is trying to seduce her better self. "That song is so deliberately about somebody that wants to harm you - and it being you," she explained to Rolling Stone.
• This isn't Gaga's first musical house call. Little Monsters will remember 2017's "The Cure," where she declared herself a sort of love-bound remedy, singing:
  
  Promise I'll always be there
  Promise I'll be the cure
  
  With "Disease," she's revisiting that same devotion.
• Lady Gaga transmitted "Disease" in October 2024 as the first single from her album Mayhem, which came out five months later. The song is reminiscent of her early, game-changing hits from the late 2000s and early 2010s; there was chatter comparing it to 2009's "Bad Romance," where she proclaimed:
  
  I want your ugly
  I want your disease
• Gaga created the chopped-and-screwed pop production with Andrew Watt (Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa) and Henry "Cirkut" Bell (Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Ava Max).
  
  The same trio also wrote the song with one less established name: Michael Polansky, Gaga's romantic partner, a financier by trade. In a cover interview with Vogue magazine, Gaga revealed that Polansky had shaped her musical direction of her upcoming album by telling her plainly: "Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music."
  
  Polansky added, "Like anyone would do for the person they love, I encouraged her to lean in to the joy of it. On the Chromatica tour, I saw a fire in her; I wanted to help her keep that alive all the time and just start making music that made her happy."
• The "Disease" music video, directed by Tanu Muino (Lil Nas X, Harry Styles, Dua Lipa), introduced the character "Mistress of Mayhem," which represents the dark, egotistical side of Gaga's personality. Fittingly, she wears black. Throughout the video, she tries to destroy the authentic Gaga dressed in white.
  
  These characters formed the storyline when Gaga toured for the album on her Mayhem Ball tour. As in the video, they would battle it out throughout each show.
• Gaga's Bruno Mars collaboration "Die With A Smile" was still on the charts when "Disease" was released in October 2024. "Disease" and the next Mayhem single, "Abracadabra," didn't put up huge numbers in part because "Die With A Smile" wouldn't, well die. It hung around the charts for over a year took up space on lots of playlists, which limited Gaga's more daring Mayhem tracks.
• The song was released in 2024 soon after Joker: Folie à Deux, which Gaga starred in as Harley Quinn, hit theaters. The film was ravaged by theatergoers and critics, which left a mark on Gaga and informed the video for "Disease." She told Rolling Stone: "There was a ton of negativity around Joker, and I think I was feeling artistically rebellious at the time."