Lady Gaga Announces October Release Date For Special Guest-Stacked New Album "Joanne"

Save the date?

It's been a week since Lady Gaga shared her new single “Perfect Illusion” (and her unique pronunciation of the word “laaaahve”). Finally comes confirmation that it’ll live (or “liiiiiihve”) on Gaga’s next studio album, titled Joanne and set for release on October 21.

Now, if you’re assuming the record has been named after Joanne Froggatt, the English actress who plays Anna in Downton Abbey, you would be way off. (Why would you even think that?)

According to an interview Gaga conducted on Beats 1, Joanne is the name of her late aunt, a poet and painter (and, apparently, one of her biggest inspirations, despite dying twelve years before her birth). It’s also one of Gaga’s (real) middle names: Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

She shared the album art on social media.

According to Billboard, Joanne will feature collaborations with Beck, Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine, Father John Misty and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. That festival-friendly line-up follows in the footsteps of the slightly (and we mean slightly) rockier sound of the Tame Impala-powered “Perfect Illusion” (not to mention its accompanying imagery of a mosh-pitting Gaga).

If you start now, you can listen to it approximately 16,800 times in a row before Joanne is officially released. Get cracking.