Kevin Parker played a small but crucial role in the composition of Lady Gaga’s new album, and now it seems the dizzying heights of such a project have left the Tame Impala frontman chasing the dragon, explaining that Gaga is but one of many big-name collaborations in the works.
Speaking with DIY about his involvement in Gaga’s track Perfect Illusion, Parker explains that partner-in-crime Mark Ronson’s approval was all he needed to commit to pop collabs and now that he has buddied up with the pop world’s Big Wigs, it seems like his demand is skyrocketing.
“There’s definitely a few other things coming up,” Parker says. “You don’t have to be switched on to realise that if I do this, and then this happens… it’s just the way the music world works, you know? So there’s going to be other things happening.”
Parker falls just short of naming names, instead suggesting that right now, naming names would “be ruining it”, but that’s what they say when they’re working on something really, really juice, y’know?
Perfect Illusion began as a demo from Parker, and was later fleshed out by the trio of him, Gaga and Ronson. But now we have some interesting new tidbits about how such a clash of the music titans came about. As Parker explains:
“Mark was telling me he was gonna work on the Lady Gaga album, and just asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. So obviously I did! It was so left field for me, but because it was Mark I had no hesitation in just diving in headfirst. There was no fear, I knew the project was in good hands with Mark. So yeah, it just went from there. Luckily it wasn’t a room full of people, it was just Gaga and Mark.”
Despite laying claim to an ever-growing back catalogue with plenty of healthy collaborations peppered throughout, Parker says he found himself experiencing a “first” while working with Gaga on the lyrics for Perfect Illusion.
“She is now the first person I’ve ever written lyrics with,” he says. “It was getting towards the end of the day, we were deep in that zone, writing lyrics for Perfect Illusion, and I suddenly realised it was the first time. Gaga commented that I was easy to work with lyrically, we’d bounce ideas off each other really well, and I was like, ‘Y’know this is actually the first time I’ve written lyrics with another person!’”
Gaga’s new album Joanne was released last month, and has so far resulted in what would have to be one of the weirdest pop beefs of the year so far.
Watch: Lady Gaga – ‘Perfect Illusion’
