Executive Editor, Music

After a week of teasers, the wait is over: Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars' duet, “Die With a Smile,” dropped Thursday night, and it's every bit as big a song as you'd expect from the mega tag team.

While the look for the video is '70s country, the song itself is a soulful ballad in the style of Mars' 2021 Soul Sonic project: soaring vocals, a big chorus, softly strummed guitars, and a towering climax in the final refrain. He takes the first verse and Gaga the second, and from there the two play off each other's powerful vocals.

The video, however, is styled more like a '70s Nashville TV performance, with all the players wearing matching light blue suits with red shirts — Gaga's hair is piled up in a Dolly Parton-style pile, while Mars wears a white cowboy hat and strums a gorgeous vintage hollow-core electric guitar. She sings the final verse with a cigarette between her teeth, and the clips end with the couple inside an animated heart.