“I wondered if we took some of the electric guitar energy that’s on the pop version and stripped it back, would I find another level to the song?” Lady Gaga guitarist Tim Stewart shines as the pop icon unveils a Suhr-fueled take on her recent single

(Left-Right) Tim Stewart and Lady Gaga performs on stage during The Chromatica Ball Summer Stadium Tour at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on July 29, 2022 in London, England
(Image credit: Samir Hussein/Getty Images for Live Nation)

Last month, Lady Gaga released Disease – a track that harks back to her dark pop and synth-pop roots, reminiscent of early albums The Fame, Born This Way and Artpop. But in true Gaga fashion, she didn’t stop there; she has now unveiled a guitar-led version of the song.

“After I spent some time on the production for The Antidote Live – which was built around me at the piano – I started thinking about how I may go even deeper,” Gaga tells Vogue.

“Since the chorus of Disease was written at the piano, that version was in some parts really delicate and almost somber. So, something I always try to do when I’m singing a song again is to go deeper, and I wondered if we took some of the electric guitar energy that’s on the pop version and stripped it back – would I find another level to the song? And I did.”

The guitar version, dubbed The Poison Live, features her longtime guitarist Tim Stewart playing a Suhr Classic JM in an Olympic White finish.

Lady Gaga - Disease (The Poison Live) - YouTube Lady Gaga - Disease (The Poison Live) - YouTube
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“With the electric guitar, there’s a sense of fun that I found in the torture of the lyrics, and some of Tim’s choices with the chord inversions gave it a sense of ‘hurt,’ and I thought that was really interesting and something I hadn’t discovered before,” she continues.

Stewart has been a mainstay of Lady Gaga’s band and even played at her 2017 Super Bowl halftime show – an experience he described as one of the most memorable of his career.

“There’s no way I can fully describe the feeling you have on that stadium stage,” he said in a 2020 Guitar World interview.

“You’ve got everybody around you, and you’re being beamed out to a billion people around the world. It’s thrilling, humbling, scary, crazy - you’re like, ‘This can’t possibly be happening, right? This must be a dream.’”

Lady Gaga recently collaborated with Bruno Mars on the Andrew Watt-produced Die with a Smile, which has topped the Billboard Global 200 chart for eight weeks, making it the year’s longest-reigning song.

Janelle Borg

Janelle is a staff writer at GuitarWorld.com. After a long stint in classical music, Janelle discovered the joys of playing guitar in dingy venues at the age of 13 and has never looked back. Janelle has written extensively about the intersection of music and technology, and how this is shaping the future of the music industry. She also had the pleasure of interviewing Dream Wife, K.Flay, Yīn Yīn, and Black Honey, among others. When she's not writing, you'll find her creating layers of delicious audio lasagna with her art-rock/psych-punk band ĠENN.