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Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s hit duet “Die With A Smile” came out back in the middle of 2024, but it’s still dominating the world: Spotify revealed their year-end stats a couple days ago and the track was the most-played song globally in 2025. For years, though, the unfinished track just sat among other Mars drafts.
In a Variety feature about the song published yesterday (December 4), James Fauntleroy, one of the song’s co-writers, said:
“He was such a genius for pulling that out of the back of his subconscious memory because of the timing of that movie, which is also how Lady Gaga came into his mind as a collaborator. Then when we found out that wasn’t gonna be a thing, he had already kind of started the ball rolling because the power of Bruno compels you.”
“That movie” is Joker: Folie a Deux; As Variety notes, Mars first wrote parts of the song three years ago before putting it on the back burner. Once he learned that Gaga would star in the film, Mars thought the track could be a good fit for either that or Gaga’s accompanying Harlequin album.
Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II, a co-writer and co-producer on the song, spoke about the song’s journey to its final form, saying, “We had a second version that felt closer to what it ended up being. […] Once we got to it, [Mars] laid the guitar down. I laid the bass down. We just got going, and then once we got it to a place, we really laid it down.”
Read the full feature here.
