Lady Gaga's new album release date and how she's changed since 'Artpop'

Gaga has announced that a new album, 'Joanne,' will be debuting later this year. Since 2013's 'Artpop,' Gaga has released a standards album with Tony Bennett, among other work, and critics hear a different sound on her new song 'Perfect Illusion,' too.

A new album from Lady Gaga will arrive this October and will be the singer's first album since the 2013 work "Artpop," with the two works separated by a length of time that has seen various unusual developments in Ms. Gaga's career. 

The new album, "Joanne," will debut on Oct. 21. Gaga's recent song "Perfect Illusion" will reportedly appear on the album.

"Artpop," which was Gaga’s fourth album, was the lowest-selling of the singer's career. 

In between her two album releases, Gaga recorded another album, but it was a departure from her previous sound, with the singer teaming up with Tony Bennett to record a covers album, "Cheek to Cheek," that included tracks such as the title tune, "Anything Goes," and "I Can't Give You Anything but Love." 

A 2015 Oscars appearance at which she performed a medley of songs from the film "The Sound of Music" impressed many. Gaga was then praised for her work on the song "Til It Happens To You," which accompanied the campus rape documentary "The Hunting Ground."

Gaga discussed these various collaborations when she was selected by Billboard as woman of the year at the end of 2015 as well as the changes in her career. 

"It speaks volumes to me that I'm being recognized as Woman of the Year in 2015," she said at the time. "This is the year I did what I wanted instead of trying to keep up with what I thought everyone else wanted from me." 

Since then, "Illusion" has been seen by some as a change in direction for Gaga as well. Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic wrote of the new song, "She's played with ’70s and ’80s analogue music tropes before, but mostly on the deeper cuts of the strange gonzo odyssey that was 2011's 'Born This Way,' and rarely without the armor of irony that she has foregone here. Indeed, perhaps the one capitulation to current trends – and the biggest shift from her previous pop work – is simply in the earnest angst of the song."