Lady Gaga's Release of "The Cure" Proves She Does Nothing Low Key

Lady Gaga surprised the world earlier this month when she casually dropped a new single "The Cure" just in time for her headlining stint at Coachella, the summer, and for anyone deep in withdrawal for something new from Gaga. While her October 2016 release Joanne found Gaga toying around with a country-tinged pop sound, "The Cure" lands the pop star back in familiar party-ready territory.

The track's undeniable flirty dance vibe makes it the perfect one-off release to gift fans with before temperatures heat up. And according to DJ White Shadow, a longtime Gaga collaborator who co-wrote and executive produced the track, that's only part of the reason why the song got released. "After it kind of got produced out, we listened to it and everybody was like, 'We got to get this thing out into the universe.'"

"Unlike other records we've kind of done together, we were just having fun just sitting around and trying to catch a vibe and wrote stuff that was upbeat and cool and positive," he recently told the Daily Dish. "There's so much terrible stuff going on in the world right now, it's like when you're a creative person you do your best to try and combat evil with creative stuff, so that was kind of the vibe."

The track, which was produced by Detroit City, Gaga, and Monson, was created in L.A. as the team was working on some other music before Gaga's upcoming commitments, including the filming of A Star Is Born, kicked off. "[It was like], 'You have a couple free hours, let's meet up over here and hang out and see what we come up with,'" White Shadow recalled. "We've been kind of hanging out and goofing around before she had to go shoot scenes for a movie and do Coachella. So she had a little bit of time, so we were just hanging out doing fun stuff, making music."

From there, "The Cure" came into existence. And while Gaga was only six or so months out from the release of her previous record, it seemed as good a time as any to give fans even more jams. "I don't have a direct answer from her perspective [about why she released it now], but the broad stroke answer is that I think that the song needed to be heard like now," he said. "This is a very positive song and the message is really good and the world needs a good message right now, so let's do it."

And Gaga certainly gave the track a pretty major debut during her first weekend headlining Coachella because, let's face it — she does almost nothing low key. "I mean I thought it was cool. It looked pretty cool to me. It's not every day you get to play in front of 100,000 people, so it was pretty cool," he said of the splashy premiere. "I think that's what makes her awesome: the effortlessness of go big or go home with her is pretty incredible."

While fans may be wondering why Gaga veered back into some familiar dance pop territory, White Shadow explained it like so: "I said something to somebody the other day when we were discussing this, I was like, 'I have a bunch of different sets of clothes in my closet. Some days I might wear a suit, some days I might wear a pair of sweatpants. There's still the same person wearing the clothes.' So it's like all of this. Joanne's a great record... we weren't sitting there like, 'Oh, we need to make a song for the summertime and put it out this weekend.' Everybody was in agreement, it was very dope."

With Gaga's Coachella commitment wrapped, fans will be able to see her play live again when she kicks off the Joanne World Tour on August 1 in Vancouver. White Shadow has worked with Gaga on her tours in the past, so will they resurrect that relationship again this time around? "Maybe," he teased. "If I'm lucky, I guess."