Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars go on tour through Nashville in the video “Die With a Smile”

After a week of anticipation, the wait is over: The duet “Die With a Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars was released on Thursday evening and is just as great a song as you would expect from this mega tag team.

While the video is '70s country-style, the song itself is a soulful ballad in the vein of Mars' 2021 Soul Sonic project – soaring vocals, a big chorus, gently plucked guitars, and a sky-high climax in the final chorus. He takes the first verse and Gaga the second, and from there the two play off each other with their powerful vocals.

The video, however, is styled more like a '70s Nashville TV performance, with all the cast in matching light blue suits with red shirts – Gaga's hair is up in a Dolly Parton-style pile, while Mars wears a white cowboy hat and strums a beautiful vintage hollow-body electric guitar. She delivers the final verse with a cigarette between her teeth, and the clip ends with the couple in an animated heart.

According to the press release, the song actually started with Mars. Gaga said, “Bruno and I have a lot of mutual respect and talked about collaborating. I was finishing up my own album in Malibu and one night after a long day he asked me to come to his studio to listen to something he was working on. It was about midnight when I got there and I was blown away when I heard what he had started doing. We stayed up all night and finished writing and recording the song. Bruno's talent is indescribable. His musicianship and vision are on a whole new level. There is no one like him.”

Mars added: “It was an honor to work with Gaga. She is an icon and brings magic to this song. I'm so excited for everyone to hear it.”

The song was co-produced by the artists with 2021 Grammy-winning Producer of the Year Andrew Watt (Post Malone, Elton John, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, the Rolling Stones' latest album) and D'Mile (who also co-produced and co-wrote most of the Silk Sonic album as well as HER's “I Can't Breathe”); Watt also played lead guitar and D'Mile played bass and drums. Gaga, Mars, D'Mile and Watt co-wrote the song with James Fauntleroy (Mars, Rihanna, Frank Ocean, Beyonce, SZA, Kendrick Lamar and many others).

Gaga, of course, stars in the upcoming comic musical “Joker: Folie À Deux,” in which she sings but “is unlike anything I've ever done before,” she said in a recent interview with Empire. The Grammy and Oscar winner stars in the film alongside Joaquin Phoenix Lee, a reimagining of Harley Quinn.

The new song featuring Mars doesn't seem to have anything to do with the movie, although the title does fit the Joker theme.