Lady Gaga has recorded a music album featuring legendary pop singer Tony Bennett, despite his illness, Variety reports.
The new release will continue their collaboration on the album Cheek to Cheek, which was released in 2014 and had great success. The release is scheduled for spring 2021.
When he and Lady Gaga began recording a new album at Electric Lady Studios in New York in 2018, Bennett already had obvious symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, which he was diagnosed with back in 2016, which his assistants carefully tried to hide.
Work on the record continued until early 2020, and Lady Gaga encouraged Bennett as much as she could.
According to the newspaper AARP, video recordings of some working moments have been preserved. They showed that Bennett spoke very rarely and sometimes seemed lost and confused. The singer clearly understood his condition, so she said short and simple phrases (this is how experts recommend communicating with patients with Alzheimer’s disease).
“Cheek to Cheek” peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 chart almost immediately after its release in November 2014. For Bennett, it was the second record – “number one” – in three years. In 2011, his album “Duets II” for the first time in the life of the then 85-year-old author, topped the chart. The singer became the oldest living artist to top the Billboard rankings.
In total, Bennett won 18 Grammy Awards, and in 1995 he was named “best album of the year” by MTV Unplugged.
