"Lady Gaga renewed her illuminati contract and she is about to give us the best music."

Last week, Lady Gaga announced she would be postponing the release of her highly anticipated upcoming album Chromatica, due to the unfolding coronavirus crisis around the world.

It was due to be released April 10, but now has been shifted to an unknown date later in the year.

Perhaps as a way to ease fans’ disappointment, this morning the singer shared the album artwork — shot by Norbert Schoerner, fashion direction by Nicola Formichetti — across the socials, and it is predictably wild.

Gone are the muted Joanne tones and the pink cowboy hat — instead they’ve been replaced by industrial alien/robot vibes, with Gaga sprawled across a grate above pink light. It’s like Blade Runner if it was turned into a pop album. See it below:

View this post on Instagram #Chromatica ⚔️💓 2020 A post shared by Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) on Apr 5, 2020 at 2:00pm PDT

Needless to say, fans lost their collective shit, and it didn’t take long for them to begin scrutinising the artwork to pull out the sneakiest details. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest ones.

For starters, there’s the symbol of Chromatica, which is built into the grate she’s strewn across. The symbol, according to Gaga in an interview with Beats 1’s Zane Lowe, is a mathematical symbol for sound.

“It’s from what all sound is made from, and, for me, sound is what healed me in my life period, and it healed me again making this record, and that is really what Chromatica is all about,” she told Lowe.

“It’s about healing and it’s about bravery as well and it’s really like, when we talk about love I think it’s so important to include the fact that it requires a ton of bravery to love someone.”

Then there’s Gaga’s pose on, which some have pointed out looks quite similar to an image of Satan. Which is a reach, but sure:

Lady Gaga renewed her illuminati contract and she is about to give us the best music #chromatica pic.twitter.com/6Ct8YwAbVe — 𝖒𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖉𝖆 (@melindammme) April 5, 2020

There’s also the recurring theme of the ‘tribes’, which Gaga introduced to us in the ‘Stupid Love’ video.

Each tribe — there are eight of them — has its own symbol and colour. Eagle-eyed fans found the symbols in the upper right hand corner, the middle right panel, and the bottom left corner of the cover.

And you can also see some of the tribe colours hanging around the bottom of the image.

There’s also this curious green splatter on the land hand side, which some fans have posited could be a reference to her recent comments about earth being “cancelled”.

“I think what I’ve learned is that I can view the world in whatever way I choose to see it,” Gaga said. “It doesn’t mean that I’m deleting the bad things, it just means that I can reframe my life experiences and reframe the way that the world frames life experiences to a way that I love and believe in… that is Chromatica. I live on Chromatica, that is where I live. I went into my frame — I found Earth, I deleted it. Earth is cancelled. I live on Chromatica.”

There there’s the case of her shoes, which don’t appear to have any ethereal meaning, but are quite cool nonetheless.

The heels on her shoes are made from a carving knife and either a tusk or horn. pic.twitter.com/jSthawwLd0 — Nick it’s “lee” not “lay” Ley (@AlloftheNick) April 5, 2020

A fan pointed out that we’ve seen the knife shoes before:

The shoes 🔪 in december 2010 pic.twitter.com/ULLV7j0rWp — Jérémie avec un Y (@jayroyalbacon) April 5, 2020

And sure, maybe we all have too much time on our hands given we’re in isolation, but who cares? Chromatica will be out later this year, let’s hope it’s not delayed again.