Snippets of Lady Gaga’s new album Joanne have been shared online after fans “tricked” Amazon’s virtual assistant into playing preview clips.
Previews can commonly be heard on Amazon when an album is available for pre-order, but they had been disabled for Gaga’s highly-anticipated comeback.
Owners of Amazon’s Echo speaker then discovered they could access songs by issuing the instruction: “Play Joanne by Lady Gaga.”
Amazon declined to comment to the BBC.
The 30-second clips have been recorded and shared online by several fans, with one video showing Amazon’s speaker lighting up and responding to the voice commands.
Among the leaked songs are Hey Girl, in which Gaga duets with Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine over a stomping, staccato piano line reminiscent of Elton Johns’s Benny and the Jets.
Just Another Day is a country ballad about the star’s break-up with fiance Taylor Kinney, in which she sings: “We both know I could learn a thing or two about relaxing.”
Lady Gaga has been previewing the new album in a tour of American “dive bars”Gaga has opted for a “live” feel throughout, rejecting the synthesized beats of her earlier albums for a combination of rootsy Americana and power pop.
The lyrics also seem to be more personal and emotive than the high-concept self-empowerment anthems of Born This Way and The Fame Monster.
Joanne is officially released on 21 October. Like her father’s New York City restaurant, it is named after Gaga’s aunt Joanne Germanotta, who passed away from Lupus in 1974 at the age of 19.
“This record was about me trying to understand my father, and his grief,” she said in a statement announcing the album last month.
“It’s also a record about me trying to understand myself and wondering where I’m going next in life. Because truly, the thing that I’m searching for the most is to feel connected to humanity, to feel connected as a person. So Joanne is like, you know, Lady Gaga if you erase all the fame.”
The star has already unveiled several songs from the album, including the single Perfect Illusion and the heartbreaking ballad Million Reasons, online.
Others were debuted live on a “dive bar” tour of Nashville this week.
The BBC understands the “leaks” were isolated to the US, and the loophole has now been closed.
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Source: BBC