Lady Gaga is back with a new single, which features the help from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and Mark Ronson – an old friend. ‘Perfect Illusion’ is the first release from a long-awaited as-yet untitiled fifth album.

Gaga appeared on the Radio One Breakfast Show on Friday morning to unveil the song and talked about what it was like working with Mark Ronson and Kevin Parker. “Kevin flew to us from Australia and he came with this idea, that was the beginning of a song called Illusion. I work on a typewriter and we would bounce new lyrics back and forth”, she told the host Nick Grimshaw.

She also revealed on the show that ‘Perfect Illusion’ is about social media, and the “many fake things around, things that appear to be real”. “People feel pressured to live up to that perfect illusion in their real lives,” she said. “This is about accepting that and letting go. I’m not saying not to use your phone, I’m not that crazy. I think social media is great. But there’s also a lot of things that are on the internet that arent reality.”

“How do we navigate through social media? How do we look through these images that we know are filtered and altered, and decipher what is reality and what is a perfect illusion? There are also a lot of things on the internet that are not reality. And I think people are pressured to keep that personal illusion going on in their real lives.

“So this song is about raging against it and letting it go. It’s about wanting people to re-establish that human connection.”

This song is the first that Gaga has released since 2013, with her Artpop album. Meanwhile, she has won a Golden Globe for her acting performance in ‘American Horror Story: Hotel’, released an album with Tony Bennett and was nominated for an Oscar for ‘Til It Happens To You’, which is from the documentary ‘The Hunting Ground’.

In an interview with Triple J, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker said that his collaboration with Lady Gaga “started out sort of like a career move,” and claimed that working with Gaga was amazing … one of those life/career-defining moments”

The reviews for ‘Perfect Illusion’ have been mostly positive, with Billboard magazine calling it a “banger”, and E! describing it as “equal parts rock anthem and dance floor mega hit.”

A video has not yet been released for the song, but the song is available to stream and download.