We’re continuing our countdown of the ten most-viewed scores on MuseScore for 2025, and #4 seems like a shoo-in. “Die With a Smile” features the star power of Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, who teamed up with hit producer Andrew Watt to bring their vision to life. The song was released as a standalone single on August 16th, 2024, before being added to Gaga’s 2025 studio album, “Mayhem.”
“Die With A Smile” became a viral hit and rose to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in January. It also made history on Spotify as the longest-running number one song at 201 days straight and the fastest to ever reach one billion streams, a feat the streaming platform called “legendary behavior.“
On Musescore, a lead sheet created by stect was viewed over 230,000 times, proving that the song is just as popular with musicians as it is with casual listeners. That may be because Gaga and Mars wrote the music for themselves rather than engineering it for the charts.
“This was a pure, organic thing that both these artists who respect each other so much wanted to do together,” Watt told Billboard. “This was about the love of making great music.”
“Die With A Smile” is a ballad in 6/8 time, which helps establish an easy flow. A big part of the magic comes from the harmony. The song is in the key of A, and the verses flow between the I chord (AMaj7) and the IV chord (DMaj7). This simple alternating pattern has more depth by including the major 7ths, making each chord sound dreamier and ethereal.
In a slick bit of songwriting, the pre-chorus reverses the progression to IV-I, turning your ear around and enhancing the floating feeling. A C#min7 and F# set up the chorus, which hops onto the circle of fifths: a ii-V followed by iii-vi-ii-V, and so on. Gaga called them “Lush, beautiful chords” in an interview with the LA Times. They also helped set up what she wanted to do with her vocal harmony line.
“I was at the piano when we were writing, and I was trying to really get in his head,” she said. “And then when I was singing, he took me through every intonation of how he heard it. I had some pretty strong views about the harmonies — I wanted them to be super ’70s.”
Gaga does so by harmonizing mostly a third above Mars’ line, expanding the range as the song goes on to build emotion. Of course, there’s more to it than the science of what note to play.
“When Gaga put her voice on top of Bruno’s, that’s the moment I remember… hearing their two voices together, you get lost in it,” Watt recalls from the recording session. “It was this wow factor of ‘Holy crap, [they’re] like the Avengers of music.'”
Add “Die With A Smile” to your repertoire with the sheet music arrangement by stect:
