The 94-year-old musician has been battling the disease for four years.
Tony Bennett's final album might be another collaboration with Lady Gaga. The 94-year-old musician's family announced on Monday that he's been battling Alzheimer's disease since 2016 in a profile for AARP The Magazine.
In the profile, it was revealed that Gaga and Bennett recorded a follow-up album to 2014's Cheek to Cheek between 2018 and 2020, while he was privately dealing with his diagnosis.
The follow-up album to Cheek to Cheek suffered several delays due to Gaga's jam-packed few years and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is due to be released in the spring and the knowledge that Bennett cannot participate in press for the album partly led to the family's decision to go public with his diagnosis.
“I wanted to check with her to make sure she was cool,” Bennett's son, Danny, said of asking Gaga about their decision to go public with his diagnosis, “because she watches his back all the time. She was like, ‘Absolutely, it's just another gift that he can give to the world.’“
Bennett's wife, Susan, also spoke about Gaga during a CBS This Morning interview, revealing that the GRAMMY winner knew about Bennett's diagnosis while they were recording the album.
She added that Bennett "most definitely" remembers his duet partner, saying, "Gaga is hard to forget."
The family noted that this could be Bennett's final album.
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