Rob Fusari teams with William Paterson University students to launch new single

by JAY LUSTIG
Rob Fusari will perform his new single "Don't Let Love Down" and other songs at the Cutting Room in New York, April 27.

Rob Fusari will perform his new single “Don’t Let Love Down” and other songs at the Cutting Room in New York, April 27.

Lady Gaga’s former producer Rob Fusari has resurrected an outtake from her 2008 album The Fame, and recorded it on his own. He’ll celebrate the release of the song, “Don’t Let Love Down” — which he and Gaga co-wrote — at the Cutting Room in New York, April 27, with backing by five students attending William Paterson University in Wayne: Bobby Mahoney, Cole Mozelesky, Ashley Overa, Maria Cassenti and Yasmin Azhir.

WPU students are also helping to publicize the show, which will raise money for a WPU scholarship fund. Fusari is a WPU alumnus as well as a Livingston native.

In an hour-long interview with Evan Toth on Toth’s wfdu.fm “Garden State Sound” show (you can listen to it below), Fusari said “Don’t Let Love Down” came from early sessions for Gaga’s debut album The Fame, during which Gaga was recording in a Beatlesque rock vein. It was 2006, and she had not even adopted the Gaga name yet, but was still known as Stefani Germanotta; she and Fusari were working together in Parsippany.

When she finally broke through to a mass audience, as Lady Gaga, in 2008, it was with a more pop- and dance-oriented sound.

“Don’t Let Love Down” was “in this early body of work that myself and Gaga did, that basically got, I don’t want to say the term ‘pushed aside,’ but they did,” Fusari told Toth. “At the end of the day, they didn’t live, these little guys. They got put onto the shelf.

“I used to love some of these tunes, man … and I wanted to sing it out of pure enjoyment.”

Fusari is a singer and multi-instrumentalist, and has writing and producing credits on hits such Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious” and “No, No, No” and Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West,” in addition to Gaga material such as “Paparazzi” and “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich.”

The single release show takes place at the Cutting Room in New York, April 27 at 9 p.m., and will feature Beatles covers as well as Fusari-written songs. Visit thecuttingroomnyc.com.

You can listen to Fusari’s interview with Toth, and watch Fusari’s video for “Don’t Let Love Down,” here:

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