Lana Del Rey announces next album: 'We're going country'
Lana Del Rey's 13-year journey from "Video Games" and "Summertime Sadness" to "Venice Beach" and "...a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd" is officially now leading her to Music City.
Del Ray made the following statement onstage on Jan. 31 while honoring her longtime producer, Jack Antonoff, at Billboard's Power 100 Party 2024 pre-Grammy event in Los Angeles.
"If you can't already tell by our award winners and our performers, the music business is going country. We're going country. It's happening. That's why Jack has followed me to Muscle Shoals, Nashville, Mississippi, over the last four years."
The album, tentatively entitled "Lasso," will be her fourth album in four years and her sixth audio project with Antonoff since 2018. The multiple-time Grammy winner's Nashville-related bona fides include work with The Chicks and Taylor Swift.
Her tenth studio album, "Lasso," could earn another top-10 appearance on the Billboard 200 albums chart, including two No. 1s (2014's Ultraviolence and 2017's Lust For Life).
September has been hinted to as the release month for Del Ray's latest.
What can we expect from Del Ray's first (of many?) country releases?
AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine has previously praised Del Rey's aesthetic-drenched pop for its "cinematic quality and exploration of tragic romance, glamour, and melancholia, with frequent references to contemporary pop culture and 1950s–70s Americana."
To wit, Del Ray — alongside Kacey Musgraves — another country-to-pop and back-again favorite, appeared during NBC's holiday season "Christmas at Graceland" special
About a Sept. 2023 appearance at suburban Nashville's FirstBank Amphitheater, The Tennessean noted Del Rey "waltzed onto the stage in a white flowing dress and cowboy boots," then, mid-show, stated the following:
"Even though we had Nikki Lane, my favorite singer, open here with all her amazing outlaw country, we still want to do one of my favorite standards, that's [Tammy Wynette's 1968 classic] 'Stand By Your Man.'"
Dating back to her foundational days as Lizzie Grant, she covered Skeeter Davis' 1962 hit "The End of the World" and Donna Fargo's 1972 classic "The Happiest Girl In The Whole U.S.A." Alongside "Stand By Your Man," recent years have seen Del Ray cover John Denver's 1974-released "Take Me Home, Country Roads."
In 2021 and 2022, Del Ray teased work on a country release.
She even made frequent trips to California's longtime country outpost of Bakersfield in regards to that work.
“I hope you guys like country music” — Lana Del Rey threatens new music is on the way on IG pic.twitter.com/OqffZYEx1L
— Lana Del Rey Online (@LanaDReyOnline) August 6, 2022
In a 2021 Contact Music feature, she noted that she had a "cover album of country songs" and a "collection of other folk songs" waiting to be released.
Moreover, she offered to MOJO magazine that she had re-listened to 2011's "Ride" and "Video Games" and realized they were likely more Americana and country-influenced.
"I mean, they're definitely not pop," she added.
Even back in 2021, she had a definite vision for the album — if a close follower of a particular variant of 2024 in country's mainstream, her notion sounds profound and prophetic.
"So let's see how these things come out — I'm not going to have pedal steel guitar on every single thing, but it is easy for me to write."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Lana Del Rey announces country album recorded in Nashville, Mississippi
