Lana Del Rey had quite the 2021 year. She released two albums in the span of seven months with the first being March 2021’s Chemtrails Over The Country Club and the second being October 2021’s Blue Banisters. Between the two albums, Chemtrails Over The Country Club was the better-performing project as it peaked at No. 2 on the albums chart. Both albums are in Del Rey’s past now, and as of late she seems very focused on crafting her upcoming ninth album, which she spoke about during a recent interview with the fashion magazine W.
During the sit-down, Del Rey revealed that she’s been practicing “meditative automatic singing, where I don’t filter anything” as she sings into the Voice Notes app on her phone. “It’s not perfect, obviously,” she said. “There are pauses, and I stumble.” She added that she’s been sending “really raw-sounding files” to producer and songwriter Drew Erickson, who she worked with on Blue Banisters. “He’ll add an orchestra beneath the words, matching each syllable with music and adding reverb to my voice,” Del Rey said. When speaking about the music they’ve created, Del Rey noted that while her 2015 album Honeymoon featured references to color, her new music contained “none of that at all.”
“It’s more just like: I’m angry. The songs are very conversational,” Del Rey said. “For the first song, I pressed record and sang, ‘When I look back, tracing fingertips over plastic bags, I think I wish I could extrapolate some small intention or maybe get your attention for a minute or two.’” She continued, “It’s a very wordy album. So there’s no room for color. It’s almost like I’m typing in my mind.”
It remains to be seen when Del Rey will release this “angry” and “conversational” music. Until then, you can enjoy her most recent release, “Watercolor Eyes,” which was heard in an episode of HBO’s Euphoria.
You can read Del Rey’s full interview with W here.