Lana Del Rey is gearing up for the release of her studio album Chemtrails Over The Country Club. While the singer continues to be vague about the record’s release date, she recently chatted with her producer, Jack Antonoff, about the record for Interview Magazine. Throughout their conversation, Lana discussed some of the upcoming album’s themes, how she’s holding up in quarantine, and the time she went clubbing with Joan Baez.
Lana and Antonoff chatted on the phone while the singer was driving across the country, the perfect setting to discuss her Americana influences. At the start of the interview, Lana recalled the time she performed a duet with the iconic singer Joan Baez, saying they even went clubbing together afterwards:
“On the last tour, we went to Berkeley and I really wanted to do ‘Diamonds And Rust’ with Joan, and she was kind enough to accommodate me. Nobody necessarily wants to show up to do a giant show for 15,000 kids at Berkeley, but she told me that if I’d drive out 80 miles from Berkeley, then we could practice at her kitchen table, and if it was good, she would do it. So that’s what I did. She corrected me on all my harmonies, and by the end, it was great. Then we went out clubbing to this Afro-Caribbean two-step place and danced all night. She f*cking outlasted me.”
Speaking about her upcoming music, Lana said she had been “really stressed” about the album: “I’ve been really stressed about this album. From the top, we knew what Norman was. But with Chemtrails, it was like, ‘Is this new folk? Oh, god, are we going country?’ Now that it’s done I feel really good about it, and I think a defining moment for this album will be ‘White Dress/Waitress.’”
The singer continued to revealed a bit of the theme behind Chemtrails, saying she wrote the title track about striving to be normal: “I hear Chemtrails and I think “work,” but I also think of my stunning girlfriends, who so much of the album is about, and my beautiful siblings. ‘Chemtrails’ is the title track because it mentions them all and it mentions wanting so much to be normal and realizing that when you have an overactive, eccentric mind, a record like Chemtrails is just what you’re going to get.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Lana opened up about how the pandemic has been affecting her mental health:
“I’ll say, ‘Today was a bad day and it’s because of you, and I don’t even know you anymore.’ I don’t necessarily think there’s much value in doing that—it’s just what’s true. I don’t ever feel bad for saying to someone, ‘I’m having a panic attack because of what you’ve done.’ That’s black-belt life, like 3.0. What’s insane is that the pandemic has brought up all of these mental health crises and domestic crises that were always there, that I always sang about, that people had so much to say about in terms of, ‘She’s just feigning emotional fragility.’ And it’s like, ‘Well, not really. You’re feigning emotional togetherness despite the fact that you’re a wack-job Monday through Friday. […] But now that you can’t go shopping, you have to look at your partner and be like, ‘I’ve lived with you for 20 years, but do I even know you?’ You realize maybe you’ve only ever allowed yourself to scratch the surface of yourself because if you went any deeper, you might have a mild meltdown for no reason, just out of the blue, and no amount of talking could explain why. It’s just a part of your genetic makeup. You could just be prone to panic. I think a lot of people are that way. I got a lot of shit for not only talking about it, but talking about lots of other things for a super long time. I don’t feel justified in it, because I’m not the kind of artist who’s ever going to get justified.’”
Read the full interview with Antonoff here.