Lana Del Rey has opened up about songwriting and working with super-producer Jack Antonoff for her upcoming album, ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’ in a new interview.
Speaking to Billboard, Del Rey opens up about the difficulties she had with writing initially, as well as some anxieties she had about working with Antonoff – who has also worked with the likes of Lorde and Taylor Swift previously.
“I wasn’t in the mood to write,” Del Rey told Billboard. “[Antonoff] wanted me to meet him in some random diner, and I was like, ‘You already worked with everyone else; I don’t know where there’s room for me.’”
However, after Antonoff played her “10 minutes of weird, atmospheric riffs”, Del Rey said she could visualise the whole album – “a folk record with a little surf twist” – and Antonoff was then brought in to co-produce the vast majority of songs on ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’, which is set for release on August 30.
Opening up about the writing process on her album in more detail, Del Rey added: “I’ve got a more eccentric side when it comes to the muse of writing, but I feel very much that writing is not my thing: I’m writing’s thing. When the writing has got me, I’m on its schedule. But when it leaves me alone, I’m just at Starbucks, talking shit all day.”
Del Rey also revealed more about the meaning behind the album closer, ‘hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it’.
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“It was staggered with references from living in Hollywood and seeing so many things that didn’t look right to me, things that I never thought I’d have permission to talk about, because everyone knew and no one ever said anything,” Del Rey said of the track.
She added: “The culture only changed in the last two years as to whether people would believe you. And I’ve been in this business now for 15 years! So I was writing a song to myself…Hope truly is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have, because I know so much. But I have it.”
Earlier this month, Del Rey released ‘Looking For America’, a song she wrote with Antonoff in the aftermath of the two recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. In an Instagram post, the singer explained that the tragic events “affected [her] on a cellular level”. However, it is unclear if the song will be included on her new album.
‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’ is due out August 30. Del Rey will support the album with a UK arena tour that’ll kick off February next year.