well folks, a couple weeks back, I got to talk to the one and only Lana Del Rey for Billboard’s 2017 #1s issue. the version that appears in print is quite abbreviated, so I thought I would publish the full transcript for your viewing pleasure. (I left out the part at the end when I asked her for advice about getting over a toxic break-up; you’ll just have to use your imagination with that one.)
MG: How has this year been for you? You’ve had all these great career highs, but at the same time, at least personally, it’s hard not to feel a bit beaten down by the world…
LDR: Yea. Yea, I can see that. I try and take different approaches to how I see things every day. Because I guess if you just watched the news only, and didn’t have your own perspective, it would be hard to get through the day. But I really like the Leonard Coen quote: “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” I feel like this is the year where we’re seeing a lot of cracks—all the cracks that have been there forever. But the blessing in all of these things that have been coming out is that we get to shine a lot of light on the problems that have been in society for a long time, and hopefully fix them. So that’s something I like to hold on to, and it makes me feel excited, actually. Because it feels like it’s happening fast.
It’s funny because, leading up to Lust for Life, a lot of people were like: “Oh my god, Lana is smiling! This is going to be her happy album!” And definitely there’s a shift that seems significant, but I don’t know if “happy” is the word I would use. How do you feel about that?
I think maybe a good word to use would be more present—less from the outside looking in, and sort of a more integrated perspective lyrically. Like, it’s not just about love, or feeling disappointed, it’s also about being in LA, cause that’s where I live, and thinking about… You know, like a song “When the World Was At War We Kept Dancing,” and the lyric is, “Is it the end of an era? Is it the end of America?”, kind of like we were saying earlier. I was thinking about things that are broader than just my relationships, which was nice for me. Probably nice for the fans, too—a little bit of a reprieve.
Starting off with a blank slate, did you have some idea that these were things you wanted to express, that this was going to be a more integrated perspective, or was that just kind of where the songs took you?
Well, I think I started writing the record in the reverse order that the tracklisting is in now. So I started with the more… I don’t know how to describe them. I don’t wanna use the word “negative.” But we’ll say, I started writing the darker songs first. “Heroine,” “Get Free,” and then I kept “13 Beaches” at the front of the tracklisting. I had a lot of songs where I was trying to state my intentions of what I wanted; in “Get Free,” I wanted to move forward, I wanted to feel differently. “Heroine” I was thinking about some stuff that had happened in the past. And then “13 Beaches,” I was lamenting over the fact that it took me that many beaches to find a quiet one to just chill out at. So I had to get through all of my complaining [laughs]. And then once I got to be cathartic in that way, I thought: Alright, now I want to invite my friends in. I want The Weeknd to come in and be on a track, and [A$AP] Rocky’s so cool, I want him to be on a track. Obviously, the election was happening halfway through my writing process, and I was thinking about the election, and I wrote four songs that didn’t end up going on the record that were a little more politically oriented. I didn’t end up using those, but “When the World Was At War We Kept Dancing” and “God Bless America (And All The Beautiful Women In It),” we kept on the record. So i was sort of just letting the process happen to me as I was moving through the election—and also just working through my personal life, which has been… very balanced. That’s all the little things that culminated into the body of work.
It’s interesting because we seem to have reached this point of cultural urgency that extends even to pop music—not to say that your music is necessarily pop music, but some people would put you there. And sometimes that works quite well, and other times it’s like, ugh, swing and a miss! [Lana starts laughing] And when “Coachella / Woodstock In My Mind” came out, I think it caught people off-guard—like, wait, Lana Del Rey is getting woke? It could’ve gone so wrong, but you pulled it off completely!
[Laughs] I know what you mean. But everybody has a different level of emotional depth that they draw from, and you know, I didn’t always choose to draw from—you know, that’s not true, actually. I was always drawing from my deeper writing well the best that I could. But I was just in a different place. I know what you mean, though, it can go so badly. It can go so wrong. But I actually was never worried. I’m never really worried about whether I can pull off a sentiment, because I know if I’m even trying to write it, I’ll eventually finesse the language and the mood of it in a way that feels comfortable to me. Because I know if it sounds comfortable to me, it’s gonna be comfortable for the fans. It would never be something that like, reads in a weird way. I mean, I really trust my writing voice so much—even more than my decision-making voice.
You’re really good at knowing, like: Sometimes things need to be subtle, and sometimes symbolic, and then sometimes need to be really on-the-nose because that’s just what the situation calls for.
Yea, I think that’s true.
It’s also interesting that Lust for Life felt so suited to the madness of 2017, but it also was very soothing. It sort of absorbed the madness and metabolized it into something that was transportive, even as it reached out into the world. And that was nice, because it wasn’t just like, “Oh, we’re fucked man!”
I love the way you just described that—“metabolizing” something. My version of that word is “integrating” it, and processing it. Like, I take so much time for myself to think, and to meditate, and to talk to people I really trust about what they think, so I’ve got a lot of perspective that’s wound up into my own. And that really helps me to have a balanced view on everything. I mean, even though overall, it’s pretty dramatic. Even in L.A. right now, with the fires, and in Sonoma up north. And the earthquakes and everything—it’s a lot! But, I don’t know, I just have this really strong instinct that it’s all leading in a much-needed, different direction, that hopefully we’re all leaning into. It’s like a really hard turn to make, because we’ve got all these weird societal norms we’ve gotta break out of, and we’ve been stuck in them.
Yea, I guess it requires chaos to shake out of that.
Apparently! It’s pretty weird, but I feel like it’s not a coincidence. It feels a little bit like a movie.
I wondered about the process of getting inspired for you. Because some artists get inspired by going out in the world and feeding off energy, and then others are able to create by removing themselves from that noise and creating their own space where they feel comfortable. So I wondered where you sat on this spectrum.
Mm, that’s a good question. I think my most important thing has been just trusting what I want to do every day, even if it’s different. If I wake up and I have plans to do one thing, but I really feel like I’d rather drive six hours north to San Francisco to visit a friend for no reason, I just kind of don’t second-guess it and I go. Spontaneity, that’s a big thing for me. But that being said, still having a place I like to call home, even though I travel a lot. And for me, I don’t really like to write when I’m upset. I don’t really like sharing those thoughts until I’m all the way through them. So I don’t really feel inspired by heartbreak, and I don’t even necessarily feel inspired by something super exciting. I think I’m just inspired when I’m doing whatever feels right in the moment—when I’m really in the flow.
I’ve always been a little jealous of people who can make art out of depression or grief. Because for me, that’s when I’m non-functional.
I’m non-functional, too. That’s when I don’t really wanna do anything. I definitely don’t want to make an amazing song.
Yea, that’s when art as a priority kind of just falls away for me.
I don’t know how people do that. Those must be people who function really well in high crisis situations. Which I don’t.
Going back to “Get Free” for a second: I think it’s interesting you felt like you were getting out negative feelings on that song, because… well, that song always makes me cry, but not quite in a sad way. It’s more overwhelming, because when you sing “Finally, I’m crossing the threshold,” it feels like that moment of change where you don’t know yet what’s going to be on the other side of it, because it’s happening to you, and you’re in it. The album itself almost feels like a document of change—it’s not like at the end of the album, it’s like, “Well, this is the lesson learned…”
Which is how I thought it was gonna be! I thought it was gonna be that way.
Do you have any perspective now on, when you say you’re crossing this threshold, what was on the other side?
Okay, so “crossing the threshold” was actually a reference to this little concept, or diagram, that’s called “The Hero’s Journey.” This writer, Joseph Campbell, came up with this little model. And it’s all about this character who has a lot of trouble at the beginning of the story, and then somewhere in the middle of the story, crosses the threshold to sort of face the monster, or the challenger, and in the end hopefully emerges triumphant once he’s beaten the bad guy or whatever. And I had been talking about that with my engineer, and I thought: I don’t usually use metaphors, but I loved the line “crossing the threshold,” and I wanted to bring it into that song I’d already started writing. So I changed those first few lines, so that woven in would be the idea of the hero’s journey. Because I really liked the idea of changing your own past. I think that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t really know if I had control over doing that for a long time, and yea, I didn’t know what would be on the other side of me making a couple of really strong personal decisions and statement. Even just using my own voice to talk about stuff, that was different from “Love.” And I didn’t really know how the whole thing would go. But I liked so much that it would be my authentic voice at the time, so I just decided that to write what I was feeling was important enough to cross that threshold in the music. It’s kind of hard for me to explain, because there’s so many different levels to it: like, I’m making literary allusions, but I’m also really trying to make changes in my own life. It’s hard to articulate it eloquently!
“Love” was what I wanted to ask you about next. First, just the title, because you know, you’ve got this reputation for mystery and melancholy and then suddenly it’s like, boom, LOVE! The most direct, unmysterious title. Was there some significance to you in the directness of that?
Yea. It didn’t start off as “Love.” It started as “Young & In Love,” but I didn’t really like that title, because that wasn’t even the point of the song. I could have gone back and edited the song as well, but I liked how the whole thing sounded, so I didn’t. Then I worked with Sean Lennon, and you know, that Lennon legacy is so tied into that one word. So I just thought, you know what? I just wanna go for it. The whole record is pointing its own little nose in that direction, between like, Stevie Nicks, and Sean Lennon, and “Lust For Life,” and “Love”… It felt like once I got through the chaos of making all these little personal statements that I had to almost delete from the music and then put back in, I was ready to say that what I’m getting at is, like so many singers in the past: it’s all about love! And obviously it’s about more than that. It is about more than that. But what you said about being on the nose sometimes—I liked that it was pretty literal, and it felt nice and comfortable to not necessarily have layers to all of the singles. That one and “Lust for Life” were similar in that they were kind of just about having fun. Even if you don’t have anywhere to go, well, so what, just get dressed up and go anyways.
Sometimes that line [“You get ready, you get all dressed up / To go nowhere in particular”] kinda made me sad, too, though!
I sometimes heard it as, you know, you get dressed up and you don’t have anywhere to go, and you maybe made these plans that didn’t turn out.
All dressed up and nowhere to go. Which is funny, because when I was 20 and writing little folk songs, I had a lot of that line, “All dressed up with nowhere to go.” But sometimes my lines end up slipping on themselves, and I feel differently about them once I’ve got some perspective on them. But I think I was thinking… you know, you don’t need hundreds of friends to have something fun to do, you know? You can have fun by yourself. It was more about just feeling a lot of love whether you’re alone, or you’re with someone. You don’t have to have a party to go to. But I know everyone interpets it in their own way. I read one review that was like, “Well, this is depressing.” And I was like, “Fuck, really? Another depressing song?” [Laughs] You can’t get it there all the way sometimes, you can’t get the message exactly the way you want it. But I think because of the production and the melody, I can also feel the melancholia. And maybe, on some level, I was feeling like, “Fuck, I’ve got nowhere to go.” I don’t remember thinking that when I was writing it, but probably there’s a little of that in there. Who knows!
I wondered if you cared about… You know, this album has singles, and that’s more than could be said of Honeymoon to begin with… [Lana starts laughing] No, I totally don’t mean that in a negative way, I adore Honeymoon!
No, it’s just funny! It’s funny.
Do you think, like, okay, this song’s gonna be the single, and we’re gonna push it like so? Or is that just the shit that happens later?
That’s like, what John Janick says. He’ll say, “Oh I love this song, I want this to be the single.” And if I like it, well, then I’ll say okay. But not with a record like Honeymoon. With a record like Honeymoon, he’s like… Have fun! Because that’s just, you know, kind of like a vanity project. I mean, in a good way. Like, a project just for you. With this one— first of all, I love everybody at my label. But John and the guys I work with loved “Love,” and they loved “Lust For Life.” So those were really the only two singles that we thought about, and I’m kind of doing air quotes with “singles” alone in my room right now. What that means for us, at this point, is just that the song’s gonna get a video. So it’s kind of different for us than it is for other people. It usually means, like, there’s a feature on it or there’s gonna be a video, or maybe I’ll sing it on the radio if I do, like, a thing with KROQ. My label’s pretty good about not having too many expectations. I guess I felt like, if one song was going to go further than the other ones, I thought it was “Love,” and I think I was right about that. That’s the one people will remember if they’re just a casual listener—which is good, because I really like that song! Even if just one of the songs goes far, that’s kind of like an accomplishment, because there’s so much music out there. Even if one makes it to the radio, even if it’s indie or college radio or whatever.
Do you have expectations for your own records? When you finished writing the record, did you have any idea as to… what you thought it would do? Or if people would like it? Ugh, I don’t know how to phrase this question, do you know kind of what I’m saying?
Yea, I do. I did have expectations for the record. I wanted to see if it was going to be heard for what it was really saying, and overall, from what I read, it was interpreted correctly. Which is a good sign for me, because it means I’m not seeing things one way, and the culture is seeing things the other way. Which is bad—that means there’s some incongruence there. That means you need to check yourself, and I don’t wanna check myself. I wanna stay in the flow, keep writing. From what I read, I didn’t feel like anyone thought I was trying to make some mega-turn in the end, away from what I had done originally. It was just a slow advancement with a couple sparkly details in it. So that was good enough for me. And what’s cool is that I’m only just starting to tour next month. My records are very slow-burning for a long time, and sometimes… I remember with “Summertime Sadness,” that song didn’t even go on the radio until two years after the record came out. My songs always surprise me. Sometimes they find themselves in movies, or getting nominated for things, way after they’ve been out. So it’s pretty cool.
Yea, not to like, blow smoke up your ass, but with you in particular, it seems to take the culture as a whole a minute to catch up with you. And that’s true with each of your records, but with Lust for Life in particular, it feels like the moment that the culture has met you on your grounds.
Well, that’s a really cool way of looking at it. And when I think about it, maybe that’s because I’m ready, too. Maybe I needed a lot of time to just be me, all to myself, and just be weird. It’s easier when you’re in a mood to be more out there. And I don’t really know what makes that happen; maybe it’s just enough time making music. Who knows why timing works out the way it does? But I like that you said that, I think that’s cool. I really like this record; I think if this was the first record some people heard from me, I’d be really proud of that.
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