Lana Del Rey is known for her emotional, vulnerable lyrics, and in a new conversation with Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele for W Magazine, she shared which of her stirring songs makes her cry.
The singer revealed that her Honeymoon track “Swan Song” gets her misty-eyed. “Put your white tennis shoes on and follow me / Why work so hard when you could just be free? / You got your moment now, you got your legacy / Let’s leave the world for the ones who change everything,” she sings in the opening verse of the 2015 song.
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“It’s the antithesis of hopefulness,” Del Rey told Michele. “It’s about trying to find beauty in giving up. If I had my way, I would continue to persist in all areas of my life, but it can be quite challenging because I can be too trusting too soon. The burn that can come from that really can incinerate your whole thinking life and your daily processes. At the end of every album, I say goodbye and thank you—very Old Hollywood style—and yet I cannot help but just continue to write.”
Speaking of Old Hollywood, she said her grandparents are the reason for her love of the classic era. “When I was younger, my grandparents would let me watch their old movies, and I related to the subtle nuances of the female characters,” Del Rey explained. “Not much needed to be said; a lot was inferred between the lines. When things got bigger for me and my career, I always assumed that just by me speaking and being myself, people would know who I was inherently. I learned that was not true. You had to really spell things out, and that was very hard for me.”
Del Rey also shared that she’s working on some new music for an untitled album still in the works, set to follow up her 2021 album Chemtrails Over the Country Club. She told Michele that the upcoming LP will be different than her previously released music. “I’m angry,” she said. “The songs are very conversational. 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.’ It’s a very wordy album. So there’s no room for color. It’s almost like I’m typing in my mind.”
Read the full interview here.