Lana Del Rey is still tying up her next album, Lasso.
The alt-pop star gave an update on the upcoming LP while speaking to People and Entertainment Weekly at the 2024 Instyle Imagemaker Awards in Los Angeles Thursday (Oct. 24), revealing that she’s taking her time to make sure all the songs are perfect. “I don’t want to turn it into something that’s half cooked, even if it’s super stripped back,” Del Rey told the outlets. “I want it to be what it was supposed to be.”
The 11-time Grammy nominee previously revealed that Lasso would be a country album at January’s Billboard and NMPA Songwriter Awards. ”If you can’t already tell by our award winners and our performers, the music business is going country,” she said while addressing the room at the time. “We’re going country. It’s happening.”
Months later, Del Rey clarified that Lasso wouldn’t be a “heavy departure” from her past work, much of which has been Americana-inspired. The “Summertime Sadness” echoed those remarks on Thursday, telling the outlets, “I think all the [new] songs have been Americana and I want to wait to see what the musical atmosphere feels like.”
“‘Cause I don’t usually feel like I need a pause in the creation process, but if there’s a literal energetic pause that almost feels like physical, then I have to wait, and I don’t know why,” she continued. “I’ll have to see if it’s because of something someone’s done or because it’s going to take a turn.”
Lasso was originally expected to arrive in September, but the month came and went with no new LDR record. At the Imagemaker Awards, Del Rey clarified that she isn’t certain when the project will be ready for release, saying, “We’ll see. But the songs I have, I love.”
When it does drop, Lasso will follow Del Rey’s critically acclaimed 2023 album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200. It was nominated for album of the year at this year’s Grammys, but lost to Taylor Swift’s Midnights — on which the “Born to Die” musician was also featured, duetting with the pop star on “Snow on the Beach.”
The new LP will also mark Del Rey’s first since marrying alligator tour guide Jeremy Dufrene in September. The pair wed by the bayou in Des Allemandes, La., a few weeks after which the singer called her new husband her “one and only” on Instagram.
“Unfortunately, a local couple from Houma won’t stop flying drones into our windows every morning and following us with a tracker,” she wrote at the time. “All that being said Jeremy is the one and only. And amazing. And we’re very happy.”
