Last night, at a Billboard event, Lana Del Rey revealed the title, release month, and genre of her next album: Lasso, a country album, is out in September. “If you can’t already tell by our award winners and our performers, the music business is going country. We’re going country. It’s happening,” Del Rey said, according to Billboard. “That’s why [producer] Jack [Antonoff] has followed me to Muscle Shoals, Nashville, Mississippi, over the last four years.”
When reached by Pitchfork, Lana Del Rey and Jack Antonoff’s respective representatives had no further comment or information to share on Lasso.
Lana Del Rey has been known to tease albums that don’t come out exactly the way she planned—or don’t necessarily come out at all. For instance, immediately following the release of Chemtrails Over the Country Club, she said that a follow-up called Rock Candy Sweet would arrive June 1, 2021. Instead, Blue Banisters came out October 22.
As far as albums that haven’t materialized, Del Rey said in November 2020 that she’d release “a digital record of American standards and classics for Christmas.” Instead, she shared only a cover of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Del Rey also told Mojo about an in-progress country covers album. “I went back and listened to ‘Ride’ and ‘Video Games’ and thought, you know they’re kind of country,” Del Rey said. “Maybe the way ‘Video Games’ got remastered, they’re pop—but there’s something Americana about it for sure.”
As far as her more recent forays into country music, Del Rey, in December, shared her cover of the John Denver staple “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The cover arrived after her U.S. tour that focused on the South and Appalachia. In addition, the singer was among the performers in NBC’s Christmas at Graceland, filmed at Elvis Presley’s iconic Memphis estate. For the special, she sang “Unchained Melody.”
Lasso will follow Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, which you can read about at No. 11 in Pitchfork’s “The 50 Best Albums of 2023.”