I’ve always gone with my gut,” Lana Del Rey told me back in 2023, during the promotion of her ninth album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. Her label is well aware of that fact. “If I feel like the timing isn’t right or I don’t feel like some kind of situation or plan is right, they’ve always backed me 100 per cent.” Something you should know about Del Rey is that she lives and works according to the flow of life, wherever and whenever divine inspiration strikes. All this to say, her much delayed, renamed, country to Americana to probably-a-bit-country-or-Americana 10th album might not be ready.
It wasn’t ready when she announced it as Lasso at the Billboard and NMPA Songwriter Awards in January 2024. It wasn’t ready eight months later when it was originally due for release. Neither was it ready when it morphed from Lasso into The Right Person Will Stay, and was given a new scheduled release date of May 2025. It very possibly wasn’t even ready this summer when rumours suggested that production hadn’t properly started, that she was focused on her first full stadium tour, and that crucially her and her favourite producer Jack Antonoff’s schedules had not yet aligned.
