Lana Del Rey's latest single gets fans excited for new album
"Lana Del Rey may be up to something," remarked Pitchfork after posters cropped up in Los Angeles featuring a lidded portrait of the singer superimposed over a starry skyscape and the word Love. The following day, on Saturday, February 18, Del Rey proved them right by releasing a new song, "Love," with the cover art mirroring the posters. On Monday, Del Rey released the video for the track.
The new track shot up to No. 1 on the Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 -- which measures the conversation around artists and their music on Twitter in real-time acceleration -- shortly after it dropped. The song was produced with Del Rey's regular collaborator Rick Nowels, with contributing producers Benny Blanco and Emile Haynie.
"My songs are cinematic so they seem to reference a glamorous era or fetishize certain lifestyles, but that's not my aim. I'm not trying to create an image or a persona. I'm just singing because that's what I know how to do," she once told Pitchfork in an interview.
Born Lizzy Grant in Lake Placid, New York, the musician rebranded herself with her first album "Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant." It was eventually re-recorded by David Kahne for the independent label 5 Points Records. "The title of her debut spelled out in plain letters that a transformation was afoot," noted Nylon Magazine in a 2014 profile.
Her first album as Lana del Rey, "Born to Die," yielded a hugely successful track with the viral "Video Games" in 2011: the accompanying he video featured found footage of California landscapes and the Chateau Marmont with fuzzy shots of herself singing. Her 2014 album "Ultraviolence," made with the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, was followed by 2015's "Honeymoon," which closed with a telling cover of the Nina Simone song "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."
Other side projects included her song for "The Great Gatsby" soundtrack in 2013, "Young and Beautiful," which went platinum and gained a Grammy nod for Best Song Written For Visual Media. She also starred in "Tropico" in the same year, a short film set to three songs off the singer's "Paradise" EP from 2012 that mingled the Garden of Eden, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, a unicorn and Jesus.
Last year, Del Ray collaborated with the Weeknd on the tracks "Party Monster" and "Stargirl Interlude" from his LP Starboy. She shared a video of herself on social media singing along to the latter track, in her kitchen.
Del Rey's upcoming new studio album is due later this year.
Watch the "Love" video: https://youtu.be/3-NTv0CdFCk
