American songwriter and poetess Lana Del Rey, who carved her name into the zeitgeist in the early 2010s, has forever been poetry set to melody, each album a tome of coquettish verses plaited into haunting American requiems; a discography drenched in the faded charm of an America she both mourns and mythologizes. Drawing from the beauty of mid-century Americana, she has historically spun tales of longing and ruin, her narratives often steeped in the kind of tragic romance that lingers like a bruise. Over the last decade and a half, the Video Games singer has traced the fingerprints of her lived experiences across her artistry, examining how the raw nerves of her past have shaped the myth of her persona, all of which led to her finally releasing her latest opus, Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd? (abbr. Tunnel), which progresses as an ambivalent letter to the very things that undo her.
In addition to its unrelenting, in-depth exploration of personal themes, Tunnel, explored a myriad of musical styles, a standout from the album being “Let the Light In,” a dusky, country-kissed duet by Del Rey and Father Johny Misty. The track featured tender textures that, for the first time, departed from the brooding introspection of Tunnel’s first half, and provided a sound more similar to Del Rey’s quintessential, Americana persona—one many speculated she had since let go of following the release of 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, produced by Jack Antonoff.
Prior to and post Tunnel’s release, many had speculated that Del Rey was moving her Californian, Americana-inspired aesthetic in a more conservative, country-oriented direction, with her announcing-then-scrapping an album full of covers of classic American standards to be released on Christmas of 2020, incorporating a cover of Tammy Wynette’s classic “Stand By Your Man” into her live performances, releasing a cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” and teasing a new single: “Henry, Come On” in January 2024, which played with a slight country sound.
Almost a year after Tunnel, Del Rey announced during the Billboard and NMPA Songwriter Awards that “the music industry’s gone country,” and her next musical endeavor would be a country album titled Lasso, set to release in early September. Sticking to this promise, she followed up on her word five months later, releasing “Tough,” a country-trap single featuring the ex-frontman of Migos, Quavo, complete with a music video that captured moments of intimacy between the two as they drifted around the American countryside together.
In the time between the announcement of a country album and Tough, we saw the release of Beyonce’s influential Cowboy Carter album, a departure from her usual pop and R&B sound which has since gone on to win Country Album of the Year and Album of the Year at the Grammy’s, and led to greater cultural acclaim of Shaboozey, a Nigerian-American genre-bender of hip-hop, country, and Americana sounds, who released Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going. We also received Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene, Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion, George Birge’s Cowboy Songs, and Megan Morone’s Am I Okay? all before September, and once September came around, Del Rey’s Lasso was nowhere to be heard.
September came and went without a word from Del Rey regarding Lasso, and in October, Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken released as another successful country music album. The following month, toward the end of November, Del Rey came online to change the title of her album from Lasso to a 13-track album titled The Right Person Will Stay, along with a May 21, 2025 release date and the promise of a song rollout before her Stagecoach performance in April. With Stagecoach being known as California’s Country Music Festival, fans were hopeful that Del Rey would stay true to her word and deliver further news regarding her album. She did not disappoint.
Two weeks before her Stagecoach debut, Del Rey released “Henry, Come On” as a single sounding like a ballad straight out of Chemtrails Over the Country Club with a more cinematic sound bed and more country-oriented in its perspective and lyrics. A week later, “Bluebird” found its way to the world’s music platforms, another gorgeous ballad, this time featuring a glorious harmonica and guitar accompaniments.
However, in the days between “Henry, Come On” and “Bluebird,” Del Rey took to Instagram to thank fans for their support and her collaborators for their work on ”Henry, Come On” and to reveal that not only is the project project not going to arrive on the scheduled May 21 release date, but she changed the title—again.
“You know it’s not going to come on time, right?” she said in her video. “Should I even tell you that the name changed again? Should I tell you that now, while you’re so happy that you even have a song? Yeah, maybe I’ll wait.”
A week later, at Stagecoach, we see Del Rey has fully surrendered to the country aesthetic, her stage transformed into a fairytale bayou, complete with a quaint, bluish cottage at its heart. It was a tribute, no doubt, to her Louisianan husband, Jeremy Dufrene, whom she’d married the year before. Emerging from the cottage like a vision from another era, dressed as a Sixties housewife, she began her performance with “Husband of Mine,” a haunting new ballad from her upcoming album. In it, she pleaded with the world to “give grace” to their unconventional love.
Del Rey followed ”Husband of Mine” with “Henry, Come On” and her rendition of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” but it was when George Birge joined her onstage for ”Cowboy Songs” that the performance truly yielded the raw, unvarnished spirit of country.
After country reimaginings of her own hits and summoning the Alabama-born Secret Sisters to wrap their harmonies around ”Let the Light In,” came ”Quiet in the South,” a new anthem that burned with Americana grit. Perched at a dining table inside her cottage set, Del Rey turned the song into a reckoning, her voice laced with quiet fury as she addressed an absent lover: ”Are you coming home tonight?” “Should I burn down your house or turn off the light?”. The stage, bathed in the eerie flicker of a projector, became a scene of slow-motion destruction as a lone dancer scattered gas cans around the bayou cottage before striking a match. As flames licked the walls, Del Rey stood silhouetted against the glow.
After a hologram-led interlude and an outfit change, Del Rey reemerged on the stage a Fifties Southern belle—her hair in perfect curls, sporting a crimson gown. In this state, she debuts the campy song “5.75,” where she brags of her monthly listeners on Spotify, shares her secrets to success, and confesses that not only did she kiss Morgan Wallen, but that kissing her must have gone to his head.
As a finale, she welcomed her guests back on stage to sing her rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” accompanied by a pedal steel and her full band. Leaving the performance, many fans had no doubt in their mind that even if The Right Person Will Stay would not be coming out the following month, it would be a spectacular opus from Del Rey, and a grand reintroduction of her Americana sound to the mid-2020s pop scene.
Despite her announcement that the now-untitled album would not be coming on time just a week before her Stagecoach performance, Del Rey did not provide any information about a new release date for her album during her performance or after, and three months later, has yet to provide any clarity on the subject.
Having been known as one of the few legacy artists of the 21st century strongly associated with an American aesthetic, it is astonishing that for the last year and a half, she has met this rise in the all-American aesthetic less than halfway instead of embracing it and setting the standard.
Although there are rumors circulating—that the album’s title is now called Classic, that the album has been scrapped completely, or that it is being revamped to include her covers from 2020’s scrapped American standards album—Del Rey has confirmed nothing to her followers, though she has been touring internationally and frequently active on social media.
Del Rey is known for her scrapped releases, since the 2000s, we’ve heard of albums like Sirens, Lana Del Ray A.K.A Lizzy Grant, Tropico, Melancholia, Pacific Blue, Rock Candy Sweet, American Standards and Classics, and an untitled, unreleased collaborative album with The Last Shadow Puppets, where from she pulled the songs “Thunder” and “Dealer” for Blue Banisters in 2021. With the fate of her tenth album being unknown, it is not a stretch to speculate if we will soon be adding its two previous titles to this list. If it does, it will be Del Rey’s most fully-fledged body of work to date to have gone unreleased.