HAIR BY SHERIDAN WARD AT CLOUTIER REMIX. MAKEUP BY PAMELA COCHRANE AT BRIDGE ARTISTS.chart — more than Prince’s Purple Rain, tied
with Michael Jackson’s Thriller and just behind
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. It’s an indication
that, as broad as her fan base is, it also runs
deep, with a ratio of hardcore devotees to casual
ones that even stars with inescapable radio hits
might envy.
Credit Del Rey’s strong aesthetic and singular
throwback sound that, as it has moved away
from its initial pop and hip-hop influences, has
kept young fans interested and allowed them
to grow up with her. “When we sign [an artist],
it’s not necessarily what everyone was listening
to, but they had real vision,” says Interscope
chairman/CEO John Janick. “Lana’s at ground
zero of that. There have been so many other
people who’ve been inspired by Lana. She’s
massive, she has sold millions of albums, but it
always has been on her terms.”
This has been Del Rey’s deal from the jump.
“Some people really are trying to get in the mix
of the zeitgeist, and that is just not my MO —
never cared,” says Del Rey, cradling a coffee with
sky blue-painted fingertips. “My little heart’s
path has such a distinct road that it’s almost
taking me along for the ride. Like, ‘I guess we’re
following this muse, and it wants to be in the
woods. OK, I guess we’re packing up the truck!’
It’s truly ethereal, and it’s a huge pain in the ass.”
Del Rey’s instincts are what led Interscope
to sign her to an international joint-venture
deal with U.K. label Polydor in 2011 and what
compelled her managers Ed Millett and Ben
Mawson to create their company, TaP Music,
with Del Rey as their first client in 2009. “It
was at that moment of peak piracy when no
one in the music business was making money,
so labels just weren’t taking risks,” recalls
Millett. “You’d play one of her songs at an A&R
meeting, and they’d be like, ‘You know what’s
selling at the moment? Kesha.’ But we were
lucky with Lana because she knew exactly
who she was. Our job was about making sure
everybody understood that.”
That battle for understanding has followed
Del Rey for much of her career. “People just
couldn’t believe she could be so impactful
without some svengalis behind her. I still think
there’s a tinge of misogyny behind all that,” says
Millett, referencing the endless debates about
Del Rey’s creative autonomy. “She realized very
quickly, being at the center of that storm, you’re
not going to win.” So she went deeper into her
own weird world, and somewhere between her
third and fourth records — the haunted jazz of
2015’s Honeymoon and the new-age folk of 2017’s
Lust for Life — it felt like people finally got it. Or,
at least, the people who were meant to get it
got it. After all, Del Rey never had intended to
make popular music, even if she now headlines
festivals. It just kind of happened that way: a poet
disguised as a pop star.
In many ways, Norman Fucking Rockwell feels
like a fulfillment of the groundwork she has
spent nearly a decade laying: She is now free
to be Lana, no questions asked. “People want
to embrace her lack of formula,”
says Millett. “And now she can do
whatever the hell she wants because
people have accepted that, well,
she’s brilliant.” Though she has sold
out arenas in the past, the North
American leg of her upcoming fall
tour has her playing amphitheaters
and outdoor venues that feel
especially suited to the style of her
music. And if her songs feel lighter,
it’s because Del Rey does, too.
“I mean, God, I have never taken
a shortcut — and I think that’s
going to stop now,” she says, feet
kicked up on the coffee table. “It
hasn’t really served me well to go by
every instinct. It’s the longer, more
arduous road. But it does get you to
the point where, when everyone is
just copying each other, you’re like,
‘I know myself well enough that I
don’t want to go to that foam rave in
a crop top.’ ”
Although that does sound kind
of dope, now that she’s thinking
about it. “Yeah, never mind,” she
says, laughing. “Google ‘nearest
foam rave.’ ”IN PERSON, DEL REY’S VIBE
isn’t noir heroine or folk troubadour
so much as friend from college
who now lives in the suburbs. Her
jean shorts, white T-shirt and gray
cardigan could’ve easily been
snatched off a mannequin at the
nearest American Eagle Outfitters.
A couple of times in our conversation, she lets
out a “Gee whiz!” like a side character in a Popeye
cartoon. Between the tour announcements and
Gucci campaign shoots, her Instagram consists
mostly of screenshot poetry and Easter brunch
pics with her girlfriends. For the most distinctive
popular songwriter of the past decade, she
appears disarmingly basic.
“Oh, I am! I’m actually only that,” agrees Del
Rey, eyes gleaming. “I’ve got a more eccentric
side when it comes to the muse of writing, but
I feel very much that writing is not my thing:
I’m writing’s thing. When the writing has got
me, I’m on its schedule. But when it leaves mealone, I’m just at Starbucks, talking shit all day.”
Starting in 2011, when her nearly drumless,
practically hookless breakthrough single “Video
Games” blew up, the suddenly polarizing singer
found it hard to move through the real world
unbothered. But something changed a few
years back; she’s not sure if she chilled out or if
everyone else did. In any case, she’s
happiest among the people, whether
that’s lingering in Silverlake coffee
shops or dipping out to Newport
to rollerblade. “I’ve got my ear
to the ground,” she says with a
conspiratorial wink. “Actually, that’s
my main goal.”
Somehow this only makes Del
Rey weirder and cooler: the high
priestess of sad pop who now
smiles on album covers and posts
Instagram stories inviting you to
check out her homegirl’s fitness
event in Hermosa Beach. You could
feel the shift on Lust for Life, which
enlisted everyone from A$AP Rocky
to Stevie Nicks and traded the
interiority of her early songwriting
for anthems about women’s rights
and the state of the world. She even
seemed down to play the pop game
a bit, though by her own rules: She
worked with superproducer Max
Martin on the title track, even as it
quoted ’60s girl groups and cast R&B
juggernaut The Weeknd as the long-
lost Beach Boy.
Among those entering Del Rey’s
creative fold on Norman Fucking
Rockwell is Jack Antonoff, the four-
time Grammy Award-winning
producer who has become a go-to
collaborator on synth-pop heavy
hitters for the likes of Lorde and
Taylor Swift. Enlisting Big Pop’s
most in-demand producer doesn’t
seem like a very Lana Del Rey
move, and she knows it.
“I wasn’t in the mood to write,” she admits.
“He wanted me to meet him in some random
diner, and I was like, ‘You already worked with
everyone else; I don’t know where there’s room
for me.’ ” But when Antonoff played her 10
minutes of weird, atmospheric riffs, Del Rey
could immediately picture her new album: “A
folk record with a little surf twist.” In the end,
Antonoff wound up co-producing almost the
whole project, alongside longtime collaborator
Rick Nowels and Del Rey herself.
Most of Norman Fucking Rockwell follows
similar whims — or, as Del Rey puts it, “DivineAGENT
CREATIVE ARTISTS
AGENCY
Carole Kinzel
INTERSCOPE
RECORDS
John Janick
Chairman/CEOMatt LaMotte
Senior vp marketingMichelle An
Senior vp/head of
creative contentLABEL
TaP MUSIC
Ed Millett
Ben Mawson
MANAGEMENT
THE TEAM
PREVIEW 2019
FAL L
50 BILLBOARD | AUGUST 24, 2019