Lana Del Rey Covers W Magazine’s Volume 3, The Music Issue

Posted on May 17, 2022

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W Magazine revealed the cover of their third issue of 2022, Volume 3, The Music Issue, featuring six-time Grammy® Award-nominated singer, Lana Del Rey. As part of the interview, Del Rey sat down with Alessandro Michele, the creative director of Gucci and a longtime friend and collaborator, to discuss the creative process, finding inspiration in the natural world, and working from the heart. W Magazine, Volume 3 The Music Issue is on stands, May 25, 2022.

 

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On her use of elements of nature in her music and your videos: “My dad is a deep-sea shark fisherman—he has been for 15 years— and he lived on a boat in Providence, Rhode Island, from the age of 15 to 18. He was also a storm chaser. In California, earth, wind, and fire are huge. All the elements are taken into consideration with my art, all the time. Which is funny, because people often ask why I sing about California. But I usually sing about wherever I am, and it just so happens that California is such a storm center right now. I mean, I’m from Lake Placid, the coldest spot in the nation. For me, the California landscape never gets old.”

Sharing certain poets who have been important to her: “When I found out that Allen Ginsberg wrote Howl in a few days, and then I saw Lawrence Ferlinghetti reciting Loud Prayer, I realized that I didn’t have to go slowly to have something be good. I could work fast if I wanted to. I also relate to some of the sentiments from Walt Whitman’s work, and Sylvia Plath’s—she wrote with blatant honesty about the experience of being a woman, and the history of hysteria.”

On the different writing process between Honeymoon and her new album: “I’ve been practicing meditative automatic singing, where I don’t filter anything. I’ll just sing whatever comes to mind into my Voice Notes app. It’s not perfect, obviously…When I’m automatic singing, I don’t have the time and leisure to think about things in terms of colors. It’s very cerebral. In Honeymoon, there were so many color references…For this new music, there’s none of that at all. It’s more just like: I’m angry. The songs are very conversational…It’s a very wordy album. So there’s no room for color. It’s almost like I’m typing in my mind.”

Recalling how she used to write songs on the train and how that’s changed: “…When I lived in the Bronx, we were about maybe a half mile from a D train stop…and you could take it to Coney Island and back. I come from a town of 700 people, and I couldn’t believe that I had the opportunity…to take a long walk…and take that D train. Now there are so many fewer words that come to me when I’m alone. I seem to need to be sitting with someone. It’s a little frustrating, because for so many years I was rich with ideas. Now I need someone to force me into the studio. Ideas don’t even come to me in the car anymore, my favorite place.”

Explaining what it is from the Old Hollywood Era that inspires her: “Everything. When I was younger, my grandparents would let me watch their old movies, and I related to the subtle nuances of the female characters. Not much needed to be said; a lot was inferred between the lines. When things got bigger for me and my career, I always assumed that just by me speaking and being myself, people would know who I was inherently. I learned that was not true. You had to really spell things out, and that was very hard for me.”

 

Story By Andrea Whittle

Interview with Alessandro Michele, (Creative director of Gucci)

Photographed by Jamie Hawkesworth

Styled by Sara Moonves
 

[Photo Credit: Jamie Hawkesworth/Courtesy of W Magazine]

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