Antonoff: Will you talk about Joan Baez and your feelings about her?
Del Rey: On the last tour, we went to Berkeley and I really wanted to do ‘Diamonds and Rust’ with Joan, and she was kind enough to accommodate me. Nobody necessarily wants to show up to do a giant show for 15,000 kids at Berkeley, but she told me that if I’d drive out 80 miles from Berkeley, then we could practice at her kitchen table, and if it was good, she would do it. So that’s what I did. She corrected me on all my harmonies, and by the end, it was great. Then we went out clubbing to this Afro-Caribbean two-step place and danced all night. She fucking outlasted me.
Antonoff: On that last tour, you really put an emphasis on building a community. Artists are so isolated. People don’t realize that most of us don’t know each other. I love that you call people and say, “Hey, I’m going to be in your town. Do you want to come sing with me or have coffee?”
Del Rey: You’re so funny, the way you always hit things spot-on.
Antonoff: Don’t you feel that way? Like there’s animaginary club, but it’s not real and you almost feel sad because you wish it was?
Del Rey: That’s especially true when you’re an alternative artist, and you’re not collabbing or making nightclubappearances. You’re either in your room or you’re with your producer. The best thing I ever did was tour the Midwest. I got to know Weyes Blood and Hamilton Leithauser.Devendra Banhart was texting me. I found my heart and I was super happy there. I’m driving back from there now and I didn’t want to leave.
Antonoff: Do you feel like you’re ever going to leave L.A.?
Del Rey: I guess I can’t because I have all the animals and I have my family. I don’t know if I’ll do this drive again in a hot minute. The fact that you can be in Kansas in two hours by plane is amazing.
Antonoff: With ‘Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass’, I feel like you’re mourning a piece of L.A., sometimes literally, sometimes in feeling and tone. Then, couples with ‘Chemtrails’, it’s like you’re starting to talk about all these new places and slowly planting little flags and creating little emotional homes in other parts of America. Obviously I’m here for it, but it does make me wonder if we’re going to be making records is Tucson or Tulsa next year.
Del Rey: It’s funny, the record was Midwestern-sounding before I even went to the Midwest. What’s interesting about having a true muse – and it sounds kind of ridiculous – is that you’re at the whim of it. When I’m singing about Arkansas, even I’m wondering why. The one way I woulddescribe the Midwest, Oklahoma in particular, is that it’s not cooked or oversaturated, and there’s still space to catch that white lightning.
Antonoff: That’s why I love Jersey so much. It gives you space to get bored out of your mind, and if you let yourself get bored, you might just think of something great.
Del Rey: One hundred percent.
Antonoff: Before I met you, I thought you’d be the opposite of what you are. I’m trying to think of the best way todescribe it.
Del Rey: You were probably surprised that I actually write. I guess that’s how I would describe it: I really write. Poems and music. Sometimes I miss the mark, but I know what I’m going for. That’s why I really like hip-hop.
Antonoff: I remember you listening to some of the hardest stuff in the room. I think the best part of really feeling something that someone else does is that it inspires you not to mimic them, but to do you. With ‘Chemtrails’, do you feel like you’re revisiting the past?
Del Rey: Not so much where I’ve been, but more like where I’m going. It makes me anxious listening to it, because I know it’s going to be a hard road to get to where I want to be, to do what I want to do. A lot of that’s going to involve writing classes and being uncomfortable in new places with not many friends and raising my dogs and my cats and my chickens alone. It’s going to be work. I hear ‘Chemtrails’ and I think “work,” but I also think of my stunning girlfriends, who so much of the album is about, and my beautiful siblings. ‘Chemtrails’ is the title track because it mentions them all and it mentions wanting so much to be normal and realizing that when you have an overactive, eccentric mind, a record like ‘Chemtrails’ is just what you’re going to get.
Antonoff: So many people bring a confidence to the table that is actually destructive to the work.
Del Rey: And yet, that’s often not true. I know some women who put on a real front. The one thing I have to learn from other people is how to be happy, and everyone has different ideas about how to do that and how to keep a lightness in the songs. The one thing that I know that I can do regardless of where I’m at in my process is make a beautiful melody. I don’t really care if you mush an amazing life story into an alternative record. If the melodies don’t stun me, I kind of don’t care. I think it’s interesting if you’re yelling and shouting and talking about where you’re going and what it’s been like, but to me that’s not a record. That’s a therapy session.
Antonoff: You could have a great idea for something, but if you can’t find a beautiful melody, then maybe it’s just apodcast.
Del Rey: And that’s where the poetry comes in. It’s a diary you should read for Audible or something.
Antonoff: Do you know what my favorite line in ‘Violet’ is? You say this things about how you can go to the beach with your girlfriends and they don’t know that you’re crazy. You say, “I can do that.” There’s something about that line that gives me a sense of freedom, like it’s a mantra for artists in general, or people who don’t feel like they’re living the same experience as other people. When I hear you say it, I immediately think to myself, “Maybe I should just go shopping for shirts, or get a new vacuum and spend two hours zipping around my house.” It’s almost like you’ve given this call to artists: “Just do these things and no onehas to know you’re crazy.” I think that’s the deeper story behind both ‘Norman’ and ‘Chemtrails’. If I had to find the thread, it’s this person who’s trying to do things like everyone else does them, but not pretending to be everyone else. Do you feel like the people in your life know every inch of you?
Del Rey: They do. Every ex I have, every girlfriend I have, every family member I have, even the ones I don’t speak to – they know the ins and outs of why I sometimes catch sheer panic out of nowhere. I can even say to some of them, “It’s related to you. You fucked me over.”
Antonoff: Do you say that?
Del Rey: Yeah, I’ll say, “Today was a bad day and it’s because of you, and I don’t even know you anymore.” I don’t necessarily think there’s much value in doing that – it’s just what’s true. I don’t ever feel bad for saying to someone, “I’m having a panic attack because of what you’ve done.” That’s black-belt life, like 3.0. What’s insane is that the pandemic has brought up all of these mental health crises and domestic crises that were always there, that I always sang about, that people had so much to say about in terms of, “She’s just feigning emotional fragility.” And it’s like, “Well, not really. You’re feigning emotional togetherness despite the fact that you’re a wack-job Monday through Friday.”
Antonoff: “A wack-job Monday through Friday” is very good. I think the pandemic has done this weird thing – it’s not necessarily interesting what you choose to do with your time when life is taken away, when you can’t go outside. It’s interesting what you choose to do with your time when everyone’s outside having a good time and you choose to shut yourself away and write.
Del Rey: Right.
Antonoff: Do you feel like you’re doing okay because you’re sort of always in touch with some sort of underbelly?
Del Rey: I don’t feel like I’m doing okay. I just know now that I was always right.
Antonoff: That’s interesting.
Del Rey: I subscribe to the idea that what’s going on in the macrocosm, whether it be in the presidency or a virus that keeps us isolated, is a reflection of what’s going on in the individual home and inside bedrooms and what people intimately talk about. I think there’s been existential panic for a long time, but people haven’t been paying attention to it because they’ve been too busy buying shoes. And shoes are cute. I love shoes. But now that you can’t go shopping, you have to look at your partner and be like, “I’ve lived with you for 20 years, but do I even know you?” You realize maybe you’ve only every allowed yourself to scratch the surface of yourself because if you went any deeper, you might have a mild meltdown for no reason, just out of the blue, and no amount of talking could explain why. It’s just a part of your genetic makeup. You could just be prone to panic. I think a lot of people are that way. I got a lot of shit for not only talking about it, but talking about lots of other things for a super long time. I don’t feel justified in it, because I’m not the kind of artists who’s ever going to get justified. I will die an underdog and that’s cool with me. But I was right to ask, “Why are we here? Where did we come from? What are we doing? What happens if this insane, crazy, sci-fi crisis happens, and then you’re stuck with yourself, and you’re stuck with your partner who doesn’t pay attention to you?” I’m not saying it’s more relevant than ever, but my concern for myself, the country, the world – I knew we weren’t prepared for something like this, mentally. I also think it’s a really good thing that we’ve gotten to this point where we have to bump up against ourselves, because it’s not going to be the same when the Beverly Center reopens.
Antonoff: It won’t be and it shouldn’t be. I agree with you in that we can’t go back and we shouldn’t go back. To me, the positive side of it is, “Okay, the furure’s here.”
Del Rey: With Y2K, it was like, “The future is here.” No, it wasn’t. But the future sure is here now!