Lana Del Rey Announces Spoken Word Album Benefitting Native American Organizations, Shares 3-Song Norman Fucking Rockwell! Video
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Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! topped our list of 2019’s best albums, so we’re anxiously excited for her next move. The day the album dropped, she revealed she’s already working on another one called White Hot Forever that she’s hoping to release in 2020. But first, she’s releasing a very different kind of album, a spoken word LP she describes as a collection of “freestyle poetry.”
In a video message posted to Instagram Thursday night, Del Rey announced that she’ll release the spoken word album on 1/4 and that it will cost $1. “I love the spoken word record,” she said. “It’s not particularly polished. It’s a bit more gritty.” Del Rey added that the spoken word album will benefit various Native American organizations dedicated to “preserving their rights or trying to help keep their land intact,” a gesture she describes as her own personal reparation toward indigenous people groups.
In the video, Del Rey explained that she’s been exploring her own lineage lately and was in encouraged to simultaneously dig deeper into the history of America itself. “It kind of informed the next album that I’ve been working on,” she said, presumably referring to White Hot Forever. “I just really wanted to sort of pay homage to the country that I love so much by doing my own reparation, I guess I would say, my own reparative act. So I know it’s a bit of an unusual choice, and I have no reasoning for it other than it just feels right to me.”
She also noted that her previously announced poetry book Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass is taking longer to hand-bind than she expected, but is still on the way.
And now, back to Norman Fucking Rockwell! Today Del Rey has released a 14-minute music video comprising three songs from the album: the title track, “Bartender,” and “Happiness Is A Butterfly.” It’s directed by Del Rey’s sister, Chuck Grant, and edited by LDR herself. Watch below, where you can also see her video message.
