Lana Del Rey: ‘I got jolted into the real world’

She’s just been in the studio with Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw, trying to make him giggle while he goes about some serious radio presenting business; and she’s daydreaming about her favourite UK delicacy – a sandwich from Pret.

When she discovers she’s in the same building as the BBC newsroom, the star politely asks for a guided tour.

“I never get to do stuff like this,” marvels the singer, as she walks wide-eyed past the studios and satellite feeds.

In this context, Del Rey is oddly anonymous. Jane Hill, who is preparing to read the lunchtime news on BBC One, doesn’t even look up when the superstar squeezes past her desk.

It’s a rare luxury for someone who’s followed by paparazzi and the all-seeing cameras of TMZ when she’s at home in California.

She addresses the lack of privacy on her new album, Lust For Life, where a song called 13 Beaches finds Del Rey searching for a spot “past Ventura and lenses plenty” where she can enjoy a romantic moment in seclusion.

When we sit down to chat, she reveals those same concerns stopped her attending the women’s marches in Los Angeles, earlier this year.

“I drove my sister and her girlfriends to the marches,” she says. “I thought about [joining in] but I felt, like, not really sure how it would go.

“I didn’t really want to be a distraction to that group of 10 girls who were going. I wanted them to think about the actual march and not about me standing right next to them.”

• Five things we learned by speaking to Lana Del Rey
• Lana speaks to BBC News in 2012
• Lana Del Rey on BBC Music

But the star is making her contribution in other ways. A new song, God Bless America And All The Beautiful Women In It, is an ode to womankind (“may you stand proud and strong”); while Coachella – Woodstock In My Mind, mines the contradictions of dancing at a festival “whilst watching tensions with North Korea mount”.

It’s a new dimension for Del Rey’s lyrics – which have traditionally concerned themselves with “looking for love in all the wrong places”.

“I kind of got jolted into the real world again,” she says.

“Just being in California, it’s such a liberal state, I was bombarded with the news every day. So my studio became like a think tank – during the elections it was a constant conversation with my producer and engineers and assistant engineers.

“And then obviously during Coachella, that news broke about North Korea and pointing missiles at each other. That was a bit of a rude awakening.”

Del Rey’s work rate is astonishing. Lust For Life is her fifth album in six years – and it bursts at the seams, with 16 tracks all co-written with her longtime producer Rick Nowels.

They record everything at his studio in Santa Monica, just blocks away from the beach, so it “never feels like work,” she says.

“Just walking in every day and having a coffee together and taking a walk, and then we start.

“So it doesn’t ever feel like I’m pumping them [the songs] out. Although it’s definitely a blessing that I’ve been able to put out so much music.”

On Lust For Life, the singer has opened up musically, as well as lyrically. The title track is a pulse-raising duet with The Weeknd, while Summer Bummer almost self-destructs, dissolving into digital noise and blacked-out beats, with Lana’s vocals barely holding the song together.

She’s also welcomed collaborators into her world for the first time – absorbing them into her aesthetic, rather than capitalising on chart trends.

“It was really fun!” she says of working with A$AP Rocky and The Weeknd. “I wanted those guys to add a little fire, a little energy to the record.”

BBC