American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey has released her long-awaited eighth studio album, Blue Banisters.
The album is the singer’s second studio album in 2021. It follows her seventh studio album, Chemtrails over the Country Club, released on March 19, 2021.
Blue Banisters was preceded by four singles: the title track, “Text Book,” “Wildflower Wildfire,” and “Arcadia.”
On July 3, 2021, Del Rey revealed the album cover on her Instagram along with a teaser for an upcoming single, captioned “Album out later… Single out soonish. Have a good fourth x”. The album artwork shows Del Rey sitting on a wooden stoop with her dogs Tex and Mex.
On September 3, 2021, Del Rey posted the cover for the single “Arcadia” on her Instagram account and revealed that the song would be released on Wednesday, September 8. A day before the release of the song, Del Rey shared an additional snippet, captioning it with a small written teaser of the album’s general themes, mentioning that she’s never felt the need to explain her story, “but if you’re interested, this album does tell it-and does pretty much nothing more.”
On September 8, 2021, the album’s pre-order was released along with “Arcadia.”
Born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, she envisioned a Southern California dream world constructed out of sad girls and bad boys, manufactured melancholy, and genuine glamour. Then she came to embody this fantasy.
At first, her stylized noir-pop garnered skeptical sneers — the rise of her 2012 debut, Born to Die, was impeded by a tentative live debut on Saturday Night Live — but Del Rey proved to be tougher than her soft exterior suggested.
Following a hit remix of her single “Summertime Sadness,” she steadily gained not only popularity but respect; her second album, 2014’s2014’s Ultraviolence, received positive reviews to accompany her sales, and her imitators (of which there were many) became merely an alluring accessory.
With subsequent albums like 2020’s Grammy-nominated Norman Fucking Rockwell, Del Rey grew more and more into the ideal she intended to be: a damaged torch singer designed as the tragic romantic icon for her age.
Blue Banisters is out now through Interscope and Polydor Records.