Her fans wanted a psychedelic haze to envelop the follow-up to 2012’s Born To Die. And Lana Del Rey has delivered just that on her new Universal Music album, Ultraviolence. It’s melodic, haunting and heartbreaking. Here’s what the 28-year-old singer has to say….

After the last album, Born To Die, you announced your retirement. Yet, here you are again with Ultraviolence?!

I can’t start an album if I have no idea of the narrative, the concept. If the songs aren’t perfect, what’s the point of forcing myself? That’s why I said I had no albums planned. But in December and January everything opened up after a chance meeting, at a party, with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Some kind of chemistry happened. When we recorded a song like Brooklyn Baby, we looked at each other and felt something was happening. The album was recorded in a very relaxed atmosphere. What was very surprising to me –– a person who had always worked with her inner circle, people that I know and love –– here, I found myself with a total stranger!

How do you feel in front of a blank piece of paper?

These last two or three years, I experienced long periods where I couldn’t write a word. I was constantly on tour and I naively thought I could write on the road, but it didn’t work. Finally, in December 2013, I spent a few weeks in New York at Electric Lady Studios where I recorded the whole album alone with my guitarist Blake Stranathan and a session drummer. My sound was modelled on The Eagles! That’s when I met Dan, he told me that what I’d done was too “classic rock” and, as a result, we redid everything in Nashville, in six weeks, with an ordinary microphone, recording mostly live.

The Eagles’ influence is obvious on Pretty When You Cry… very Hotel California. You’ll bring slow dancing back in vogue!

Nobody makes slow-dance music anymore; I’d really like to try again, it’s been such a long time. Nobody knows this, but I love dancing. During the Nashville sessions, at the end of the day, we’d re-listen to what we did and dance like crazy. Dan had his friends from Brooklyn come down for the recording. We’d invite people we had just met at the corner shop, (singer-actress) Juliette Lewis and (film director-producer) Harmony Korine were also there hanging out. I’d never worked like that. It was the first time that I’d met such creative people in a studio… I opened the doors. Now I can isolate myself, to experiment without effort even when there are lots of people in the studio –– there’s a vast universe inside my head where I go to find refuge. Maybe I don’t have any luck in my daily life, but in my studio life, I’m lucky –– I’m always surrounded by good people. It’s where I’m in a good mood, so shocked when people want to work with me. The simple fact that a guy like Dan Auerbach is interested in me does a lot for my confidence.

Your songs offer a strange mix of luxury, opulence and sadness. A bit like Roy Orbison….

You’re right. I feel like I’m making happy songs but when I have people listen to them, they tell me how sad they are. I can’t run away from life, which was pretty tumultuous.... Three years after my real debut, I’m still plagued by both doubt and sadness. I just have uncertainty, emptiness in front of me. And I don’t like not knowing where I’m going. My love life, my family life… I’m not sure of anything. That’s why I hate when I can’t write because for 10 years, writing was the only stable thing, reassuring thing in my life.

You grew up in the countryside (Lake Placid, New York). Was it lonely?

No, I had a real group of friends, inseparable, we were very similar. It was the first time in life –– and the last –– that I felt such friendship. But at 14, I was sent to boarding school because we did a lot of bullshit together –– like going out with older boys, running away to parties. In this school, I became friends with one of the teachers –– he was 22, I was 15 –– who made me discover Jeff Buckley as well as 2Pac (Tupac Shakur) or Allen Ginsberg. When I arrived in New York at the age of 19, I tried to find this lost friendship again with people my own age. But it was too late; they all seemed obsessed with their careers, their social success... so I wondered where the musicians were, those who are willing to sacrifice everything for their songs… ready to die for them.

So you had the feeling of burning bridges with this idea of social success?

I read a book by Napoleon Hill that talked exactly about this: the need for an artiste to burn bridges with any career opportunity. For years, my life took place in my head, no one knew anything. It was almost like a double life. I felt so lucky to receive songs, which I never told anyone about. Because for a long time, except for my roommate, nobody had heard my songs. I played the guitar very badly. The first time I heard Cat Power, I was really relieved because she also played a bit like that at the beginning… very simple. But there was a real enchantment: the music came over me, literally. Entire songs, already composed and arranged rushing out of my pen, onto my notebook. I knew it was in me. When I was 20, since nothing was happening, I decided to continue responding to this call, whatever it took. It sounds strange, but I was a fan of my music. I tried to fight against the music, I was terrified by how others saw me : “Who does she think she is, this one?” I was sure they would think that I didn’t deserve it. Since then, I’ve talked to a lot of musicians… many have felt the same uneasiness. It’s so personal, music, that we’re inevitably frightened by rejection. And, I would have been happy just to be a back-up singer, I even tried to join groups that toured.

At what point did you feel you were right to hold on?

During the recording of Born To Die (2012), I’ll never forget my father’s visit. He was amazed to see me so sure, so in charge, so fulfilled, asking the producer to give me a beat or a symphony. He had no idea what I’d done for the last six years, that I’d patiently built my little world. My parents didn’t even know I sang. But when he saw me in the studio, my father told me it was one of the happiest days of his life. He was shocked; he felt that music was really my passion. My parents had insisted that I didn’t leave school for music –– and I finished my studies in philosophy because I knew they could feed my songs. I told them early on that I wanted to become a singer, but they didn’t get how passionate, how serious I was. My mother asked what I was doing every day in New York. But suddenly when my father saw me, he understood, it validated six years of work.

You mention Lou Reed in Brooklyn Baby...

I dreamed of sharing the song with him, I thought he would have found the lyrics amusing, I’d written them with him in mind (“My boyfriend’s in the band/ He plays guitar and I sing Lou Reed”). The day I landed in New York to have him listen to the song, he died.

Many of your icons are ghosts: Amy Winehouse, Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain.…

I never liked them because they died young, but that seems to be the fate of the people I admire. Fortunately, Leonard Cohen proves otherwise. I don’t like this romanticism for dying young. Artistes are more useful alive than dead.

Are you interested in what’s happening in music?

I’m so difficult that when I find a song I like, that’s all I listen to, non-stop, making people around me crazy –– from (Bruce) Springsteen to Cat Power. For me, every new song is a discovery. It’s the same with movies, books, documentaries. The advantage of California is that I can go to concerts all the time: I recently saw The Who, Guns N’ Roses and Courtney Love, it gave me a good dose of energy.

How do you handle these big concerts?

For the past two years, I don’t feel well physically, I’ve been suffering from an ulcer, but my voice perfectly tolerates these big concerts, sometimes in venues that hold 9,000 people. I smoke, I drink too much coffee, I eat chocolate bars and pizza: my lifestyle is not great, on the road…. As a teenager, I saw myself living in Paris, expatriate, poet... I was fascinated by French culture; by Serge Gainsbourg especially.

LANA IN THE NEWS…

In the director’s cut of her new video for Shades Of Cool, the 28-year-old singer pops it after falling in love with an older man with a drug problem.

Snaps have appeared of the singer kissing Vogue photographer Francesco Carrozzini in Portofino, Italy.

No publicity is bad publicity. In a recent interview with The Guardian, she said: “I wish I was dead already.” After it appeared, the singer denied making such a statement, until the newspaper posted the recording in full!

She recently performed at the Kanye West-Kim Kardashian wedding. And she didn’t charge a penny.

Lana is rarely seen without a pack of Camel.