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You could be forgiven for thinking you read this article about a year ago, when the first iteration of Lana Del Rey's new country album, then-titled Lasso, was shelved and replaced by the mysterious The Right Person Will Stay, and given a May release date.
Lasso was originally slated for a September 2024 drop, and then The Right Person Will Stay was lined up for May 2025, but both came and went without any sign of an album.
In April, it really felt like The Right Person Will Stay was coming, with Lana Del Rey releasing the long-teased ‘Henry, come on’ and ‘Bluebird’, keeping the anticipation high.
But alas, it failed to materialise, with W reporting in a new interview that the ‘Video Games’ hitmaker decided to postpone the release and add six new songs to the project.
Now, in that same interview, Lana Del Rey confirms she's changed the name yet again to Stove, with the record being tentatively given a release date for the end of January 2026.
In this conversation, Lana Del Rey explains that the rush of other artists into the country sphere gave her second thoughts, “They were more autobiographical than I thought, and that took more time. The majority of the album will have a country flair. Eight years ago, when I was looking to make a country record, no one else was thinking about country. Now everyone is going country! I’ve asked myself, ‘Should I retire all my snakeskin boots? Should I put my cowboy hats in storage?’”
Elsewhere in the chat, Lana Del Rey shares that she once considered releasing an album of classic country covers, titled Country and Western, but later decided against it.
From this interview, it definitely appears that Lana had the album ready for May 2025, with the delay purely the result of her choosing to include these additional six offerings.
However, the fact that she implies she was put off venturing into country due to the sudden influx of pop acts into the genre, such as Post Malone, Beyoncé and now BigXthaPlug, doesn't give us much hope that we'll actually get to hear Stove in January 2026.
Country continues to enjoy an explosion in popularity, and if Lana Del Rey had dropped Lasso when she had first teased it back in September 2024, she would have been considered a part of that initial crossover wave with Beyoncé and Post Malone.
By the time January rolls around, though, we'll no doubt have had countless other cross-genre collaborations and forays from mainstream acts. Fans are already getting a little jaded of this trend, so by next year, Lana is far more likely to receive flak for “jumping on the bandwagon”, something she already seems wary of.
We're keeping our fingers crossed we do get to hear Stove in January, however, and that Lana gets to express her deep-seated love of the genre throughout this project. It's evident how much she appreciates country music, and she's always had a penchant for blurring the lines between hazy pop and alt-country, so we're hoping she just sticks to her guns, ignores the naysayers and drops the album.
For more on Lana Del Rey, see below:
