Lana Del Rey releases three new songs and announces July 4 album, ‘Blue Banisters’

Just two months after her well-received escape-from-L.A. opus “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” Lana Del Rey has released a batch of singles to build expectations for her second album of 2021, “Blue Banisters.”

The singer dropped a trio of new songs Thursday in anticipation of the July 4 release of “Blue Banisters.” They largely continue the misty, bucolic vibes of “Chemtrails,” which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200. That album followed up her Grammy-nominated 2019 LP “Norman F— Rockwell,” one largely considered a career highlight, and a July 2020 spoken-word album, “Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.”

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The three new tracks (“Blue Banisters,” “Text Book” and “Wildflower Wildfire”) are each heavy on piano and melancholy atmosphere, pulling from her beloved ‘70s L.A. soft-rock. She worked with writers and producers Gabriel Edward Simon, Zachary Dawes and longtime Kanye West collaborator Mike Dean on the three tracks.

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One of the songs, “Text Book,” is already drawing a bit ire for a lyric that references the racial justice protests of 2020. “And there we were / screamin’ ‘Black Lives Matter’ in a crowd.” In May 2020, Del Rey was criticized for posting video from protests where stores were broken into, and for statements she made on social media which posited that Doja Cat, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj (all women of color) were given more leeway than her to sing transgressive lyrics and dress provocatively.

“I’m not the enemy, and I’m definitely not racist, so don’t get it twisted,” she later said.