Lana Del Rey Planned to Work with Lou Reed on 'Ultraviolence,' Admits "I Wish I Were Dead"

In her The Guardian profile, Lana Del Rey gave a rather interesting interview. The California singer revealed to writer Tim Jonze that she planned to work with Lou Reed on her second album Ultraviolence, as her latest song and album cut “Brooklyn Baby” had been written with the late Velvet Underground frontman in mind. Unfortunately, he passed away right as they were set to meet. Reed passed away on October 27, 2013. He was 71.

“I took the red eye, touched down at 7am … and two minutes later he died.”

She further revealed that she re-recorded the album after finishing it in December of last year, following a meeting with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. She realized that she “needed to record it all over again with his looser techniques – adding a more casual, California vibe to the sound by recording in single takes, with cheap microphones bought from the drugstore.”

Furthermore, she asserts that she is not all too happy with her career, stating that she didn’t enjoy the release of her debut single “Video Games” and the immense media response it received. “I never felt any of the enjoyment. It was all bad, all of it.”

Lana Del Rey also delved into her teenage years that might as well can be looked at as some sort of rock ‘n’ roll existence.

“displaced … I didn’t have a home, didn’t know my social security number” and says she wasn’t in contact with her parents for about six years. Which must have made it extra galling when accusations came in that her career was funded by her father. “It was the exact opposite of that,” she says. “We never had more money than anyone we ever knew in town. My dad was a well-loved entrepreneur – he was interested in the early dawning of the internet in 1994 – but it wasn’t anything that ever translated financially.” When those stories first emerged in the wake of Video Games she says she wasn’t even sure what her father was doing with his life: “And I don’t think he was too sure what I had been up to either. So it was interesting that they sort of fictionally put us side-by-side together and involved him in that story.”

She would also be rather dead right now. When Jonze asks her “if she sees an early death as glamorous,” she responds, “I don’t know. Ummm, yeah,” before adding, “I wish I was dead already.” When the writer tells her not to say that, implying that she doesn’t really mean it, the singer responds, “I do! I don’t want to have to keep doing this. But I am.” Jonze asks “Do what? Make music?”, and she responds, “Everything. That’s just how I feel. If it wasn’t that way, then I wouldn’t say it. I would be scared if I knew [death] was coming, but…”

Ultraviolence comes out June 16.