After a video confirming an announcement, a photo in the studio from producer Jack Antonoff, and a sleek logo update, Lana Del Rey has officially announced the new album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, out March 10, 2023, and released the LP’s title track.
“Fuck me to death,” she sings on the track’s chorus, co-written with Mike Hermosa. “Love me until I love myself/There’s a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard.” The song clocks in at nearly five minutes and features her sultry vocals seamlessly floating across dense instrumentation.
Shortly after the album’s announcement, Del Rey shared a typewritten letter where she thanked her friends who helped make the album, including Father John Misty and Antonoff.
“What can I say! I’m so grateful to be present and feeling effervescent today,” Del Rey wrote in a typewritten letter on her private @Honeymoon Instagram. “With a mind full of violets and a forehead warmed by the sun as I pray in the garden.”
She added, “It all begun for fun, playing on lazy Sunday afternoons that turned into tunes [with] big orchestras and simple melodies that matched each moment we were in.”
The album cover — which was accompanied with three additional variants on vinyl — teased collaborations with Jon Batiste, Antonoff’s Bleachers, Father John Misty, Judah Smith, Tommy Genesis, and SYML. All of her collaborators were thanked individually in her note.
To Antonoff, Del Rey wrote, “And of course, for Jack for sitting down now and then to write effortless ballads that seem to come out fully intact as though they were always there. And putting the icing on this cake. And for being such a lovely friend, and also for giving me Margaret.”
Del Rey ended her note by thanking her photographer Neil Krug “for these pictures that say 1,000 words.” Krug had previously worked with the singer in 2014 for the standout imagery accompanying her album Ultraviolence.
“The music is for fun and for you and for me and not always free unless you’re streaming ha – but spirited with the best of intentions!” Del Rey wrote.
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd follows Del Rey’s contribution to Taylor Swift’s “Snow on the Beach” on her recent album, Midnights.
“I am such a massive fan,” Swift said of the Del Rey, adding that the hazy Midnights track is about “falling in love with someone at the same time as they’re falling in love with you, sort of in this sort of cataclysmic, fated moment where you realize someone feels exactly the same way that you feel.”
Del Rey’s last two records were both released in 2021: Blue Banisters and Chemtrails Over the Country Club. This year, she covered Father John Misty’s “Buddy’s Rendezvous” and released the single “Watercolor Eyes” for Season Two of Euphoria.
This story was updated on Dec. 7 at 1:25 pm to include Lana Del Rey’s Instagram note.