Lana Del Rey scrapped her naked album cover for ‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’ because she was “too nervous” to put it out there.
The 37-year-old star – who has just shared the second single from the upcoming LP, ‘A+W’ – admitted she could still release the intimate snap one day but she didn’t want it to distract from the message the record carries.
Speaking to Billie Eilish for Interview Magazine, she said: “My original cover was nude, then I thought about it, and I was like, maybe not right now, because there are some other things I want to do where I feel like that could get in the way.”
The ‘White Dress’ singer also revealed she considered an even longer album title, extending it to ‘Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd Watch Me on Ring a Bell Psycho Lifeguard’.
She said: “That was a really psychotic day because I was like, ‘Am I willing to literally burn everything down to the ground by having some strange, nonsensical title?’ But that’s a really good lesson because even with the nude photo, it was like, I might not have used it, but there’s definitely something there.”
Lana went on to insist she didn’t want to release the nude cover as a reaction to her critics.
She added about the cover: “The idea behind it was, instead of being exposed for things that weren’t true, I wanted to reveal something about myself that I actually thought was beautiful, but in the end, I got nervous about doing that because I was like, ‘Is this an artistic inspiration that came to me or is this a reaction to something I feel is critical about me?'”
Lana ended up choosing to “play it safe” in the end, but she hasn’t ruled out sharing the image in the future.
She added: “I don’t know if that’ll ever come out, but if it did, I would just want to make sure it came out when I thought it was super fun and not because I had to show something to people.
“That part of the process was a little tumultuous, because I was feeling open, but then I closed down again and wanted to play it safe.”