I’M PROBABLY IN SAFE COMPANY HERE

when I admit I haven’t paid the closest attention to the charts for a good few years. The cut and thrust of contemporary pop music is all well and good; the vast majority of it just doesn’t interest me that much. But there’s always the odd exception, and none has been bigger in recent memory than Lana Del Rey. For a 21st century superstar, she has kept intriguing company: Joan Baez and Cat Power, Stevie Nicks and Courtney Love. But it is her music, and particularly the hazy California dreamstate conjured up on Norman Fucking Rockwell!, that separates her from her peers. That album, a MOJO favourite of 2019, showcased an artist equally at home in Hollywood noir and sunbaked Topanga; a modern Lady Of The Canyon, with the self-awareness to be candid about her Joni fixation.

It’s our pleasure, then, to formally welcome Lana Del Rey into the MOJO family this month, as her excellent new album Chemtrails Over The Country Club is readied for release. “It’s crazy to me, crazy to me, crazy to me that I could be on the cover of MOJO,” she tells Victoria Segal, in the course of a deep and fascinating interview. But it makes perfect sense to us – and hopefully to you, too.