Dan Auerbach calls Lana Del Rey 'a true eccentric' and 'extremely talented'

Lana Del Rey just released the video for her song “West Coast,” off her upcoming sophomore album Ultraviolence. As previously reported, The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who won Producer of the Year at the 2013 Grammys, is producing the effort. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, he spoke about the unlikely collaboration with Del Rey and his role in her new album.

"She's a true eccentric, and, you know, extremely talented" says Auerbach. "She has a definite vision of what she is and what she wants to be, musically and visually, which is cool. [Drummer Patrick Carney] and I have always just been, like, ‘You can take our photo, I guess,’ but she just like looks at this whole thing as this big art project that she gets to do, which is great."

According to Rolling Stone, the two met through a mutual friend while Auerbach was in New York mixing Ray Lamontagne’s latest album. Neither had really heard the other’s music, but after hanging out for a while, they found some commonalities in their music. Auerbach later invited Del Rey to his Nashville studio, Easy Eye.

"What started off as 'Let's get together for a couple days with some musicians’ turned into two weeks doing an album."

Auerbach said that Del Rey’s demos were good to go when he heard them, so there wasn’t much he had to do with the songs.

“I wanted to get my musicians in who I love and get my sound that I get here with her songs and that's it,” he said. “I didn't want to mess it up. She sang live with a seven-piece band. That's the whole record – a seven-piece band with her singing live. It was crazy."

Auerbach also talked about Del Rey’s influence on Turn Blue and commented on her SNL debacle of 2012. Read the full interview here, and check out the video for “West Coast” below. Let us know what you think in the comments section!

Tags

Lana Del Rey, Dan Auerbach, The Black Keys