Perhaps after so many years of being wrapped up in one’s own “persona” (something that Lana Del Rey has claimed to never have or need), it’s easy to forget where the line between genuineness ends and self-parody begins. With the release of “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” Del Rey’s first single of 2026, the blurring of that line has gone full-bore. And, speaking of that word—“bore”—it would be a lie to say that there wasn’t something slightly boring about Del Rey’s continued transition into a “bayou missus.” A woman who loves her “daddy” (as she cringily refers to her husband, Jeremy Dufrene, during the song) and wants “to know if I could use your stove/To cook somethin’ up for you.”
The use of “stove” as an image in the lyrics is also the likely inspiration behind Del Rey choosing to title her tenth album as such (though, prior to that, other titles announced were Lasso, The Right Person Will Stay and Classic). This, and a combination of wanting to convey the new “wife era” in her life, marked by traditionalism despite her “artistic” lifestyle. And it’s that desire for the traditional that Del Rey conjured on her last album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, when she made such declarations (via “Sweet”) as, “Do you want children?/Do you wanna marry me?/Do you wanna run marathons in Long Beach by the sea?/I’ve got things to do, like nothing at all/I wanna do them with you/Do you wanna do them with me?”
These questions, asked into the abyss, were answered by Dufrene, of whom Del Rey has stated, “Sometimes, in life, you think you’re the only one in the world who loves a particular thing, like sitting in an empty Macy’s or Home Depot parking lot. You might be really weird to some people, but then you find another soul who feels the same way.” So yes, it seems she’s found that special someone to do “nothing at all” with.
Yet Del Rey’s expression of “happiness” wouldn’t be “Del Reyian” if it didn’t still sound morose. And, in this case, downright eerie right from the start, as its The Twilight Zone-inspired intro recalls something sonically similar to what Del Rey included during the trailer for her 2017 album, Lust for Life. With its haunted and unhinged musical intro, Del Rey briefly prepares the listener for the madness to come, starting with lyrics that reveal Del Rey can’t let go of the rhyme she already wielded on 2017’s “Summer Bummer,” goading, “He’s my white feather hawk tail deer hunter/Likes to keep me cool in the hot breeze summer/Likes to push me on this green John Deere mower/I know you wish you had a man like him, it’s such a bummer.” Here, too, Del Rey seems to be calling out John Deere yet again to urge them to make her their spokesperson, considering she also mentions the tractor-associated brand on 2021’s “Blue Banisters,” opening the song with the line, “There’s a picture on the wall of me on a John Deere.”
Aside from that plug for the brand once again, this verse seems to radiate a Beyoncé vibe in the sense that Del Rey is making the false assumption that anyone would be jealous of her because of “her man.” For, though Dufrene is in keeping with the “aesthetic” of previous “Daddy types” she’s been with in the past, most of her songs have allowed one to envision who she’s singing about to the imagination, therefore allowing the listener to picture someone, let’s say, more of the Brad Pitt or George Clooney sort (a.k.a. polished versions of the “Daddy” that Del Rey seeks). Case in point, 2012’s “Off to the Races” or 2014’s “Shades of Cool.” It’s on the former track during which she describes, “My old man is a bad man/But I can’t deny, the way he holds my hand/And he grabs me, he has me by my heart/He doesn’t mind I have a Las Vegas past/He doesn’t mind I have a L.A. crass way about me/He loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart.”
In many ways, “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter” is like an alter ego to “Off to the Races” (though co-producer Jack Antonoff instead characterized it as “a sibling to venice / white dress / a&w”). Not just because Del Rey professes her unwavering devotion to a “daddy” figure (even going so far as to pronounce, “I love my daddy/Of course we’re still together”) no matter what anyone else thinks about their relationship, but because of its “flipside” (no Ultraviolence reference intended) qualities to “Off to the Races.” In the latter track, the relationship is painted as Bonnie and Clyde-esque (not to mention Humbert Humbert and Lolita-esque—with Del Rey still playing the “Lolita part” by marrying someone ten years her senior). In “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” there’s still the Bonnie and Clyde/“two against the world” element, but it’s intended to be painted as a “healthier” dynamic.
Besides that, both songs mention cocaine, with Del Rey also name-checking said drug with the, er, line, “Whoopsie-daisy, deposition cocaine.” The inference here being that she’s inhaled her lover like a drug, and has now become addicted to the feeling he gives. Cocaine is also intertwined with her 2014 tracks, “Ultraviolence” and “Florida Kilos,” though it’s the latter that also refers to cocaine and a stove in the same sentence: “White lines, baking powder on the stove/Cooking up a dream, turning diamonds into snow.”
As is the case with “Florida Kilos” (a song that doesn’t miss the chance for Del Rey to call someone a “daddy” either), “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter” subverts a symbol that is typically associated with “conventional” domestic duties and turns it on its ear. For while Del Rey might be doing her “best” at cosplaying the “missus” of the house by trying to embody a 1950s-era wife (if only in her sartorial choices and frequent touting of “feminine fragility”), she admits during the song that she lacks one of the key definitions of what society has long deemed essential to being a “good” wife: cooking skills. So it is that Del Rey shrugs to her husband, “Take my hand off the stove, hun/Yelling, ‘Yoo-hoo, dinner’s almost done’/Whoopsie-daisy, yoo-hoo/I imagine you do/Know how absolutely bad I’m with an oven.”
Invoking the use of these 50s-centric terms—“yoo-hoo” and “whoopsie-daisy”—Del Rey also makes it clear that while some part of her would like to inhabit this role of “traditional” wife (and maybe even mother), her career choice and temperament make that all but impossible. What’s more, there’s the mention of an oven in addition to the stove, which, because it’s Del Rey, automatically evokes Sylvia Plath using this classic totem of a housewife’s albatross to kill herself.
Of course, there’s another song in Del Rey’s oeuvre that refers to Plath more directly. This being in yet another comically long-in-length title for a song: “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it” (perhaps second only to the absurdity of a title such as “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing”). Characterizing herself as a “24/7 Sylvia Plath,” Del Rey shies away from that image in “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter” in the sense that she’s actually happy (or “at best” “not sad”) with her husband. The one she even went so far as to enlist to help co-write this mercurial, moody number (how very Taylor Swift with Joe Alwyn on Folklore—though he opted for a pseudonym). Leading to the question: was he the person responsible for coming up with, “Put it on my ass, no tan lines summer”? Or maybe, “Positively voodoo, everything that you do/Did you know exactly how magical you are?” After all, “voodoo” is commonly associated with Louisiana, and it would be in typical form for a white (though tan) man to reduce it to this stereotype. Then again, Del Rey is no stranger to being “regrettably a white woman” who also makes blanket statements of this nature (see also: “question for the culture”).
As for Del Rey asking if he knows how magical he is, she herself remarked on her own “magic” in 2023’s aforementioned “Sweet,” when she flexes, “I’ve got magic in my hand/Stars in my eyes/I’m a different kind of woman/If you want some basic bitch, go to the Beverly Center and find her.” The irony of it being that, for as “offbeat” as Del Rey presents herself, she’s still just a “regular” girl who ultimately wanted to settle down and live a quiet life in the country (that is, when she’s not jetting off to Ralph Lauren—a premier brand for basic bitches—runway shows in New York, dragging her reluctant husband along with her).
Described as an “alternative country ballad,” Antonoff wasn’t wrong in linking the sonic correlation of “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter” to certain songs in Del Rey’s past—namely, “White Dress” and “A&W.” But this is an offering even more bizarre and inaccessible-to-the-mainstream. Indeed, it’s almost like she wants to ensure she out-Ethel Cains Ethel Cain to further assert her dominance as “the most famous girl at the waffle house.” But while “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter” largely stands alone among Del Rey’s previous work in terms of its sound, there are plenty of callbacks to other songs of hers thanks to certain word choices and lyrical “sketches.” Apart from the stove and cocaine mentions, there’s also Del Rey bringing up such Lolita-inspired musings as, “Before I met him, wore a bow over three summers/Now it’s a ribbon ‘round my neck, and it’s cherry-colored” (‘cause Lord knows Del Rey bring up cherries). Or the use of “daisy” (even if as a “vintage” exclamation), harkening back to her lyrics on both “13 Beaches” (“With the daisies, feelin’ hazy”) and “Summer Bummer” (“Wrap you up in my daisy chains”). In another instance, she asserts, “We’re a match, he’s just in my bone marrow.” This reminding one of her insistence on “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing” (oy vey, that title), “If you don’t believe me, my poetry or my melodies/Feel it in your bones.”
To be sure, after enough listens to “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” you will feel it in your bones. For its lulling, almost hypnotic quality is what remains with the listener more than the, at times, uncomfortable, downright cringeworthy lyrics, which, although designed to prove that Del Rey still has “street cred” despite going full-tilt domestic (even acknowledging, “I know it’s strange to see me cooking for my husband”), only end up making her seem more far gone to the “dark side” of conventionalism. Which is right up the current administration’s alley as they try to promote decidedly 1950s “ideals” for women.
In this regard, one of the phrases Del Rey uttered during the previously-referenced trailer for Lust for Life comes to mind (apart from how she wanted to “cook up” something). Specifically, the moment when she announces that she likes to “consider what [her] contribution to the world should be in these dark times.” Well, the times have gotten even darker since then, and so it’s a bit odd that Del Rey should choose this as her current “contribution.” An odd ode to the pedestrian and heteronormative. But then again, that’s a description that has characterized her music from the beginning. Thus, in spite of how “different” this single might seem, in truth, it’s more of the same from Del Rey.
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