Breaking Up Slowly

Album: Chemtrails Over The Country Club (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • Lana Del Rey ends her Chemtrails Over The Country Club album with three country-inspired tracks. The first of them, a meditation on a crumbling relationship, is a duet with the country singer-songwriter Nikki Lane.
  • During the song, Del Rey and Lane compare their tempestuous romances to the toxic marriage between country stars Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Wynette was married five times, most notably to the alcoholic singer and songwriter Jones between 1969 and 1975. Though the First Lady of Country Music claimed her husband abused her, the couple continued to collaborate musically after their divorce.
  • Del Rey and Lane are longtime friends and first toured together in 2019. The pair wrote this song during a catch-up session before a show in Wichita, Kansas.

    Lane told The Boot that they hadn't seen each other for a while, so were talking in a hotel room about what had been going on in their lives over the previous few months. "I had carried my guitar up to practice... And I kind of said out loud, 'Well, someone says I'm breaking up slowly,'" she continued. "So she sings, 'Breaking up slowly…' And I'm like, 'Oh s--t, yeah.' And so we wrote the song just hanging out before we went downstairs to get ready for the show that day."
  • Del Rey debuted the song live during an October 17, 2020 Austin, Texas show.

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