Cat Power on Lana Del Rey: “She reached out at a time when I felt really super-muted”

Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, has revealed that Lana Del Rey was one of the few people to reach out to her after she was dropped by her label, Matador.

  • READ MORE: Cat Power: “The music I’m drawn to is about either healing or abandon – one or the other”

In an interview with NME, Marshall shared that Del Rey invited her out on the road during a difficult time in her career.

“When I was told that my last record ‘Wanderer’ was no good, there was a year where I didn’t have a label,” she told NME. “There’s about 200 people that were affiliated with what I thought was my family who never checked in with me… [I thought], ‘I guess I can sell my apartment and I’ll just raise my son, I’ll move somewhere and try to get into writing… I’m a really good waitress and cook and stuff, and I can just get a good stable job and start a different career’.”

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At the time Marshall said that she felt “totally not part of any musical community” and “dumped by my family”. But then she got a few calls from musicians asking for her to open for them, including Del Rey, who she collaborated with on 2018’s ‘Wanderer’.

Cat Power
Cat Power. Credit: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

“In that year of time when my phone wasn’t ringing, I got two calls. One was from Warren [Ellis] and Nick [Cave] from The Bad Seeds after [2016 album] ‘Skeleton Key’; they invited me to open up for them in California,” Marshall shared. “And then I got another call and it was from Lana and she asked me to open up for her in Europe.”

She continued: “These people reached out and offered me a job. And it was more than a job. It was like, ‘We’re artists, so it’s actually OK. Lana’s just one of those people who reached out at a time when I felt really super-muted.”







Marshall also nodded to her friendship with Del Rey by covering her song ‘White Mustang’ in her recent covers album, ‘Covers’. 

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Meanwhile, Del Rey recently new song ‘Watercolor Eyes‘ taken from the new season of Euphoria, as well as previewing her upcoming cover of Father John Misty’s ‘Buddy’s Rendezvous‘. It has also emerged that she has recorded an entire album’s worth of material with Miles Kane.