Life for Lucy Dacus has changed a little over the last three years. The singer-songwriter, who released her debut album No Burden in 2016, was beloved in certain circles, with a comfortable level of recognition amongst Pitchfork readers and introspective indie girls. As albums two and three arrived, so grew her audience; but in 2023, on the release of The Record – the first album of her supergroup side-project Boygenius, with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers – the ante was really upped. The Record earned the trio a BRIT and three Grammy awards and saw them sell out The Hollywood Bowl, headline their own mini day festival in London, and top the album charts in the UK and Ireland (with a highly commended fourth place on the Billboard 100).
Amidst the mayhem, Lucy Dacus was falling in love with bandmate Baker. Her fourth album, Forever Is A Feeling – out 28 March 2025 – documents the complexity of emotions that comes with a high-stakes, risk-it-all relationship. The visual universe surrounding the album is one that draws on Renaissance art and the romanticism of times gone by. For the songs' first outings, Dacus chose to perform in a number of intimate spaces across the US and Europe – museums, churches and galleries.
Wallpaper* met Dacus in London, ahead of a performance at The Foundling Museum: a former 1700s children's hospital, now a space to celebrate care-experienced people. 'I'm adopted and it was not taught to other children what that was,' she says of the location choice. 'Everybody's only access [to adoption] was Dickensian orphans like Oliver Twist. So the idea that kids take field trips here and learn from a young age what adoption is and accept it really moved me.'
We spoke with Dacus about her connection to art and the aesthetic realm of her new record. Read our conversation, below.
Wallpaper*: Do you remember the first time you connected with classical art?
Lucy Dacus: Probably on school trips. I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, where the museums are free, and in DC, two hours away, those museums are also free. So I grew up thinking they all were – as they should be.
I grew up in the church and all you're told as a kid is to conceal your body. But there was this unspoken: ‘But old statues are OK’. I remember as a kid just thinking, ‘My gosh, so this is allowed?’ It was kind of confusing, but ultimately good, because they are beautiful. It's a sensual essential truth. When you see these statues, they look like real bodies. Especially the 3D or life-size ones. I appreciated that. Growing up, I was always tall, I was always bigger and I definitely fit that beauty standard. So it was encouraging to see myself in some of these soft ladies.'
W*: For the album artwork of Forever Is A Feeling, artist Will St John created an original painting of you. What drew you to his work?
LD: 'He painted a portrait of a band, Satine, I met briefly in New York and he also did a portrait of [actor] Hari Nef that was so beautiful, so I followed his work. I had in mind that it would be great to get someone to paint something. And when it came around to it, I was like, why not just the guy that I keep thinking about? He did a really great job – so good a job, in fact, that people don't believe it's a painting.
If I was really bold, I would have been naked in the painting and perhaps the point would have come across – it's a body, like these other bodies in this beautiful old academic space – but even the amount of skin that I'm showing is not usual. I should have really thought about this, because sometimes I feel really feminine, other times I feel really masculine. And so half the time I'm super pleased with this album cover, and then the other half I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh!’
W*: As an introduction to the album, you've been performing concerts in churches and museums. It clearly ties in with the visual narrative of the record, but were there other reasons you were drawn to these more intimate spaces?
LD: Well, it served a lot of purposes, and it's been amazing. Not only has it satisfied everything I thought it would, there have been really cool surprises. I haven't played my own shows since 2022. I've been nervous to be the sole focus of attention again. So I wanted these to be lower stakes, smaller shows – kind of back to my early days. In museums and churches you are supposed to be quiet – people shush you. And so I thought, what a great place for people to hear new music! They will be paying attention because the space demands it.
In [new album track] 'Lost Time', there's a really loud section, and it is like, wow. I don't know if these paintings have ever heard a sound, you know? I even invite people to sing along to 'Night Shift' at the end, and some people have really gone for it. So that's been fun. And then also, especially at Église Saint-Eustache in Paris, I am singing these gay songs, right? I was just thinking how this has probably never happened here. And especially at a time when gay and trans rights are so threatened, in the US, but definitely here in the UK too. There's a sea change of things getting markedly worse, really quickly. But then I also think we have come so far – there were years in the past in this church where I would have been killed.
W*: For the music video for 'Ankles' – a song about desire – you are a girl who has escaped from a painting, traipsing around New York in a beautiful Rodarte dress. Where did that idea come from?
LD: 'I was sure the video should not be the lyrics, because that would be a crazy thing to portray. I wanted to show this tension between what's expected and what's conventional and what you really want and what's visceral. And so I'm this lady who popped out of the painting that's trying to really, like, experience life centrally – by eating fruit and being found naked on a mattress with a bunch of hotties. I'm just trying to stop and smell the roses, in a way. And then Havana Rose Liu's character is the museum guard saying you have to get back and you have to be still and do your job. And so I think that played out really nicely.'
'Forever Is A Feeling' is out now via Geffen Records
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