Lucy Dacus on Love Songs, the Luxury of Time, and Her New Album ‘Forever Is a Feeling’
Writer: Lauren O’Neill | Creative Direction and Photographer: Cal McIntyre | Makeup: Dakota Blacklaws-Lacy | Hair: Francesca Cardona | Styling: Katy Cutbirth | Photo Assist: Rosie Carney | Tattoos: Letitia Mortimer
“What I'm about to say sounds so corny, but give me a break about it, OK?”
I am being asked to go easy on Lucy Dacus, as she marches around the scenic streets of Edinburgh, over-ear headphones on. We are connected over a slightly blurry FaceTime, to talk about her current tour, and her most recent album, Forever Is a Feeling, which came out this past March – though up until this point we’ve mostly just exchanged pleasantries about the Scottish capital and how good her live band are at getting freebies from baristas.
“I can’t promise that, but in theory, sure,” I respond.
“Well, a really successful song to me is one that does work on people's hearts when I'm not there. That's really the dream. I want the song to live a life outside of me. It doesn't matter that it's from me. It just matters that the other person is getting it.”
By this point Dacus and I have been talking for about five minutes, and her heart has already found its way to her sleeve. Indeed, the appeal of much of Lucy Dacus’ music is that it packs its emotional punch by way of laying a groundwork of ordinary, quotidian details, as lines like “help me with the crossword in the morning” say so much with so little. Quickly, it feels like our conversation has also taken a similar turn.
But this swiftness to emotional candour feels appropriate for a discussion around Forever Is a Feeling. By Dacus’ own admission, it is the album in her catalogue which is “my most representative of me and my internal world.” The record was written mostly between 2022 and 2024, which was a period of huge change and upheaval for Dacus both professionally – it was at this point that she found a new level of fame as one third of boygenius, alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, who is also Dacus’ girlfriend – and personally, as she navigated the end of one relationship, and the beginning of another.
Full look: Talent’s own
Given all the change, it makes sense that Dacus’ approach to songwriting shifted a little bit around this time too: “A lot of my songs before this point are about other people, my relationships and my lens on things outside of myself,” she explains. “Whereas these songs are about what's happening internally. I wrote them in the midst of confusing feelings, whereas historically, I've written about stuff years after it happened, once I've already processed it. That feels really different to me.”
Something else that feels different to Dacus – and that might feel different to fans, too – is that she was given space to luxuriate over Forever Is a Feeling in a way that she hadn’t experienced in the past. Inspired by love songs by artists ranging from Nina Simone to Father John Misty (she cites “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” and “I Went to the Store One Day” as equally influential – and it’s true that her music kind of feels like the perfect centre of a Venn diagram of the two), she collaborated with musicians including Melina Duterte of Jay Som and violinist and keyboardist Phoenix Rousiamanis. Rousiamanis’ work in particular, Dacus says, “helped cement the sonic identity of the record.
“I was so spoiled this time around,” she continues. “My first record took a day to make. The second one took a week, the third one took maybe about three weeks, and just with limited people. But this time, I would pick it up and put it down and ask myself, ‘Who's the best for the job?’ Or I’d think, ‘This is good, but could it be better?’ And by ‘better’ I’d mean, like, closer to what's in my head. It’s a nice feeling.”
The result of this longer process is a record which feels noticeably more rich and sonically layered than anything that has gone before, heavy with strings that echo the emotions being thought through in real time, taking them seriously and giving them space to be expressed in their sometimes contradictory fullness.
Shirt and Tie: Margaret Howell
“I was so interested in the idea of ornateness and complexness and being able to imagine hands,” Dacus tells me. “I think there's so much work being made right now that is really cool. But a lot of it is very futuristic or digital or simplistic, or kind of like, almost like, artificially blasé. I guess I'm a little bit bothered by people pretending to be nonchalant. And I just had this thought, like, ‘I want to make something that is appropriately ornate – something that matches how complex these feelings are.’”
“I guess I'm a little bit bothered by people pretending to be nonchalant.”
Aesthetically, the Forever Is a Feeling era embraces the complexity and multi-facetedness of being and feeling more than one thing at once, too. Across her Polyester cover shoot, photographed by Cal McIntyre, Dacus took on various personae – this is a hall of mirrors reflection of her own day-to-day dressing, as well as something she’s been actively playing with throughout the album campaign (she most notably wore a custom, Renaissance-inspired Rodarte dress in the music video for “Ankles,” while the album cover for Forever Is a Feeling is an oil painting of Dacus by Will St. John).
“Getting to play dress up and invoking all these different time periods is always very humbling to me, to think about how small I am compared to all the history before me,” Dacus says. “It’s basically just a reminder that, like, even though these feelings feel profound to me, I'm just one amongst millions and billions historically that have felt this. Rodarte is amazing, of course, and on tour, I have a stylist I've been working with, Ashley Furnival, who totally gets that I want to be fully femme sometimes and fully masc other times. So in a lot of cities where I play two shows, I'll do a gown and makeup and jewellery, and then in other shows, I'll have a suit. And that's just how I am in my actual life, too. I don't want to pick. I want both.”
This willingness to show herself as she really is is heavily echoed in so many ways across the album – most wholly, naturally for Dacus, in the lyrics. The moment of self-revelation that fans have seemed to latch onto most comes on “Best Guess.” “You may not be an angel,” Dacus sings on the track, “but you are my girl.”
I’m interested in how it feels for her to make this outward acknowledgement of both her queerness and of a relationship that, by its nature, is already somewhat difficult to keep private. “I wrote it because it was true,” Dacus responds, simply. “After I write something, I kind of do an editing round of like, ‘Well, what do I actually want people to hear?’ And I'll sometimes change things if it feels too close, because originally I write just for my own needs. It's a different thing to share it.
Dress: Simone Rocha | Coat: Huishan Zhang
“And then with that line, I was like, ‘Do I change this?’ And it was the first time I felt like actually changing it would feel so bad – like kind of a betrayal. So I'm happy to keep it. People sometimes go “wooo” in the crowd when that line comes on. That song has been so special to perform, because I get to see couples turn to each other, and dance and kiss, and it's just really, really sweet.”
“‘Best Guess’ has been so special to perform, because I get to see couples turn to each other, and dance and kiss, and it's just really, really sweet.”
The night of our interview, she’ll be playing at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, and while promoting an album outside of the boygenius bubble has had its challenges – “It’s definitely felt harder, just having to drive on my own. With them, if I'm tired, I can tune out, and then there's two more people's incredible taste. Whereas, when I'm by myself, it's like, I have to be on or nothing happens,” Dacus explains – these live concerts have been a boon.
“The shows have probably been my favourite part so far, because my band rocks, and I love being able to just like, look on either side and see people that really know me,” she says. She’ll be on the road with them for the rest of 2025, rounding off the year in Mexico, taking a little time off in between tour legs, but not much. In her downtime, she’ll just be writing and creating and doing whatever comes naturally. “My band bought me a recorder because I want to try making music with a completely different frame of reference. So we'll see how that goes,” she ponders aloud. I laugh, but you do have to admit – if anyone can turn the infamous screech of this classroom instrument into a tool for plumbing heart-wrenching emotional depths, it’ll probably be Lucy Dacus.