Lana Del Rey’s single “Henry, Come On” is finally here! It was released on April 11, 2025, but fans have been waiting since Jan. 17, 2024, when the song was teased in an Instagram video uploaded to her account.
The song was revealed to be part of her upcoming album titled,”The Right Person Will Stay” with 13 original songs set to release May 21, 2025.
However, the delay in releasing the new music does not come as a shock. She got married to her Floridian alligator tour guide husband, Jeremy Dufrene, and lost her Malibu home during the California wildfires.
People are not so concerned with this in contrary to the possibility of her going country on this album. A wave of artists from other genres have seen the popularity of country music rise, and want a taste of the success themselves. Artists like Post Malone and Beyoncé are just a couple of examples who have tried to make this switch. Will Lana try to follow in their footsteps?
The answer to this would be, no. While Lana’s latest single follows a romance between a cowboy and cowgirl, she still remains true to her airy high note roots. Her unique sound floats between each of her lyrics but juxtaposes the emo-country production within the background.
Verse one starts off bluntly with her confronting Henry, defying the odds that she might be the cause for her instability with the focal character of tension, “Henry.” “I mean Henry, come on/ Do you think I’d really choose it?/ All this off and on.”
The pre-chorus reinforces that she is no longer the girl who used to wait for her cowboy to come crawling back to her. Instead, she looks at it as a fun phase in her life filled with memories of the past that she has now moved on from.
Even though she might appear as a strong female pillar, worry still creeps into the chorus of the song. “But yesterday, I heard God say/ You were born to be the one/ To hold the hand of the man/ Who flies too close to the sun.”
Internally, she worries that this is the fate God has destined for her — a life where true love is not a reality but rather the memories that come with abandonment. Lana does a great job of making her listeners feel these same emotions of abandonment and relate to a time when they had to deal with “Henry” of their own in their lives.
While she might have killed it on the emotional storytelling, the production falls a bit flat. Despite a subtle twang, it is just too similar to the orchestral backing of her previous discography. I would have loved to see her take more of a risk here by incorporating a sad banjo or two to bring home that sad cowgirl feel — if she wanted to go all-out country.
A feature could have also helped with this. I could easily see Florence, from Florence + The Machine, or Megan Moroney on this track to experiment even more with the sound. Instead, she settled with a safe bet that her fans would enjoy, which another part of me commends her for.
It should be interesting to see when her tenth album will release, and what the rest of it will sound like. In the meantime, “Henry, Come On” is available on all major streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify.
This article was written by Alison McMillan. She can be reached at alison.mcmillan@marquette.edu.