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August is one of the most intense months of the year. It spans the middle of summer and the end of summer; the lager-soaked delirium of long days, scorched grass and the Jet2holidays jingle, and the washed-out nostalgia as the calendar begins to turn its page to the season of change, legacy TV, and American Football’s first album. It’s an emotional spin cycle. Rapture, chaos, relief, grief, and a major bank holiday weekend all contained within 31 tumultuous days. On top of that summer 2025 has been, in the enduring words of Santana featuring Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, “a hot one.” Droughts sweeping across North America; a wildfire in the French department of Aude that grew to the size of Paris; heat across Europe more blinding than Ibiza Final Boss’s veneers. It’s been so dry for so long in London that the trees have dropped half their leaves to conserve water, and the ground at All Points Eastkicked up enough dust to rival Burning Man’s ‘Orgy Dome’. Goodbye Iced Matcha Labubu Dubai Chocolate Summer, we hardly knew you.
This intensity has been reflected in the cultural miasma, too. There have been strange goings on in high profile, formerly “blog-era coded” circles. For instance, Justin Bieber appears to have completed the final stage of his dirtbag transformation and is now just relentlessly posting thirst traps and day-in-the-life-of flexes like a girl with a mysterious source of income. Having reanimated his critical darling status with a new Mk.gee-produced album and completing his first year of fatherhood, Bieber is maturing like an original pair of Levi’s. More lived in, more beat up, found in all pockets of society. This funny lad on Reels,Josh Pray, described him as entering his “unahuman era,” which is when someone acquires the ability to “move about communities with absolutely no problem,” fitting in everywhere from the cookout to the Costco counter. Stan Twitter is obsessed with the idea of him crashing out and harbouring ill-will towards his wife, but it seems to me that he’s simply continuing to enjoy the fruits of his freedom after an ascent riddled with control and exploitation, which isn’t the worst trajectory for a child star. If he wants to upload a collage of himself ripping a bong in sliders or publish eight different grid posts rubber ringing down a river like aLouisiana meth dealer, allow him. Looks like he’s having a perfectlyswaggy summer.
I’ll tell you who is not having a swaggy summer, however, is Lana Del Rey. The queen of Americana has undergone some life changes since her last album, 2023’sDid You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. She got married to an alligator swamp boat captain, got in trouble for taking a selfie in a white bow dress holding a gun after the 2024 Grammys (where she lost – quite funny tbf), and has dropped a very noticeable amount of weight. She’s also had a new album in the works for a while, which promises to be a country affair called ‘Stove’ (previous titles include ‘Lasso’ and ‘The Right Person Will Stay’). All signs have been pointing to a vibe shift, but the vibe that has been materialising recently is, I have to say, not looking great.
In mid-August, Lana shared asnippet from a new song on Instagram – a(nother) floaty Jack Antonoff-produced piano ballad that opens with the lyric “Ethel Cain hated my Instagram post.” It goes on to reference “the most famous girl at the Waffle House” (a headline The New York Times gave a profile of Ethel Cain in 2022), as well as similar photos both artists have taken with Salem’s Jack Donoghue (friend of Ethel’s, ex-lover of Lana’s). There appear to have been some catty remarks thrown around privately in both directions, though overall I’d say it’s fairly undignified for a 40-year-old legacy star to be mining three-year-old gossip with a much younger artist for material for an argument. These seem like the movements of a drunk aunt at Christmas, which isn’t helped by the drama being immediately followed by a W Magazine cover shoot that has her looking like she pushed a child out of a lifeboat on the Titanic.
Hours after the track teaser dropped, Ethel Cain posted an Instagram story saying “Lana Del Rey has blocked Ethel Cain on Instagram” and hasn’t mentioned it since. Jack Donoghue, for his part, has contributed a photo of himself topless in the woods wearing a pair of boxing wraps. We can only hope thatStove doesn’t lean full tilt into a 1960s Valium housewife with her meat in jelly and her head in the oven aesthetic with no hint of camp, but it does seem like that’s where we could be headed. More updates as they come.