How Lucy Dacus Is Embracing Love on Her New Record, 'Forever Is a Feeling'

The indie rock singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus had already forged a successful career before the release of 2023's The Record, the album she made as a member of the supergroup boygenius along with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. When it came out, The Record kickstarted a whirlwind period for boygenius that saw them play to large crowds at major venues and later win three Grammy Awards. The overwhelmingly positive reaction to the album at the time—including praise from Taylor Swift—truly surprised the group members, including Dacus herself.

"We liked The Record when we made it," Dacus tells Newsweek. "We were like, 'Oh, hell yeah. People are going to love this.' But we had no idea of the scope. And maybe [it's] proof that we're not power hungry. You would not believe the things that we have said 'no' to.... But then I [still] have to remember, 'No, this is a really unique life.'"

Even with boygenius now on hiatus after its only full-length album, Dacus' popularity is poised to grow further with her latest solo album, the exquisite and shimmering Forever Is a Feeling—one of 2025's most anticipated music releases. Whereas her previous album, 2021's Home Video, was a reflection on her upbringing in Richmond, Virginia, Forever Is a Feeling is a document of where Dacus is now in her life. Thematically, the new record tackles such subjects as sex, love and relationships in a more open and frank manner than her previous releases.

"The good thing about Home Video is I feel kind of past that," she says. "I'm not obsessed with the stories of my past. What really interests me right now is my present moment. It's primarily about love and what love means and how it functions in my life and society."

A prime example of Dacus' perspective for this album is the romantic "Ankles," whose lyrics are bathed in urgency and sensuality, as well as tenderness, with the lines: "So bite me on the shoulder/pull my hair/and let me touch you where I want to." But the song also delves into the importance of communication between partners outside of sex: "What if we don't touch?/What if we only talk/about what we want/and cannot have?"

"It's just straight-up how I felt," she says of that track. "It's describing what you want to do to somebody in bed. But then at the end of the chorus, it's about waking up and being like, 'I want to drink tea.' It's not just lust. It's like, 'I want quiet moments with you as well.' So it shows the full spectrum of intimacy. It's about imagining that life with somebody."

Similarly another track, the sublime "Best Guess," examines the excitement of falling in love, albeit somewhat tempered. "It's easy to think, 'Oh, I found it. It's going to be like this forever,'" says Dacus. "That's not really true, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. The chorus saying, 'You are my best guess at the future'—we can't really guarantee each other anything because it would be foolhardy to try to freeze time. But 'I still intend to love you for as long as you'll let me.' I feel people who admit they're going to change have a better chance of longevity because then they don't get surprised when change comes about."

Not all of the new album is wrapped in sentimentality, as other songs address the complicated affairs of the heart in either melancholic or yearning ways—like in the elegant "Limerence," the tense "Talk," the aching "Come Out" and the album's dreamy and atmospheric title track.

"We never get to see forever," Dacus says of the latter song. "But it's something that is happening that we tap into occasionally. And we're aware of the broad scope of time that we will never really understand the beginning and end of, even if we know that our perception will end.

"I think love is like that," she continues. "When you tap into love, you're participating in an ongoing process that is like the life force of everything good. You get to pitch in your little portion of love before your time runs out. And the love, I would hope, continues without you. All of the loving that you did matters and inspires more love and comes from good."

Forever Is a Feeling closes with the emotionally gut-wrenching "Lost Time," which could be interpreted as a meditation on mortality. It begins on a subdued note before its tone shifts about two-thirds of the way into the song into something powerfully anthemic and dynamic.

"I think that once you really reckon with and remember that you'll die one day, it really clarifies how you spend your time," she says. "Your time is limited. You want to spend it on what matters most. Suddenly it's like, 'Oh my God, I had love to give and I wasn't giving it. What a waste of time.' Time is precious. Everything else is unimportant compared to being honest about your love to people."

The sound on Forever Is a Feeling is expansive and atmospheric, augmented by the contributions of Dacus' previous collaborators, producer Collin Pastore and drummer Jake Finch, and the musicians who appeared on it—among them the Irish singer Hozier, who duets with Dacus on the song "Bullseye"; and guitarist Blake Mills, who coproduced several of the new album's tracks. And as they did on Home Video, Dacus' boygenius bandmates Bridgers and Baker provide backing vocals on a few of Forever Is a Feeling's tracks. "I think that we kind of expect it," Dacus says of collaborating again with Bridgers and Baker, the latter whom Dacus recently confirmed she is in a relationship with to The New Yorker. "That's what we do now. We make music together. There's nothing more natural. I feel very at peace when I'm making music with them."

As Dacus begins her tour supporting the new record on April 16, she acknowledges that the universal adulation toward boygenius two years ago has elevated her profile. "It changed my life in almost every way," she says. "My music's in front of so many more people's eyes and ears, my identity is in people's minds, my face. It's interesting how that changes things in your personal life, too. I'm such a rarity in my circles. I'm lucky enough to retain a lot of friends from youth. And every time I grow, there's growing pains in my relationships, too. I kind of have to reiterate to my friends, 'I'm still the same guy.'"

The arrival of Forever Is a Feeling, which marks her solo debut on major label Geffen, comes nearly a decade after Dacus drew raves for her debut album, 2016's No Burden. Since then, her music, sung with her distinctive alto voice, has progressed with each successive record but still maintains the uniqueness and integrity of her songwriting.

"I just have to keep myself interested," she says about the upward trajectory of her career. "I like a challenge. Not everybody gets to record their music. It feels like every chance I get to record, I should be making the most of it and growing and stretching myself. I don't like doing the same things over and over. I want to feel like I'm pushing against the boundaries of what I understand."

As for what the next 10 years might be like for her, Dacus looks at the future with a level-headedness. "Life surprises me so much," she says. "Two years ago, if you had told me that my life looks like this, I would have been like, 'Keep dreaming.'

"I'm going to keep making music because I enjoy it," she continues. "But I think my goals might be a little bit more homeward-bound. I don't necessarily mean having kids, but I want to build my family. I want to feel what it's like to have presence and reliability in a reciprocal community of people who I love. And that takes slowing down...I could be going at this pace forever, but I'm very interested in what to learn from quietude."

Further Listening

No Burden, Matador, 2016

Dacus' arresting debut album catapulted her into the public consciousness. As she told PopMatters at the time, Dacus wrote the songs not knowing that she would record them. Of "I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore," she said, it was like "reflecting on the time when I was forming my identity in middle school. I was the funny one...there was a lot [of] pressure to be responsible for everyone's happiness. I didn't like watching other friends of mine be called the 'pretty one' or the 'smart one.' That had no depth and it didn't match how I knew them."

Historian, Matador, 2018

Released two years after her debut, Dacus' second album marked a progression in her sound with lyrics touching on such subjects as grief, breakups and political protest. "For No Burden, I hardly could wrap my head at having a band because I'd been playing solo up to that point," she told NYLON in 2018. "But for Historian, I knew that we could pretty much do anything. And so strings and horns came to mind. I had a better vocabulary for a guitar tone or vocal effects. I was so much more comfortable this time around."

Home Video, Matador, 2021

Home Video, Dacus' third full-length release, examined the singer's childhood. Not surprisingly, that record, whose singles included "Thumbs," "VBS" and "Hot & Heavy," continued Dacus' winning streak with the critics and fans. As she recalled to NPR, the journal entries she recorded from her youth provided the material for Home Video: "While I was writing all the songs," Dacus said at the time, "I would think of a specific memory and then just go find that one entry, and it's weird to see how your memory and how your documentation are different."