Early last week after a string of mysterious Lana Del Rey sightings in Alabama, AL.com reached out to Muscle Shoals Sound to see is she’d been recording there. And at the time, Del Rey, the alternative-pop superstar, hadn’t been. However, last Friday afternoon the Los Angeles-based singer showed up unannounced at Muscle Shoals Sound’s famous 3614 Jackson Highway address in Sheffield, Alabama, part of the multiple-city Shoals area.

Del Rey — with her sister and brother in tow, Muscle Shoals Sound studio and operations manager Ana Megan Hyde says — was given a tour of the studio, where artists like The Rolling Stones, Staples Singers, Rod Stewart and many others cut classic tracks.

Then that Friday evening Del Rey returned to the studio by herself to do some recording. She returned Sunday night to continue the sessions, during which three or four songs were recorded, Hyde says. Asked what the tracks Del Rey recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound are for, Hyde says, “I can’t really tell what she was working on. That’s still a secret thing.”

Echoing what others who’ve met Del Rey during her weeklong Alabama stay have said, Hyde says, “She is an absolute dream. I mean, one of the sweetest human beings I’ve ever met. She is just so laid back and easy to be around. A lot of fun. You just felt like you were working with somebody you’ve been friends with for years.”

Muscle Shoals Sound called in local keyboardist Will Allison to record with Del Rey. Allison accompanied the “Summertime Sadness” and “West Coast” singer on Hammond B-3 organ and the studio’s baby-grand piano, the same piano the original demo for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” was cut on. “She sang and Will wrote the music as she sang,” Hyde says, “and they were a great pair.” Audio engineers Chase Brandon and Colin Lott recorded the sessions.

When asked what microphone she wanted to sing into, even though Muscle Shoals Sound has high-end studio mics, Del Rey asked for a Shure SM-58, a durable mic commonly used for live vocals onstage.

Hearing Del Rey sing during the Muscle Shoals Sound sessions, studio employees were struck by the quality of her vocal performances. “When she opened her mouth to sing,” Hyde says, “you couldn’t tell the difference between listening to her on an album and listening to her in real life. Her talent is unbelievable.”

Del Rey’s previous Alabama sightings included a Birmingham nail salon, and interacting with fans in nearby Florence’s downtown, shopping at a Russellville boutique, and even working a waitress shift at a Florence location of Waffle House.

Speculation about what Del Rey was doing in Alabama has run rampant. In her song “Paris, Texas” — off her 2023 album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” which topped the charts in several countries and debuted at number three in the U.S. – Del Rey sings of going, “to see some friends of mine, down in Florence, Alabama.” So, it’s not out of the question footage of her Waffle House shift could’ve been shot guerrilla style for a music video for “Paris, Texas.”

In a 2014 Fader interview promoting her album “Ultraviolence,” Del Rey was quoted as saying that at one point she “lived down in Alabama with my boyfriend.”

When AL.com spoke with fan Taylor Hallman, an employee at Russellville’s Maggie J’s Boutique and Gifts, who checked Del Rey out at the register when she shopped there last week, Hallman said when asked what she was doing in Alabama, Del Rey said she was visiting family in the Florence area. Hallman said, “And I want to say it was on her sister’s husband’s [or significant other’s] side, but I could be wrong.”

Hyde corroborates this. “It’s her sister’s either her boyfriend or her husband. It’s his family. They’re from Hamilton,” which is about an hour’s drive from Sheffield. “And then when his parents divorced, one of the parents moved to Florence.”

Hyde says Muscle Shoals Sound waited to go public with news of the Del Rey sessions until the singer left town earlier this week. While at the studio, the singer remarked how genuine the people she’d met during her Alabama stay had been, Hyde says.

Muscle Shoals Sound was founded in 1969, by legendary studio musicians The Swampers, aka Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who played on hits recorded at nearby FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals by the likes of Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett before going out on their own.

As much of a thrill it surely was for Del Rey to record in a studio with so much history, it’s also special for Muscle Shoals Sound, where in recent years country-rocker Chris Stapleton and retro-rockers Rival Sons have cut.

“We have a lot of people that come through here that mean a lot to the older generation,” Hyde says. “But she’s one of the first artists in a while that really has an impact on the younger generation. That’s a big deal.”

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