Lucy Dacus stopped by The Daily Show to perform her reflective song “Modigliani.” The singer appeared on stage in front of a group of Modigliani paintings alongside a group of musicians, including a harpist and a string section.
“Modigliani” appears on Dacus’ most recent album, Forever Is a Feeling, which dropped in March. “The moments where I have felt in ‘forever,’ in the way you feel in love, ring on in my life, and have changed me,” she told Rolling Stone about the meaning of the title. “So they have an effect, even though that exact moment couldn’t last forever.”
Dacus sat down with host Desi Lydic to discuss the expanded edition of the album, Forever Is a Feeling: The Archives, and getting ordained to perform weddings on tour. Lydic noted that Dacus’ LP was described as “the most romantic album of 2025” and asked the singer what she feels makes a great love song.
“I love love songs that admit that you don’t know everything,” Dacus explained. “I think that some love songs, that I still love, are like, ‘I need you forever’ or ‘I’ll die without you’ or something. And though those are great songs, I don’t think it’s aspirational. So I tried to write a lot of songs that were still very passionate, but based in the reality that everything passes, including maybe the love that you’re so passionate about in the moment. But it’s still worth doing.”
Speaking about performing weddings at her concerts, Dacus said she wished she had “thought of it a long time ago.” “We started doing this in July, and I gave people, like, three days notice before our first show of tour,” she said. “And people showed up and had their marriage licenses and danced on stage. In every city that we’ve played since people have signed up to get married and it’s been really sweet.”
She added, “The thought occurred about a year ago when Trump took office. He came for trans rights so quickly and that affected so many of my friends. My mom, actually, was like, ‘He’s going to come for gay marriage and marriage equality.’ … It’s just such a colossal, miserable waste of time—like, why? It’s very confusing. So I just thought it would be fun and it’s really sweet. I think we did 154 couples.”
Dacus recently joined Janelle Monae for Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians to reflect on her creative process and her role as an artist. In the interview she noted, “An album to me, what makes you not turn it off is thinking about it as a progression through scenes. You have to earn the end of the record. So often, my favorite songs are toward the end of the record because it’s like you set up the question and go on the quest and then you arrive at something.”
