The surviving record does not establish these as six newly recorded Lana Del Rey songs, and no reliable evidence identifies the bundle as a preview of Honeymoon. On August 10, 2015, reports from DOD Magazine and Jenesaispop grouped “Cry Me a River,” “Hangin’ Around,” “Jealous Girl,” “Joshy and I,” “Live or Die” and “Wayamaya” as a six-song event. Their timing was real. The implication that six newly created songs had arrived together was not established; Jenesaispop itself acknowledged that it did not know whether any belonged on the forthcoming album.

The available record is less tidy. Fan-maintained catalogs describe the circulating files as coming from different years and creative states: a home recording of an old standard, early or undated rough material, an alternate version of a previously leaked song and a purported new version that fan discographers now describe as potentially fan-made. Their proximity to the official Honeymoon campaign created an easy narrative, but an upload date is not a recording date, and a filename is not an album credit.

The upload date was not a recording date

A fan-maintained chronology of leaks places the core batch on August 6, four days before the contemporaneous reports. Its August table groups “Wayamaya,” “Hangin’ Around,” “Joshy & I,” “Cry Me a River” and a second version of “Live or Die”; related catalog text identifies the accompanying second “Jealous Girl” version as fan-made. That chronology is useful for reconstructing when listeners encountered particular files, but it does not reveal who assembled or distributed them.

The wiki’s broader unreleased-song table also separates recording years, leak dates and versions. That distinction immediately breaks the six-new-songs premise: it places the first public appearance of “Jealous Girl” in 2012 and distinguishes a 2012 “Live or Die” version from the one catalogued in August 2015. Several rows provide no official album destination at all.

These are editable community records, not label discographies, session sheets or forensic examinations of original files. Their dates and credits must therefore remain attributed to the fan catalog unless stronger evidence corroborates them. What the fan catalogs record, if accurate, is that the August grouping was retrospective packaging: the six titles did not begin their documented histories at the same moment.

Six titles, six different evidentiary problems

A responsible file-by-file account has to resist false precision. Some classifications are well supported; others amount to the least misleading description available. Nothing in the reliable reporting identifies an intended album for the entire group, and no uploader’s use of words such as “final” can substitute for an artist or label credit.

“Cry Me a River.” This was not a new Del Rey composition. A Library of Congress National Recording Registry essay documents Arthur Hamilton’s authorship, Julie London’s 1955 recording and the song’s subsequent life as a widely covered standard. The fan discography classifies Del Rey’s rendition as a home recording from 2011. The song’s identity as a cover is secure; the precise year and domestic recording circumstances rest on that secondary catalog rather than an authenticated session document.

“Hangin’ Around.” The community table records an August 6, 2015 leak date and the alternate spelling “Hanging Around,” but supplies neither a recording year nor an intended album. That absence matters. It may be descriptively grouped with rough or demo material, yet there is no documentary basis for assigning it to the Honeymoon sessions—or to any other specific campaign. “Undated unreleased recording” is the defensible archival description.

“Jealous Girl.” The fan catalog assigns the underlying song to 2010 and says it had already surfaced on November 7, 2012. Its separate leak chronology describes the second version associated with the August 2015 bundle as fan-made. That is a community assessment rather than a forensic ruling, so “potentially fan-made edit” is the appropriate formulation. What can be said firmly within the available chronology is that the song itself was not newly written in August 2015 and that the circulated version’s authenticity should not be assumed from its label.

“Joshy and I.” Catalogued elsewhere as “Joshy & I,” this is assigned a 2011 recording year and an August 6, 2015 leak date by the fan-maintained table. The row does not identify an intended album or co-creator. Without corroborating credits or studio documentation, its safest status is an archival rough recording whose exact provenance remains provisional—not a newly delivered Honeymoon song.

“Live or Die.” This title has the clearest version history in the community record. The table distinguishes a first version that surfaced on October 14, 2012 from a second version dated August 6, 2015. The latter was therefore an alternate version of an already circulating composition, not a newly discovered 2015 song in the ordinary sense. The same table assigns a 2011 recording year and an album association, but those community-supplied fields lack official confirmation and should not be elevated into label history. Nor does an uploader’s “final version” tag prove that Del Rey approved a mix as final.

“Wayamaya.” The fan table places this song in 2007, associates it with Steven Mertens and dates its first catalogued leak to August 6, 2015. Here, independent interview evidence supports the broad era without authenticating every field: a 2013 Nylon profile and interview places Mertens in Del Rey’s pre-major-label period and reports that he produced an early iteration of her first album before David Kahne re-recorded it. That makes “Wayamaya” the strongest early-era demo candidate in the six-file group, while leaving its exact session date dependent on the fan catalog.

Taken as the fan catalogs describe it, the bundle would include a cover/home recording, undated or provisionally dated rough material, an alternate version, an early demo and a version that may have been assembled by a fan. That is a coherent archival hypothesis, not verified session history, and it is not evidence for six completed songs from one album cycle.

The official Honeymoon campaign ran on a separate clock

Del Rey’s authorized rollout was already visible before the files circulated. On July 14, Pitchfork reported that she had shared the album’s title track. That was an artist-sanctioned campaign release attached by name to Honeymoon, not an anonymously circulating archive file.

On August 10—the publication date of the six-song reports—Del Rey officially shared “High by the Beach.” Pitchfork’s contemporaneous account records plays on Annie Mac’s BBC Radio 1 program and Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 show, along with a Lowe interview. Those identifiable channels, coupled with the artist’s participation, distinguish an authorized single from the unrelated files that had appeared online days earlier.

The calendar collision encouraged conflation: one genuine Honeymoon single and one archival bundle became adjacent stories on the same day. But adjacency supplied no provenance. As of August 10, the complete album sequence had not yet been officially announced, so the accurate contemporary conclusion was that the six files’ album status was unknown—not that they were likely outtakes from the forthcoming record.

Responsible archives preserve uncertainty

There was already primary testimony explaining why Del Rey’s unreleased catalog could not be treated like an orderly shadow discography. In a 2014 Guardian interview, she said hackers had accessed her personal computer in 2012 and that material encompassing 211 songs had appeared online. She described having no control over a slow release of recordings spanning several years, including songs written for other people.

That interview provides essential context, but it does not identify the source of the August 2015 batch. Neither the contemporaneous reports nor the later discographic pages establish who obtained the six files, whether they shared a source, or why they surfaced together. Connecting this specific event to the earlier intrusion would go beyond the evidence.

The distinction is more than semantic. A leak date records public availability; a recording date concerns creation; a version label describes a particular file; and an official release requires authorization. When those categories collapse, a home cover becomes a “new song,” an alternate mix becomes a “final version,” and an uploader’s sequence begins to resemble an album that the artist never announced. Archival journalism can preserve filenames and chronology without directing readers to unauthorized audio or treating incomplete work as artist-approved publication.

Hindsight: what the official record later settled

Later confirmation: On August 21, eleven days after the original reports, Universal Music Canada announced that Honeymoon would arrive September 18 and published its 14-track sequence. “High By the Beach” appeared on it; none of the six disputed titles did. The official Apple Music catalog now corroborates the September 18 date and 14-song total. This later evidence settles the released album’s contents, though it does not prove or disprove whether any file was ever privately considered during unrelated sessions.

Later consideration, not authorization: In 2017, Dazed reported that Del Rey told an Amoeba Records audience she was considering a collection of 25 favorite leaked or unreleased songs. No track list accompanied that possibility, and the report did not identify any of this six-song batch. The remark cannot retroactively convert an unauthorized file into an official release.

Later statement of preference: After an unrelated 2022 theft involving a laptop and hard drives, Del Rey asked listeners not to play any unreleased music that might appear, according to the Los Angeles Times. That separate incident says nothing about who circulated the 2015 files, but it makes the broader boundary unmistakable: public availability and artist consent are not the same thing.

The durable account of August 2015 is not evidence of a lost Honeymoon EP. It is a six-title bundle that fan-maintained catalogs describe as drawing on an uneven archive—part old songbook, part work in progress, part alternate history and, in at least one case, possibly somebody else’s edit.

What the filenames can and cannot carry

Even the names in the August bundle show why file metadata needs restraint. “Hangin’ Around” also appears as “Hanging Around”; “Joshy and I” appears as “Joshy & I”; and version numbers for “Live or Die” and “Jealous Girl” do not come with artist-issued notes. Normalizing those variants helps connect discussion, but it does not authenticate the files or place them in a session.

A useful archive therefore records three separate layers: the title used by contemporaneous coverage, the later community catalog's version claim, and the official catalog, if one eventually exists. For this batch, the first two layers exist and sometimes conflict; the third does not exist for these six titles on Honeymoon. That absence is not proof that no related idea ever entered a studio. It establishes only that readers should not mistake filenames and fan sequencing for an artist-approved release history.