Lana Del Rey

In the past I have not liked the music of Lana Del Rey. And I have cracked open that walnut with a sledgehammer. In reviews of both Ultraviolence and Honeymoon I was near-apoplectic, like I was the only one that really got it – the fraud of it all, not merely that there’d been an image-makeover driving this music but that the music had all been done before. I was white male rage. Privilege unchecked. And anger on full tilt because I knew more. I’d heard all the reference points and added a few that I was sure the fans hadn’t bothered with/couldn’t care less about.

So, now, with Lana Del Rey’s sixth album I’m as late to the party as can be. I’ve not only found a way in, I really love this album. And the biggest surprise of that (for me, anyway) is that it’s no change in direction at all, arguably this is Del Rey disappearing even further into persona, basking in what she is and represents; the result a set of gauzy, windswept torch songs that almost forensically unpicks the American Dream for the fallacy it is, not so much hosting a eulogy but certainly posting an elegy that is all at once bored and on point, detached and pleased with itself.

When Lana Del Rey gets it right – she really gets it right. And Norman Fucking Rockell really fucking nails it.

Another weird thing about me joining the party – and it’s cautious, I know I’m neither welcome nor required – is that her collaborator here (producer/songwriter) Jack Antonoff (Bleachers/Fun) is someone whose work hasn’t ever quite resonated with me previously. But the decisions made and the proof here – by Antonoff and Del Rey – is exquisite.

The hip-hop adjacency that on previous recordings I either dismissed or ignored is sharp (Doin’ Time), the torch-balladry I once mocked as insincere and so very join-the-cue is now deeply original, all but transcendent in some moments (Mariners Apartment Complex) and didn’t I always accuse Del Rey of being a dribble-mouth that couldn’t sing? What a fucking self-righteous bozo. A moron. A clod. Me, that is. Not her. The opening, title track puts paid to that alone. (“You’re just a man, it’s just what you do” she sings. Busted).

I have had Del Rey fans angry and demanding I re-examine her earlier work and that’s never really interested me. Not because I was sure I was right. But more a case of moving on through anything else to listen to and figuring the work would eventually prove me wrong and command me to listen. It remains to be seen (heard) whether I go back through the earlier albums but Norman Fucking Rockwell is so fucking good that it’s playing out on a loop in my head when I’m not even listening to it. And it’s on my stereo a lot too. Was it the lockdown? I don’t know. But somehow this album makes a whole lot of sense in that world.

That special brand of nonchalance. This time I hear the sincerity too. They co-exist. Also the writing is exquisite. The Greatest might be some of Del Rey’s finest work in fact. Allusions to a range of Sunny Californian pop and the murky darkness that sits in just behind it (Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys being a perfect archetype).

“The culture is lit, and I had a ball/I guess I’m signing off after all”.

That there is a couplet. It’s also my exact feelings about 2020 life; written and performed by Del Rey in the months before I could ever know I’d think that way. But more important than how I feel it’s a summation of everything great about Cat Power and Weyes Blood, and I hear how the Carpenters could have been a crucial influence too.

There are many towering achievements on this album but perhaps Venice Bitch is the song I’d most like to live inside. It’s a surprise every time, with twists and turns and a nearly 10-minute run-time that never feels exhausting or even slightly too long.

Fans that have read this far through will probably be thinking that Lana Del Rey was always at least this good, this funny and clever in the poetry of her lyrics, this expressive and dismissive as chronicler of contemporary pop culture. But that was all lost to me, buried beneath my own decision to round on the fans for elevating her, buried by my process of feeling like I’d heard it all before so not bothering to go deep.

I actually have no idea how this album found me – you’d think that after not enjoying five of her records I’d stop. But there was obviously always something niggling away. I wanted to find the magic. So many fans couldn’t all be wrong. There was always something I wanted to like or know or understand about this music. I like being bugged by music. By wanting to know why it resonates with so many. By wondering why you think you stand alone and don’t get it. It’s not so much about planting a flag in a hill and thinking you’re claiming land as it is marking what you see and say so you can find your way back or move yourself forward.

I listen to Venice Bitch and The Greatest and Mariners Apartment Complex and Love Song and How To Disappear and Bartender and I hear the very best of an artist still searching, still hungry to make it, even long after making it. That’s the sort of passion, skill, brilliance I’m always hopeful I’ll see and hear and feel. And acknowledge. This is my attempt to acknowledge that.

And I’m not doing justice to how funny and clever this record is – but it’s been out several months and people are all across that. I guess my angle, if I have one, is that someone I dismissed for so long has made an album that made me really sit up and notice. More than that I’m quite hooked on it.

The bruised Americana that is always in Del Rey’s heart and mind is so beautifully explored here. So perfectly captured.

Even if I don’t go back to the earlier records this one has my ears fully pricked. I’ll be listening forward from here. For sure.

Is this my Mea culpa as review? Well, okay…if it needs to be, or reads as if it is, then that’s fine with me. All I wanted to say here is that one of my favourite things has just happened: I not only found a great new album – it happens to have come from a musical talent I had previously ignored/written off. That’s a profound experience when it happens. When you open yourself up to the beauty of the music and the full we-always-told-you-so rage of the fans. Thanks for catching up, they’ll laugh. You’re not actually wanted in our gang. That’s also fine. I reckon Norman Fucking Rockwell is its own reward.

The Next Best American Record, Lana Del Rey sings and says here. On one of the best American records I’ve heard in a while. That’s the reward right there.
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