Del
Rey’s previous record, Lust
for Life,
had a few true bangers, including “Love" and "White
Mustang,” but it also had more than a few stinkers (viz. anything
with A$AP Rocky or Shaun Lennon in it). Moreover, Lust
for Life
was marred by a lawsuit that deemed the song “Get Free” had
plagiarized Radiohead’s “Creep.” The plagiarism is debatable;
the real travesty of justice is how lifeless British tripe like
Radiohead remains relevant.
Del Rey’s latest offering, titled NFR (or Norman Fucking Rockwell in full) is something of a bounce-back record. Or perhaps it is a finale. The songs are darker and longer, the lyrics elegiac and rambling. This is not a negative, however. While there are no real bangers on the album, there aren’t really any stinkers either. The album is eminently listenable from start to finish, even if it isn't built around patent singles. There certainly are some standouts on this album, perhaps most notably "Venice Bitch," a 9-plus minute track premised on a pun paralleling that of LMFAO’s 2008 offering “I’m in Miami Bitch” (although in a considerably maturated iteration). Nonetheless, the album is best appreciated as a single, cohesive whole. Its rambling verses are integral to the artistry, as they read like poetry.
Quite fittingly, given the nature of the lyrical compositions, there are several Sylvia Plath references. Often, Del Rey speaks in finalizing terms. “The culture is lit, I guess this is it, and I had a ball/I guess that I’m burned out after all,” she offers on “The Greatest,” a resigned, poignant, but ultimately self-satisfied eleventh track that could have aptly closed the album.
Will this be Lana Del Rey's last kick at the Pepsi Cola can? Probably—hopefully—not. This haunting, wandering album leaves us wanting more. It doesn’t feel like an ending, exactly, but rather like the ushering in of a new dispensation—a Lana Del Rey who has fully evolved out of her poppy past, and is now in full-on poet mode, very much like the bearded, pot-bellied Jim Morrison who lends his voice to An American Prayer. With Del Rey, it seems as if it is not going to be about “bangers” and “stinkers” anymore. It’s going to be about poetry and melody over protracted instrumentation.
If it wasn’t obvious before, it's clear in listening to NFR that, apart from her trademark murdered ennui, there is now a palpable frustration in Lana Del Rey. Perhaps she’s feeling a futilitarian exasperation from a career of being variously characterized as a plagiarist, an anti-feminist, and an oversexed Lolita, among other things, when she is not really any of these. Perhaps contemporary critics got so singularly fixated on “getting” and subsequently labelling Lana Del Rey that they missed that she is ineludibly so much more—a poetess of vision so profoundly abysmal that it’s almost ineffable. Had the aesthetics of the era not been so obsessed with commercial popularity and political correctness, Lana Del Rey would be the Cobain or Morrison of her time; instead, incorrigibly poppy divas like Lady Gaga or BeyoncĂ© inexorably occupy those stations. As such, Del Rey has been consigned—or has consigned herself—to the role of a Sylvia Plath: overwrought and underappreciated.
Sylvia Plath deserved a better ending, and so too does Lana Del Rey. Hopefully she will get the appreciative finale that she deserves, but not for decades.
Del Rey’s latest offering, titled NFR (or Norman Fucking Rockwell in full) is something of a bounce-back record. Or perhaps it is a finale. The songs are darker and longer, the lyrics elegiac and rambling. This is not a negative, however. While there are no real bangers on the album, there aren’t really any stinkers either. The album is eminently listenable from start to finish, even if it isn't built around patent singles. There certainly are some standouts on this album, perhaps most notably "Venice Bitch," a 9-plus minute track premised on a pun paralleling that of LMFAO’s 2008 offering “I’m in Miami Bitch” (although in a considerably maturated iteration). Nonetheless, the album is best appreciated as a single, cohesive whole. Its rambling verses are integral to the artistry, as they read like poetry.
Quite fittingly, given the nature of the lyrical compositions, there are several Sylvia Plath references. Often, Del Rey speaks in finalizing terms. “The culture is lit, I guess this is it, and I had a ball/I guess that I’m burned out after all,” she offers on “The Greatest,” a resigned, poignant, but ultimately self-satisfied eleventh track that could have aptly closed the album.
Will this be Lana Del Rey's last kick at the Pepsi Cola can? Probably—hopefully—not. This haunting, wandering album leaves us wanting more. It doesn’t feel like an ending, exactly, but rather like the ushering in of a new dispensation—a Lana Del Rey who has fully evolved out of her poppy past, and is now in full-on poet mode, very much like the bearded, pot-bellied Jim Morrison who lends his voice to An American Prayer. With Del Rey, it seems as if it is not going to be about “bangers” and “stinkers” anymore. It’s going to be about poetry and melody over protracted instrumentation.
If it wasn’t obvious before, it's clear in listening to NFR that, apart from her trademark murdered ennui, there is now a palpable frustration in Lana Del Rey. Perhaps she’s feeling a futilitarian exasperation from a career of being variously characterized as a plagiarist, an anti-feminist, and an oversexed Lolita, among other things, when she is not really any of these. Perhaps contemporary critics got so singularly fixated on “getting” and subsequently labelling Lana Del Rey that they missed that she is ineludibly so much more—a poetess of vision so profoundly abysmal that it’s almost ineffable. Had the aesthetics of the era not been so obsessed with commercial popularity and political correctness, Lana Del Rey would be the Cobain or Morrison of her time; instead, incorrigibly poppy divas like Lady Gaga or BeyoncĂ© inexorably occupy those stations. As such, Del Rey has been consigned—or has consigned herself—to the role of a Sylvia Plath: overwrought and underappreciated.
Sylvia Plath deserved a better ending, and so too does Lana Del Rey. Hopefully she will get the appreciative finale that she deserves, but not for decades.