Our album of the year saw a maturing Del Rey dismantle the American dream while loving it to death, her imagery and artistry aligned to perfection
When Lana Del Rey arrived in 2011, anyone who bet on her becoming one of the decades defining artists would now be quids in. As sublime as her debut single Video Games was, her debut album, Born to Die, was flimsy, laced with hiccupy hip-hop affectations and surface obsessions (Hollywood, bad boys, putting a red dress on and then taking it off again) that didnt suggest much potential for maturation. How nice it has been to be proved wrong.
In 2017, the New York Times music reporter Joe Coscarelli tweeted: Serious Q, why does everyone seem to unequivocally love Lana Del Rey now? What changed? What changed is that an artist perceived as a dilettante, thanks to sexist assumptions about her aesthetic and background, turned out to be one of pops grafters. She leaned into the image that had aroused suspicions, creating an identity so indelible that when she swapped her pout for a grin on the cover of 2017s Lust for Life, it was as startling as finding a green can of Coke.
More significantly, Del Rey deepened her craft, producing six albums in nine years, each better than the last. In pops big league, only Drake matched her productivity, although he might wish he had her increasing creative returns. Her themes became more provocative, while her sweeping, lunar balladry pushed beyond cliched noir. Here was someone who knew exactly what she was doing and when other people tried it (see: Taylor Swifts Wildest Dreams), something was clearly missing. There were hundreds of crooners, but only one Frank Sinatra.
Del Reys image and artistry perfectly aligned for the first time on this years Norman Fucking Rockwell! (NFR), a supremely confident declaration of self. Unlike Lust for Life, with its unconvincing forays into trap, Del Reys stately sixth album is completely out of step with contemporary trends: as if a Brill Building stablehand went west on a Laurel Canyon recon mission. Those sounds are more than just another layer of Americana cosplay (though they are that, too). On NFR, Del Rey asserts a newfound sturdiness after a wayward past of teenage alcoholism and yielding to men who take her sadness out of context. Maybe the way that Im living is killing me, she gasps on Fuck It I Love You. But one day I woke up like, Maybe Ill do it differently.
And so she offers herself up as a compass (Im always going to be right here, she declares on How to Disappear) and a catalyst: the kind of girl whos gonna make you wonder who you are and where youve been, she gasps on Mariners Apartment Complex, each rich, piano-led verse a three-part rising chord progression that rings with stability, as if laying foundations, bricks then roof. She swaps her old fascination with danger to indulge in all-American domesticity: on Venice Bitch, her lovers in the yard, I light the fire. The songwriting schools that Del Rey harks back to were the product of such homely idylls: Gerry Goffin and Carole Kings work together; Joni Mitchell and Graham Nashs work about each other (their relationship informed Crosby, Stills and Nashs Our House, alluded to several times on NFR). Their work has become canonical, beyond reproach adding another layer of durability to Del Reys resolve.
NFR only earns its rich frame of reference because it is also the apotheosis of a Lana Del Rey album. Of course, her intentions dont stick: I moved to California, but its just a state of mind / It turns out everywhere you go, you take yourself, thats not a lie, she sings on Fuck It I Love You. A certifiable lineup of blokes ranging from flaky to cruel blows through as sure as the Santa Ana winds yet she sings with unimpeachable poise. On prior albums, her subjugation to bad boys has been repetitive to the point of distraction. Here, she and producer Jack Antonoff make it visceral: the ragged vocal harmonies coming apart on Fuck It I Love You suggest a woman fighting all her better instincts; the enticing decadence of Venice Bitch, with its breathy choruses rising like whipped cream, the illicit pleasure of giving in to them. She sighs tartly at how disorienting sex can be (the title tracks you fucked me so good I almost said I love you), then seems to send herself up on Love Song, a song so guileless it could only be self-aware. Her voice is dewy as she revisits a favourite cliche: Lying on your chest / In my party dress / Im a fucking mess.
These arent blind devotions: Del Reys obsession with American archetypes, once dismissed as superficial, has matured into an acute understanding of how they are created and frustration at what they conceal. This summer, she released Looking for America, a song explicitly about gun control written in response to several mass shootings, but left it off the album. Its omission is judicious: on NFR, she airs her grievances with American ideals insidiously, seeding a more potent degree of subversion. She is often consoling lost men that they dont have to fulfil macho ideals: on California, she tenderly tells a lover, you dont have to be stronger than you really are; but a disgusted, grotesque edge enters her voice in the chorus where she rifles through all the west coast cliches that she knows he expects of her. The Next Best American Record is similarly uneasy, cataloguing a blinding obsession with perfection that amounted to nothing. Critics made too much of NFRs barely-there politics on its release, but still it glowers with the indignation of being sold a lie.
And yet, Del Rey understands the facade. She loves these men (and the US) despite their flaws the title tracks self-loathing poet, resident Laurel Canyon know-it-all and is even moved by their efforts to hide them. NFRs most romantic song, How to Disappear, lapses into a brassy sway and festive bells. She affectionately eyes the elusive guys on the boulevard, at the training yard, smothering their fears in beer and violence. I love that man like nobody can, she sings, sounding genuinely overcome. He moves mountains and pounds them to ground again. Its not a reach to think that her admiration is rooted in empathy: contrary to her petulant denial of critic Ann Powers assertion that Del Rey uses persona in her work, she inarguably has played with facade. She knows well that it can be a screen to hide behind or a broken mirror.
Perhaps Powers hit a nerve because NFR is Del Reys least guarded album: she pledges to embrace the darkness, the deepness, as she sings on Mariners Apartment Complex, all the things that make me who I am. The album ends with a pledge to keep that guard down, Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have But I Have it. Its dangerous because she might get taken advantage of. And she does by the aforementioned rogues, and the litany of mischaracterisations that leave her practically writing in blood on the walls cause the ink in my pen dont work in my notepad. But staying open is what makes the art, and the art is where she wields control. Your poetrys bad, and you blame the news, she shrugs at the title tracks goddamn man-child, withering at the idea that anyone could be so passive and uninspired.
The headlines only penetrate NFR once, at the end of The Greatest, a gorgeous, valedictory ballad that builds and builds, yet never yields to the inevitable collapse. Hawaii just missed that fireball, she mutters. LA is in flames, its getting hot / Kanye West is blond and gone / Life on Mars aint just a song. Its a eulogy for the privilege of not having to care, of missing the days where she was doing nothin the most of all. Its been interpreted as a song about helplessness, but I think its about what comes next: understanding your purpose and setting aside naivety. Its another subtly defiant assertion that Del Rey is here for the long haul, no matter what. You dont move to California oblivious of the big one.
Original Article : HERE ;
from MetNews https://metnews.pw/the-best-albums-of-2019-no-1-lana-del-rey-norman-fucking-rockwell/
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