Entertainment
February 16, 2023
By Nandini Sharma
The most satisfying part of being a Lana Del Rey fan for a long time has been witnessing the framework supporting the American pop archetypes—which she has wonderfully inhabited—slowly fall apart.
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The summertime melancholy, Pepsi Cola-flavored p****, The American flag, however, has been fluttering at the margins of her discography with each new album, getting closer and closer to being permanently flown at half-mast.
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She has gradually moved away from her gangsta Nancy Sinatra roots in favor of messier music that combines her obsession with caricature with depressing, apocalypse-streaked storytelling and intimate real-world experience.
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Lana further, gloriously unspools on "A&W," the second song from her upcoming album Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
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It begins at seven minutes and sounds much like the majority of the songs on her most recent album, Blue Banisters. The vocals are a notch beyond voice memo quality, and there is background noise merging with the instrumentation.
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On a song that sounds like Lana was trying to make a Hole song, she sings, "I'm a princess, I'm divisive / Ask me why I'm like this / Maybe I'm just somewhat like this."
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Four minutes later, co-writer and producer Jack Antonoff introduces one of his specials:
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The song changes to tinny synth-pop, and Lana delivers a grade-school rap in the vein of Uffie that would have fit right in on Born to Die.
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This is Lana balancing between her modern folk minimalism and her plasticky pop beginnings, vulnerable yet not willing to give up on having fun.
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