"Maybe tomorrow you'll know"
Did You Know Lana still had it in her? Well, let's talk about her 8th studio album.
My relationship with Lana del Rey’s music has changed ever since i came across NFR! in a September morning on my way to college. That particular album has influenced the way i write and listen to music, it truly changed my life. I went through her entire discography within months and i fell in love with some songs, more of her albums and specific lyrics. As years have passed, i have learnt to appreciate her artistry more (Even when her ignorant self gets on my way to do so) but i thought she’d peak artistically already. Chemtrails had great highlights and Blue Banisters would’ve been a tad better if it wasn’t for the multiple demos she brought back that should’ve stayed where they were (Not you, Thunder). Ultraviolence and NFR! were marks that she’d never reach again, or so i thought. I got into this new album with moderate expectations and it blew my mind right away.
Its unraveling nature.
Lana has always been vulnerable. For a fact, i think that’s the biggest strength of her songwriting. She’s been able to paint pictures and describe how she feels, faintly letting us know about the context in which those songs were born or the cause that lead into her writing them. Hope Is A Dangerous Thing, White Dress and Sweet Carolina were a step towards a slightly different writing style from her but in Did You Know There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd Lana opens up in ways she has not done it in the past. She let go of the literary devices as the front and center of her storytelling, leaving all the characters that allowed her to find comfort in sensitivity and decided to create songs that are extremely descriptive and concerned about her and the way she perceives the world and life.
Artists often make music for people to “relate to it”. Lana’s not the exception. But this project couldn’t care less about its impact on people, as oppose to the impact it had on Lana’s life. During Judah Smith’s Interlude we hear a few lines that allow us to understand the nature of this album:
“I used to think my preaching was mostly about you
And you're not gonna like this, but I'm gonna to tell you the truth
I've discovered my preaching is mostly about me”.
Through these set of songs, Lana doesn’t hide herself or her feelings. She’s finding strength by venting, by unveiling every layer with no remorse or doubt. She’s in control of her narrative, as much as her mind allows her too. There’s a flow of words on here that is almost subconscious, every line feels like a recollection of a past memory. She manages to explore multiple subtopics, all tied to the love she has for the people she’s singing about. Every character on here not only is real, you are able to connect to them, their intentions, their desires, their words. Lana conducts a full show where she’s both the protagonist and the narrator. She cares for everybody who’s with her in the studio or at home. Out of all her albums, on here you can see a Lana who cares more than ever.
Loss.
Lana has written about death way before her debut. Her nihilistic perspective was concerning to say the least, but it was genuine. She portrayed death as liberating, as frustrating or painfully inevitable and as years passed by, her relationship with it is presented with a new perspective. She resents the concept of being forgotten, parting the world without leaving an imprint strong enough to reside in the subconscious of those who have known her, or even a stranger that will never interact with her again. Lana portrays memory as an extension of your life on earth, as the encapsulation of your accomplishments, the love you gave and had, the failures in your life. It’s the only remaining part of you that travels along time, through people, through stories and actions.
There’s so much pain we often carry and expressing it is a task that comes with no instructions. There is not a “right way” to open up about experiences that are still burning inside of you. Lana manages to reunite a set of events that reminded her of how brief life can be, of how painful existing is.
Through The Grants there’s a declaration of love in its purest form, towards the people that she oughts to protect. Remembering is a way to protect her memories, to keep them intact so she can get to the afterlife and run through them as if she was replaying a supercut filled with the “highlights of her life”; pain, anger, joy. She protects those that she loves by remembering them, by not letting their imprint fade away from her mind. The title track is where she extends this plead to us, she desires to be remembered because it’s her way to keep living without depending of what’s tangible and perishable.
Kintsugi and Fingertips are the most heartfelt and layered songs in the album. The depth of these exists thanks to how transparent they are. Grief is a process that never ends and the loss of her uncle was the triggering point for her to explore these themes. Kintsugi is the art of “putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold” which is a metaphor of how we, as humans, will always be imperfect but it’s through those flaws that we can create. Through mistakes, we grow. Through falls, we must get up and keep walking. That’s how the light gets in!
Lana continues with her exploration through questions, escaping from her feelings and thoughts. She starts wondering about who’ll be there when she dies. That’s where her worries about marriage and having kids came. Her fears overcome her, trying to convince her of what she can and can’t be. We saw it through the song Sweet, where she asserts to her partner the burdens that come when being with her and during Fingertips too, where she doubts she’ll ever be able to have her own children. In the latter she repeats these instances where she gives herself 2 seconds to cry, to think, to breathe, to be herself. She feels the urge to surround her uncle with her arms, even in an astral realm. She longs to be there for him and there’s a clear frustration because she can’t. As a way to cope with that, she gives herself what he probably didn’t get: 2 seconds to stop.
We see her in a better place at the end of this song. That doesn’t mean the process is over, the constant seek for escaping was just as present on Paris, Texas. She travels through all of these places but finds herself incomplete. Even when she’s home, she cannot fathom the emptiness that comes after losing someone. Specially herself.
Self awareness.
Lana’s career has been reduced several times to “an aesthetic”, the “sad girl genre”. The criticism thrown at her since she debuted was and still is very misogynistic. Although her “question for the culture” moment did warrant the amount of backlash it caused and her responses to said “controversy” were just as ignorant, she still didn’t deserve to be treated a product or called someone who “romanticizes abuse” and therefore, an “antifeminist” early in her career. It seems that people completely forgot there’s a human telling these stories. A woman whose trauma and experiences were often romanticized when they’re not being dissected and essayed.
On Did You Know There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Lana struggles with the impact of what people have assumed or told her to be and the way she sees herself now that she’s in her 30’s. As her image has been completely stripped down, from wearing jeans on a show to making homemade music videos with her brother, using selfies with canva edits as single covers, we see the culmination of that process on this album. She longs to be perceived in certain way, but at the same time she wishes not to be perceived at all.
A&W is a perfect example of how Lana struggles with her own perception. She looks back on her experiences with love, sex and fame and it seems like she’s given up. In some way, she’s letting go of those dreams she was chasing because trying meant facing failure once again. During this track, she sounds hopeless until the beat drops, where we get to revisit that image she portrayed early in her career. The whole song sounds like a venting session. We travel through Lana’s mind, artistic trajectory, her insecurities and frustration.
I interpret Candy Necklaces as the transition you experience when the source of your youth is fading, almost like holding onto that inner child because you’re on the verge of burying it. Those candy necklaces represent moments of her past she’s allowing herself to revisit and freeing them through love.
There’s a return to that anxiety of being perceived by so many people in “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing” (God, she’s hilarious). She lets everyone know her intentions are pure, even when she’s once called the result of many men in the industry, when she’s bashed for her “inauthenticity” or rightfully, for her ignorance. She’s reclaiming the spot she built through her art, she doesn’t wants to be perceived as a “deity” or as an “experiment made up by a label”. She wants her intentions to be what people remember from her.
Repetition
Lana thrives off referencing her own art. From the touches of strings from Norman Fcking Rockwell on A&W, to the sample of Venice Bitch on the last track, to some melodies that i’m pretty sure she interpolates like she did on Wild Heart. On this album, there are not only ideas brought from other albums or icons that she adores (Leonard Cohen on Kintsugi), she manages to incorporate ideas from songs within the record.
Either we find it with the “When you know, you know” on both Paris, Texas and Margaret or the idea of “Letting the light in” on Kintsugi and Let The Light In. I’m sure there are a few more, but bringing up these two is enough to see these lines work as affirmations for her. Repetition enhances the importance of an idea or a concept and these are no exception to the rule. Although the lines work different within the context of the songs, they are small reminders for them to be harder to forget.
Letting go.
Let The Light In is a love song, as it also is Margaret. They’re both very different from eachother, Let The Light In comes from a place where a relationship is blossoming, opposite to Margaret which represents that moment where the connection between two people has already bloomed and they stop on their tracks to question themselves: Are they who i want to be with for the rest of my life? And the outtake is that you’ll never get that answer. ‘Cause when you know, you know! or maybe, tomorrow you’ll know.
When it comes to its sound, this is probably Lana’s most abstract album, with lengthy tracks filled with string arrangements and gentle piano chords following the story she’s telling and some beautiful flourishes with horns and more instrumentation on the back end of the record (before the last 3 tracks). Her melody composition on this album is probably the best of her career. I didn’t even care for some of the lyrics in some tracks because her tone sounded beautiful.
Blue Banisters was in some way a transitional moment in her career, because Did You Know There’s a Tunnel feels like the realization of the sound she’s attempting to achieve back then. She sharpened her pen, decided to diversify her sound palette and even bring a few surprises like A&W, Paris, Texas and the last three tracks, which i’m still sitting with. I don’t really know how i feel about them yet, but i don’t really dislike them.
This is sitting #3 in my ranking of her discography and it’ll be hard to dethrone. I’d even say, it will only go up.
So, i’d like to know your opinion on this album too! Where would you put it in Lana’s discography? Which are your favorite tracks?
this album was really refreshing! NFR will always reign superior for me but i appreciated how quiet, gentle, and intimate this one was! (also i honestly rly dig the last tracks that sound more like bonus songs just cause they’re so silly n fun!) this was a great album review & i rly look forward to reading more of ur work!!