“I’d go on a seven-minute rant with a repetitive melody,” Lana Del Rey recently told Billie Eilish in an interview about her writing process for Did You Know There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? Indeed, many of the songs on her newly released ninth album do fit that description. They are long and can be repetitive, but truly, a rant has never sounded so alluring.
The six-time Grammy nominee, née Elizabeth Grant, returns this week with her latest album, two years on from a double release in 2021 (Chemtrails Over the Country Club and Blue Banisters). Across eight records and 11 years, Del Rey has built a world and iconography of her own. Hers is one of cherry cola cans, white sundresses, sycamore trees, seedy dive bars, and American flags that fly both defiantly and depressingly. More controversial in the Lana lexicon are the deadbeat boyfriends with fast fists that feel like kisses. (Her previous record, she said, was a defensive work written in response to criticisms, including glamourising domestic abuse.)
