You could describe Lana Del Rey’s career thus far as a Benjamin Button-type situation: the more hushed, insular, formally experimental and self-referential her music gets, the more popular she seems to become. Last year, she collaborated with Taylor Swift as the only featured artist on her 10th album, Midnights; every other week, a new song from 2014’s Ultraviolence or 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! (NFR!) goes viral. Pop’s new generation seems to look to her as a guiding light, perhaps more than any other star; her impact on culture is outsized, evidenced by a recent artist-on-artist interview in which Billie Eilish gushes about Del Rey, revealing that a photo of her was the background on her first ever phone.
