Lana Del Rey's sprawling and obsessive new LP — "the ninth studio album," as its cover describes it in a flourish of self-mythologizing graphic design — is the one where this great American collage artist begins cut-and-pasting herself.
Known since she emerged over a decade ago for alluding to or borrowing from the music of Lou Reed, Nancy Sinatra, Joni Mitchell and the Beach Boys, among countless others, Del Rey here quotes a line from her own song "Cinnamon Girl" and repurposes a string arrangement from her "Norman F—ing Rockwell" before concluding the record with a luscious-spooky dub-trap remake of 2019's "Venice Bitch," in which she rhymes "Get high" with "Never die" and "Drop acid" with "Lake Placid."
And why not? At age 37, Del Rey has ascended to a level of prestige that for her younger inheritors — including famous fans like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo — more or less matches the esteem in which she holds those in her pantheon; what's more, she's almost equally revered by musicians from the generation before hers: Stevie Nicks, who appeared on Del Rey's 2017 "Lust for Life"; Cat Power, who's covered her "White Mustang"; and Courtney Love, who recently told Marc Maron that Del Rey and Kurt Cobain are "the only two true musical geniuses I've ever known."
