Album Review: Lana Del Rey’s Norman F***ing Rockwell!
Photo from Pitchfork.com
Lari Li
Featuring a cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time” and 9-minute-long “Venice B***h,” Lana’s sixth studio album Norman F***ing Rockwell! was released on August 30, 2019, just as “the summer fades away.”
10/10 no skip album, but I’ll probably end up saying this for all the other Lana albums I review. It evokes emotions you never knew existed.
Inspiration
The album experiments with surf elements, electric guitars and Laurel Canyon sounds. Del Rey mentioned that she took inspiration from the Red Hot Chili Peppers for instrumentation. There’s a lot of piano ballads and I heard a variety of strings [likely violin and cello], acoustic guitar, and backing vocals that give the overall sound lots of depth.
The inspiration behind the album name comes from American painter Norman Rockwell, who captured the essence of everyday American life. One of his most famous works is the Four Freedoms [freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear], a series of four paintings inspired by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” Speech to mobilize American citizens and industries during World War II. Another famous work of Rockwell’s is Rosie the Riveter, a symbol of women’s empowerment and their contributions to WWII.
This album also makes me miss and appreciate APUSH (shoutout Pechanach and all the APUSH warriors).
“It’s called Norman F***ing Rockwell!, it was the album title since March. I mean, working with Jack [Antonoff] I was in a little bit of a lighter mood ‘cause he’s so funny, so the title track and it are kind of about this guy who, he is such a genius artist but he thinks he’s the sh*t and he knows it, and he won’t shut talking about it. The narrative goes on and on. It’s so awesome I ended up with, you know, being creative on a pipe story or whatever. I just like the title track so much, that I was like, 'Okay, definitely want the record to be called that.’”
- Lana Del Rey in an interview with Zane Lowe
Thoughts & Themes
In NFR! I think Lana masterfully captured the beauty of America in the second half of the 1900s. With the perfect touches of longing and emotion, it makes me nostalgic for a timeline that I never existed in. Personally, my favorites from this album are constantly changing as I relisten and appreciate patterns I’ve never noticed before, or relate to more based on my current life.
Still, if I really had to choose my favorites of all time, they would be “Venice B***h,” “Love song,” “How to disappear,” and “The greatest.” I love every song on here equally though.
Tracklist & Individual Review
1. “Norman f***ing Rockwell”
“'Cause you're just a man
It's just what you do”
NFR’s title track earned a Grammy nomination for “Song of the Year” in 2020. One of the two songs on this album that I deem “best songs to cry to.” I absolutely love the soft piano chords and lyricism. From what I can tell, “Norman f***ing Rockwell” is about Lana dealing with a narcissistic man who is out of touch with reality. His “poetry’s bad,” but he “blames the news,” implying that he’s blaming the rest of the world for not being interesting enough, contributing to his lack of inspiration and artistry. Still, she chooses to stay.
“Why wait for the best when I could have you? You?”
2. “Mariners Apartment Complex”
“You took my sadness out of context
At the Mariners Apartment Complex
I ain't no candle in the wind”
There’s organic drum beats that are accentuated by electric guitar and strings. They pair perfectly in the background with Lana’s soft vocals. This song was inspired by a late-night walk Lana had with her lover. He told her: “I think we are together because we're both similar, like we're both really messed up.” Lana did not believe their relationship was built on a shared sadness and felt that he was misinterpreting their connection. This led her to write a song about it.
“Can't a girl just do the best she can?”
3. “Venice B***h”
“It was funny when I played for my managers. I was like ‘yeah, I think this is the single I wanna put out,’ and they were like ‘it’s 10 minutes long, are you kidding me. It’s called “Venice B***h,” like why you do this to us? Can you make like a 3-minute normal pop song’ and I was like ‘No, end of summer some people just wanna drive around for 10 minutes and get lost in electric guitar.’"
- Lana Del Rey in an interview with Zane Lowe
I love this song!!! Lana and Jack did magic in these 9 minutes with lyrics and instrumentals. The guitar solo at 2:24 is life-changing. There are four verses in this song, as expected due to its length, but my favorite part is the bridge and outro. They close the song off beautifully, nostalgic about the golden days.
Lana alludes to Robert Frost’s 1923 poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” with her lyrics:
“And as the summer fades away
Nothing gold can stay
You write, I tour, we make it work
You're beautiful and I'm insane
We're American-made”
4. “F*** it I love you”
“So I moved to California‚ but it's just a state of mind”
This is one of the faster-paced songs on the album. From the moment the gentle surf-rock guitars glide in, “F*** it I love you” brings listeners into the melancholic landscape that is California. It’s classic Lana—full of cinematic longing and nostalgia. She explores darker subjects like mortality and addiction at a crazed, almost manic pace as the song hits its chorus.
5. “Doin’ Time”
“Summertime and the livin’s easy”
This song is a cover of the American band Sublime’s 1996 “Doin’ Time,” which itself is a cover of “Summertime” from the opera Porgy & Bess. John Janick, CEO of Interscope, Lana’s label, explained that Lana ended up doing this cover and adding it to her tracklist because the label “was involved in executive-producing the documentary” and that “she felt like it fit the aesthetic [of her album].”
I love Lana’s spin on this song. It has more instrumentals and a fuller voice than the original, but both songs are amazing and worth checking out.
6. “Love song”
“Be my once in a lifetime”
This song is an ode to her romantic partner, full of fame and fast cars. It’s dreamy and hazy, and her vocals are nothing short of beautiful. This song calms me down and I love playing it in the car when I’m out with friends, as the scene of the song is set in a car.
7. “Cinnamon Girl”
“There’s things I want to say to you but I’ll just let you live”
Cinnamon has a spicy-sweet taste, the way she’s personifying her lover. Heavenly is the only way that I can describe the chorus and post-chorus. You’ll know the moment you hear it. It’s like her vocals transcend all sound barriers and pierce right through your soul.
“But if you hold me without hurting me
You’ll be the first who ever did”
8. “How to disappear”
“Now it’s been years since I’ve left New York
I’ve got a kid and two cats in the yard”
The mellotron in the opening of the song makes it unique and memorable, with the ambient strings and first melodies. “How to disappear” has Lana expressing her mixed and shifting emotions while her lover seems incapable of expressing his. It’s soft and dreamy, and a perfect song to listen to if you need to unwind after a long day. The acoustics and the piano accompaniment give the song a minimalist feel; it pairs perfectly with her powerful vocals.
9. “California”
“I shouldn't have done it, but I read it in your letter
You said to a friend that you wish you were doing better
I wanted to reach out, but I never said a thing”
Romance, regret, and nostalgia. Ocean-wide yearning. Lana’s patriotism for California is evident in this song, as well as her devotion to her unnamed lover. She references Joni Mitchell’s “California” with her lyrics about the magazines Rolling Stone and Vogue. I like how this song is a blend of all her other styles in the album. There’s the slow ballads in the beginning, while the chorus flips to the faster styles evident in “F*** it I love you” and “Doin’ Time.”
10. “The Next Best American Record”
“We were so obsessed with writing the next best American record
’Cause we were just that good
It was just that good”
There are lyrics contrasting the counterculture of the 1970s and 1990s, shouting out rock bands like Led Zeppelin and the Eagles, as well as mentioning Interstate 405. Not much to say about this song as it’s just going to sound like I’m repeating myself. But it’s beautiful just like every other song on NFR! and it never gets old.
11. “The greatest”
“L.A. is in flames‚ it's getting hot
Kanye West is blond and gone
‘Life on Mars?’ ain't just a song
Oh, the live stream's almost on”
The beat drop into the chorus is my favorite. Lana goes on a wistful and yearning tangent that’s strategically paired with a gorgeous run of chords. The riffs in this song very beautifully sang as well.
I’ve been saying that this album has a lot of nostalgic themes. While the other songs hint at that, “The greatest” directly reflects this theme. Lana here is also critical of modern culture. She calls it “lit,” which is “cool” in modern slang but she mentions being burnt out and believes society has lost sense of itself. She sings about missing New York and the music, as well as Long Beach plus rock and roll. The song title “The greatest” is mentioned as she describes the dilemma she’s facing: the greatest loss of them all—the culture and the golden days.
I love the closing line “Oh, the live stream’s almost on.” It shows how fleeting and prone to distraction the current generation is.
12. “Bartender”
“Bartender” is rhythmic and blue. I love how the piano chords start slowing and then accelerate with the chorus, before fading away as the song ends. There’s many references to her old problem with alcoholism as a teenager. Although she’s quit, she feels disillusioned from her extravagant peers, who still indulge in alcohol. I personally don’t listen to “Bartender” that much, but I can definitely see it being someone else’s favorite on the album.
13. “Happiness is a butterfly”
The second of the two “best crying songs” that I’ve deemed from this album, “Happiness is a butterfly” is similar in sound and structure to the title track with Lana’s melancholic voice and soothing piano. It alludes to a quote by the American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau:
“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”
This was the first song I listened to from NFR! back in 2019. It wasn’t close to one of my favorites as I got into the rest of the album, but I revisited it years later after I saw a TikTok of a girl crying in her dorm room to this song. After a few rewatches of the TikTok and one relisten, I was mad at myself for not realizing the beauty of this song. So if you’re not a huge fan of this song yet, don’t fret. It’ll grow on you, just give it time.
14. “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it”
The closing track of NFR! is very similar in sound to the title track, as well as “Happiness is a butterfly.” Once the chorus hits, her voice has the same desperation as in “California.” The lyrics in this song are extremely developed. They don’t feel like song lyrics to me—they’re more similar to lines in a diary. I like how that contributes to the song’s overall depth.
“A modern day woman with a weak constitution, 'cause I've got
Monsters still under my bed that I could never fight off
A gatekeeper carelessly dropping the keys on my nights off”
“Hope is a dangerous thing” is a quote by the character Red (played by Morgan Freeman) in the 1994 prison film The Shawshank Redemption. When Andy (Tim Robbins) tells him that music gives him hope during their time in confinement, Red says:
“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
Prominent American figures that are mentioned in this song include poet and author Sylvia Plath and photographer Slim Aarons.
Final Thoughts
I just love all the allusions Lana made in this album—from poetry to quotes to prominent historical figures, these all give so much depth to NFR! and show the thoroughness behind the songwriting and creative process. Jack Antonoff did not disappoint and the instrumentals made the album what it is. I cannot think of a better producer for Lana and that’s evident in her other albums as well.
Overall, I really haven’t said much about how the album sounds since I’d just be repeating myself with how pleasing it is to the ears. Instead, I enjoyed bringing light to the references and allusions that Lana makes to show the depth behind her creative process and what went into this album. Lana has the kind of voice you come across once in a lifetime and the melodies she’s created in NFR! make it a no-skip album.
