Lana Del Rey has come a long way from this:
On Born to Die, the chilly album she was hyping when she appeared on SNL in 2012, Lana’s stiffness was exhausting, like she was afraid of emoting, or else she’d crumble into a pile of flower headdresses and flowing skirts. She seemed like a doll designed by the Internet, not an actual musician.
So she retreated from late-night sketch comedy (good call) and headed down to Nashville, where she met and enlisted the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach to produce her upcoming album, Ultraviolence. The first single, “West Coast,” was released earlier today, and…it’s actually pretty good. The sultry, less forced production works well with Lana’s airy voice, because they’re both given space to breathe. Unlike “Video Games, “West Coast” doesn’t flatly lie there; there’s actually a sense of movement.
Keep this up, Lana, and we’ll forget this ever happened.
(No, we won’t.)
