Jump to content

Archived

This thread has been closed to further replies because it was not updated for 12 months. If you wish to have this thread reinstated, please contact an administrator.

Americunt

Lana Del Rey | Norman Fucking Rockwell! | August 30th, 2019

Recommended Posts

6 hours ago, Ghostface said:

Probably not the best song in her discography, but I can see it being top 20. brit15

 

...If you hold me without hurting me

you’ll be the first who ever did...

Idk, sonically wasn't THAT great, even tho i enjoyed it, haven't check album lyrics yet cause my HP is on crack. brit15

2 hours ago, Chris Morlock said:

You are not being serious i- brit15

 

#RegineNeverLies

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
17 minutes ago, Urbanov said:

88 on Metacritic gag1 

I literally don't care about rates but I can't help but feel smug and vindicated gag1 "I win" gag1 

13 minutes ago, Madame X said:

Cant believe this is going to be her highest rated album there. gag1 

BELIEVE IT gag1 

Link to post
Share on other sites
55 minutes ago, Hunty Bear said:

I literally don't care about rates but I can't help but feel smug and vindicated gag1 "I win" gag1

Same but it’s still good to see gag1 

Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, BJORK said:

Anyone else struggling to understand the meaning of most songs? The lyrics are personal and confusing AF to an outsider ellie1

I think the only one that I find completely cryptic is "Bartender". The rest seem pretty straightforward.

 

Norman Fucking Rockwell - A dude who thinks he's a crazy talented artist actually isn't and refuses to acknowledge that.

Mariners Apartment Complex - We know the story of this one, with an unnamed partner telling Lana he liked her because she was fucked up like him and her response being that she was actually doing pretty well and didn't feel kinship like that.

Venice Bitch - All about the bombast and iconoclast of a relationship that feels like the archetype of the American Dream, even though it isn't and she realizes that.

Fuck It I Love You - Lana examining the relationship she has with herself via projection on a faceless lover. The first verse is all about her journey to self-improvement and the realization that all the performative things she does to be "empowered" might not really be helping. She doesn't like this revelation, so she seeks out her old comfort: someone who will love her. The chorus is her trying to throw herself at this person for comfort and begging them to respond in kind. They don't. The second verse is her projecting hard and trying to understand why the relationship didn't work out, even though she and this person had so much in common personally, which led her to expect them to think like she does. The outro is her ruminating on that idea and kinda letting her thoughts go wild.

Doin' Time - Obviously, she didn't write this one, but I guess you could see the adapted lyrics as also being about her relationship with herself, which the video reinforces. For example, "Me and my girl got this relationship, I love her so bad, but she treats me like shit" would be her talking about herself in a depersonalized way.

Love Song - Feels a little like a continuation from the mental state she was left in at the end of FIILY. She's moved on and is finally in a relationship that feels stable. It's safe and loving in a way she's rarely felt. It kind of freaks her out, but she just has to adapt to the sound of a new type of love song.

Cinnamon Girl - Lots of juxtaposition between the good and bad relationship songs so far. This is kind of the alternate path from the end of FIILY, where she went back to this emotionally misconfigured relationship and let it continue because she was so desperate for love. She's still pining for it to be right, but is ultimately settling into a passive role, because she knows her drug-addled lover is never going to be the tender partner she wants.

How to Disappear - A story song about the way her life progresses in these two alternate paths. The first verse is the destructive path from Cinnamon Girl/FIILY and the second one could be argued as the safer and more stable path from Love Song. The final verse is either her in the future looking back at all of this or one of the versions of her looking towards the future and hoping. This song conjoins the paths and shows that despite the different bumps in the road she may experience, she's still aiming for the same goal: to disappear, either into a relationship (on the bad path) or from public life (on the good path).

California - I think we can say pretty definitively that this is about her ex, Barrie James O'Neill. She checks up on him via a friend, who says he's not doing well, which leads her to reminisce about the good times they had and how she now wants to rekindle what they had, because she's tried the LA lifestyle and it's not suiting her. I also think the affectation of slurring during the chorus is supposed to imply that she's drinking.

The Next Best American Record - This could be argued as another Barrie song and maybe a more direct reminiscence. They were so in love and so into each other, connecting physically, spiritually, musically. She's wiped out all the negative aspects of the song, in comparison to the demo version. It's just the happy memories, without any of the bad times in there. Very much a reverie, in context.

The Greatest - She acknowledges that giving up on Barrie is probably the biggest mistake she ever made and now that other parts of her life seem to be crumbling, she realizes how important he was. It plays around with pathetic fallacy and the metaphysical conceit of an apocalyptic future, mirroring her internal apocalypse. The end of the song is a recognition that her mistakes are set in stone and has to live with the state of the world, the state of music and the state of herself.

Bartender - Reading through the lyrics now, I think I'm beginning to understand this. She's spending a lot of time at these uppercrust parties in Laurel Canyon and meets someone new, who lets her feel like she's having fun again. The rest of the song is her efforts to begin a secret double-life with this person. They live a fair distance from the main part of her life, but close enough that she can visit when she wants. She buys a trashed truck on the cheap so the paparazzi don't catch her in the act of visiting the guy. As for the title metaphor, she feels a kind of addiction to the guy because he gives her mental release, but at the same time, she knows what addiction feels like and doesn't want to go down that road again, so she keeps it casual. The song really just describes that relationship and doesn't make any comment on progression. It's purely "I'm having fun with this guy in private and that's all you need to know".

Happiness is a Butterfly - A combination of a story song and a generalized self-empowerment song. She's romantically involved with someone who's giving her mixed signals, but she still feels satisfied with her career, her friends and her fans, all of which she believes are important. The chorus makes this song the antithesis of Cinnamon Girl (which is passive to the extreme) because she actively calls this guy out on how much of a douchebag he's being. She recognizes that he's hurt in some ways, much like she is (which is a callback to Fuck It I Love You, in that she recognizes the same thing in that relationship and didn't know how to act on it), but she gives him the ultimatum that if the relationship is going to continue, he needs to let his emotional walls come down. The rest of the song is her reinforcing that.

Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have - But I Have It - Another song examining her relationship with herself. She explains her personal history and how that caused her problems with the manic way she treats love of both others and herself. A lot of the anecdotes are from her personal life, but they're generally explainable enough.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • Replies 218
  • Created
  • Last Reply

  • Browsing now   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×