Lana del Rey - Venice Bitch
Norman Fuckin Rockwell. Probably one of the best album titles in recent memory, the upcoming Lana del Rey album might be the one that stirs her career in a new direction. There are quite a few parallels between del Rey and Rockwell that go beyond their fascination for the Americana lifestyle, beyond their pop style and themes (even if Rockwell painted the happy families and Lana sings about the tragic prom queens and their rocker boyfriends), both of them are very politically compromised artists that can be very critical of the country they love, even when their style and artistic merit have been heavily questioned.
Venice Bitch is, starting with the most obvious, a song that lasts nine minutes and 40 seconds, the longest one in her whole catalogue, a daring move for a pop artist, one that could have killed her career ten years ago when almost no radio station would have accepted to play a track this long (not to mention that it has the word "Bitch" in its title), and that even in the Spotify era, will test the endurance of many listeners that won't find the quick gratification they are used to in here. Lana derails her melancholic love song in a trippy psychedelic trip heavy with electric guitar noise and a second part that lacks any sort of structure.
In some ways, her poetic palette hasn't changed: jeans, summer, ice queen. But in this stance, it feels more a self-retrospective that a repetition; she charges the track with a new found melancholy for the crazy old times while she keeps moving forward. The times of bad fuck boys were fun, but now she's ready for "one life, one dream, one lover", even her approach to getting high is more mature, it is not an identity self-affirmation by circling what is forbidden, now it's a way to connect with herself and with her partner. Lana has finally matured; if the change was hinted in Lust for Life, now it's fully materialized. It is now that no one doubts her talent and her relevance that she can focus on creating new paths for her music by experimenting in meaningful ways.
Venice Beach puts Lana del Rey in a new league. No more comparisons with Sky Ferreira, Charli XCX or Lady Gaga, now she is much closer to Feist, Cat Power and Bat for Lashes. She is a proper alternative songwriter, an artist in a search for beauty and art as her main concerns. Like Beyonce, she has used her power as a celebrity to take control of her music, and her place as one of the biggest contemporary pop stars to twist the industry and let her creative self, and not the trends of the industry, the ones that will guide what she offers us next.
