Summer solstice. Lana del Rey’s birthday. There’s nothing I love more than these two, such a great pair that resulted in one of the most amazing songs of the decade, and I dare to call it ‘a genre’: Summertime Sadness. I was dying to do this Random Ratings before, I finally found a decent reason (which honestly I didn’t even need it) to write about my favorite songwriter/poet/singer, Lana del Rey, and there are so many: Her birthday, the start of Cancer season, 9 years since the release of Ultraviolence, Her disappearance from social media; and the most important, my deep admiration of her work.
gets it of course. She’s a poet for the poets.
I was 15 years old when I first heard Lana sing: “This is what makes us girls, we don’t stick together ‘cause we put love first”; had I experienced being separated from my girls to go to a boarding school because of causing too much trouble and being a drug addict/alcoholic at such a young age? No, I didn’t even have a group of girlfriends but I felt it in every inch of my soul as if I had lived it as well. That’s where I discovered what Lana del Rey does to me in a visceral, spiritual, sinister way: I see myself in her stories and it helps me accept and heal this sort of passive, unique and special, victim complex I’ve always had.
There are so many times I have felt my body and emotions coming together to express and release a very rooted feeling I had.
In Cherry, the part where she longs: “’Cause I love you so much, I fall to pieces”, I fall with her.
In Dealer, where she builds up the loudest scream she’s ever recorded: “Gave you all my money, I don’t wanna liiiiive, I don’t wanna give you nothing, ‘cause you never give me nothing back”, I tilt my head backwards and scream to the sky with her.
In The Blackest Day, I used to cryyy to the last part: “It’s not one of those phases I’m going through, or just a song, it’s not one of them, I’m on my own, on my own, I’m on my own again”.
Also, the rabbit holes I’ve entered for researching so many of her references, I have a brain because of her. I’ve never been so much into a poem that I would learn it from memory as Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot or also to read I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman for the first time, that poem blows my mind anytime I come back to it. I got into Nina Simone because of The Other Woman and Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, also Billie Holiday (a big part of it was thanks to Warpaint as well). And yeah, I really tried to get more into the Lolita references from Born to Die but the story was not for me at all, I did see the Stanley Kubrick movie and got into almost half of the book but that was enough, I actually got a very aesthetic vintage edition though, from a flea market in Amsterdam.
And this is just the intro… Sooooo, today I want to get into her 9 albums, rank them and tell you all about my favorite songs and maybe lines in them. I don’t think I’ll go too deep because that would be a dead end since there’s lots of unreleased songs I could talk about and music videos, but I’ll make sure to make it short not get into details, and add a playlist! So here we goooo
9. Chemtrails Over The Country Club
To be honest, I never became close to this album, I decided to skip on it the day Blue Banisters came out and stuck to listening to this one better. Today I’m writing this while listening to the albums on the back, not completely because I will be done by tomorrow if I do but a quick overview and, truthfully, I skip this album because of White Dress, I cannot stand the sounds in it, once I skip it, I really feel it. Somehow this album feels controversial to listen to, but it’s soothing and I think that’s all I gotta say about it.
Fav songs: Breaking Up Slowly, Tulsa Jesus Freak, Chemtrails Over The Country Club
8. Lust For Life
Okay, second spot and it’s getting hard to choose. As RuPaul would say, “this is hard because it’s separating the A’s from the A+’s” nothing bad at all with how I decided to rank them, this is not an elimination, I love them all.
This is one of the albums I have on CD format and used to play it on my car riding around, this albums feels like summer in California, like the sun hitting on your face while driving up a highway on a mountain. “That I’ve been dyiiiiing for someeeething real”, “Who’s doper than this bitch? who’s freer than me?”, “And everyday felt like Sunday and I, I wish we had stayed home”, “Change is a powerful thing, people are powerful beings”, dropping true feelings in every song, I rewind, FUCK!
Fav songs: Cherry, Tomorrow Never Came, In My Feelings
7. Paradise
I liiiiive with this album. I remember being in highschool with my best friend making fun of ourselves for liking this album, very dramatic, Americana, “I am fucking crazy but I’m free” of us. The Ride music video??? The tropico short film??? The Burning Desire video??? The Blue Velvet for H&M music video??? All cinematic masterpieces. She gave us fantasy, poetry, illusions of freedom, blue jeans-white shirt-and-converse outift inspiration, she gave us everything after her homemade videos era and I love this album for that.
Fav songs: Body Electric, Gods & Monsters, Blue Velvet
6. Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd
So this is the latest album, I’m starting to love it. The first two singles blew my mind, when A&W came out it lit me up, it gave me so much energy and hope to manifest being in Mexico, I don’t know how to explain how it related but I just felt so much nostalgia in me about fun times, feeling free, going places. The piano in this album takes me somewhere else, I imagine myself in a white dress, in an empty room playing Paris, Texas from memory as if I had practiced it all summer long out of boredom. Maybe I should actually do that instead of imagining myself in this scenarios out of boredom. Anywayssss…
Fav songs: Candy Necklace, Paris, Texas, A&W
5. Blue Banisters
This album is just great lyrics after great lyrics in the beginning: Text Book “maybe just the way we’re different could set me free”; Blue Banisters, the whole story, “She said ‘You can’t be a muse and be happy, too, you can’t blacken the pages with Russian poetry and be happy’ And that scared me”; on Arcadia, “My body is a map of L.A.” ok it’s just a line but what!! an!! icon!! I really enjoy the stories in this album, it feels like a glimpse into Elizabeth Grant’s everyday life.
Fav songs: Arcadia, Dealer, If You Lie Down With Me
4. Born to Die
We’re getting thereeee. Ok I know I cannot call myself a die-hard fan if I don’t consider Lana del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant album as the first one but for me Born to Die was the first one I listened to and kept it that way. I remember the hype around me and I didn’t want to believe it, I remember my cousin showing me Dark Paradise on a shitty youtube lyrics video and falling in love instantly, I remember downloading the Born to Die album on torrentz, making my own CD, taking it on a two-week trip to Cancun and listening to it on my favorite CD player. This album was soooo different than what I listened to that it became my guilty pleasure.
It has sweet vocals, violins, lo-fi voices in the back that sound like memories, bass drops, dark stories about girlhood and womanhood, I just keep it very close to my heart.
Fav songs: Carmen, National Anthem, This Is What Makes Us Girls
3. Ultraviolence
The music geek in me was so excited for this album when it came out because I knew Dan Auerbach was the producer and at the time he was producing top-notch indie jewels like Yours, Dreamily by The Arcs, AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP by A$AP Rocky, Tell Me I’m Pretty by Cage The Elephant and my favorite Black Keys album, Turn Blue.
This album has the best tracklist order out of every album of hers, no skips, no shuffle, just the complete ride through this very troubled Cruel World Lana lived in.
Fav songs: This one is harder to pick 3 because I love every song buuut I must say Shades of Cool, Fucked My Way Up To The Top, Old Money
2. Norman Fucking Rockwell!
NFR was the soundtrack to my most memorable spiritual awakening, turning 25. I adore the nostalgia I’ve built up around it, I used to listen to it on my car rides through the beach town I lived in for a while. Every song in it feels like a warm hug with ocean breeze, I feel like every (and THE) Love Song ever made by Lana del Rey is in this album. Hands down, the best opening line of her albums (God damn, man child, you fucked me so good that I almost said “I love you") and one of my favorite closing songs of her (hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but I have it).
Fav songs: California, Happiness is a butterfly, Cinnamon Girl
1. Honeymoon
The poetry in this one!!!!!! I adore Honeymoon. I didn’t get into it right away, but as soon as I learned to appreciate it, I loved it. I love the sounds in it, every song gives me the shivers, her voice sounds so mature, so mysterious, the crying violin at the beginning of Honeymoon stops me from living in this Earth and takes me to some heavens I wouldn’t visit otherwise. It’s purely hypnotizing.
“We both know that it’s not fashionable to love me, But you don’t go cause truly there’s nobody for you but me”. “I feel free when I see no one and nobody knows my name”. When she screams “Ground control to Major Tom, can you hear me all night loooong?”!!!!!!!!!!!
Fav songs: The Blackest Day, Salvatore, Terrence Loves You