Lana Del Rey released her ninth album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” last week.
Courtesy | Wikimedia Commons
Following the release of three eclectic hit singles, Lana Del Rey dropped her ninth studio album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” this past Friday to universal acclaim. While the raunchy, hip-hop sound of the second hit single, “A&W,” indicated a new, experimental vibe for the anticipated album, the hype distracted from what is otherwise a classic, deep dive into the world of American trauma and nostalgia that Rey embodies in her late career.
Rey has never shied away from brutal honesty. This newest offering extends that honesty to a point of rawness rarely heard before. In the ninth track on the album, “Fingertips,” the serene queen croons out a stream of family trauma that leaves almost no time for breathing. At one point, she softly asks her sister Caroline Grant, “what kind of mother was she to say I’d end up in institutions?”
Rey traverses the hills and the ditches of growing in age while celebrating the bitterness, love, fear, and silliness of it all. In “A&W,” she proudly asks the listener: “Did you know a singer could still be looking like a side piece at 33?”
Importantly, death and its imminence come up more in this album than in the past. Rey handles her fear of this imminence with the grace one would expect from the poet. In the opening track, “The Grants,” she imagines the beauty of taking her memories of “her sister’s firstborn child” and her “grandmother’s last smile” with her.
Following an 11-year discography that struggles to be caged in one genre, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” continues to flex Rey’s ability to inhabit a constantly changing but unmistakable sound. Rey herself best explains her genre-bending in the 11th track, claiming, “I’m folk, I’m jazz, I’m blue, I’m green.”
In “Peppers,” featured singer Tommy Genesis brags, “hands on my knees, I’m Angelina Jolie” over a trap beat that is almost indecent alongside the light, trickling piano of “Paris, Texas” (feat. SYML). This unique contrast is comparable to “Lust For Life,” Rey’s fifth studio album, which included rappers A$AP Rocky and Playboi Carti.
One cannot fully appreciate the newest album without understanding the deep friendship between Rey and the renowned producer Jack Antonoff, who offers his voice and keys to multiple songs. As a special tribute, Rey blesses Antonoff’s engagement to actress Margaret Qualley on “Margaret” (feat. Bleachers). The sweet song gives a much-needed respite to the heavier tones that persist throughout other tracks.
The album arrives four years after her wildly successful and formative sixth studio album, “Norman F***ing Rockwell!” Fans will be pleased to hear samples of “NFR!” throughout the newest album. Most notably, Lana reprises “Venice B****,” one of the most popular singles from “NFR!,” over a dark, trap beat in “Taco Truck x VB.” The repeated sampling of her own tracks demonstrates Lana’s confidence in her craft. “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” joins an elite roster of albums with the same confidence.
