'Norman Fucking Rockwell': A Dive into Lana Del Rey's Masterpiece
Lana Del Rey brings the California coast to the music landscape in the flawless 2019 record, 'Norman Fucking Rockwell.'
Norman Fucking Rockwell. One of the best albums to ever be put out by an artist. No matter your thoughts on Lana Del Rey, there is no denying the creative mastery behind this album. You have a record that encapsulates the California coast and the memories it holds in just over an hour-long journey. It deals with the passion a person has for love. The hurt memories can cause. The dark impacts romance has. It all comes together to create a cohesive album that remains a versatile, relatable body of work many years later.
What makes this album so special compared to her other bodies of work? It is a good question many people ask because Rey has a couple of albums that could heavily rival Norman Fucking Rockwell for the top spot. Her most recent album, Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard?, tussled with NFR as one of my favorites from the songstress. However, undeniable mysticism laces through the writing and production of the 2019 album, making it shimmer in her discography. Norman Fucking Rockwell has the it factor that reaches out with a broad appeal yet feels like Rey the most. She isn’t creating these formulated songs found on albums like Born To Die and Lust For Life. While the albums come close to perfection, Ultraviolence and Honeymoon don’t have that cohesiveness where each track feels connected into one big musical story. Norman Fucking Rockwell is an elevation of the albums that came before it. It is the product of years of Lana Del Rey crafting her talent.
What I love most about this record is that it’s a lyrical collage of Rey being herself while producer Jack Antonoff takes her words and places them through some majestic production. The best example of this would be ‘The greatest,’ one of the most beloved tracks on the album. She takes the chaos of pop culture and world news and puts a lens of nostalgia, adoration, and slight fear.
The outro itself really packs a punch:
If this is it, I'm signing off
Miss doing nothin' the most of all
Hawaii just missed that fireball
L.A. is in flames‚ it's getting hot
Kanye West is blond and gone
"Life on Mars?" ain't just a song
I hope the live stream's almost on
It feels so naturally laid out in a way she never had expressed at the time. It is a personal track I still find so breathtaking, celebrating it as one of Rey’s best, as it has become a song that shifted her career. It was subtle, but you can see hints of its influence on songs found on Blue Banisters and Ocean Blvd.
This album has also one of Rey’s best opening tracks. The titular tune starts with an insane opening line: “Goddamn, man-child; You fucked me so good that I almost said "I love you.” It is so out there yet so grounded in the terms of the story she is trying to tell. It feels raw. It feels heartfelt. It feels right. Rey is not afraid to speak her mind here, which is something I have noticed throughout her recent albums.
She isn’t afraid to get personal as well. In her track ‘Happiness is a butterfly,’ Rey creates a thought-provoking piece about how she doesn’t know if she feels cherished by the man she loves. Using a painfully emphatic quote with California destinations, she creates a vivid story of her experiences with ‘bad’ men or men who can’t show her endless devotion. It is one of my favorite songs from the album, and it has one of my favorite blurbs from Rey:
If he's a serial killer, then what's the worst
That can happen to a girl who's already hurt?
I'm already hurt
If he's as bad as they say, then I guess I'm cursed
Looking into his eyes, I think he's already hurt
He's already hurt
The aesthetic is also one of Rey’s best, improving the array of visuals she has crafted over the years. The album cover speaks volumes in creating the overall theme of Norman Fucking Rockwell. It is not just Rey posing with the title slapped in the corner. It feels more than that, with the art connecting to subjects and locations explored throughout the tracks.
First off, it is very reminiscent of Norman Rockwell's paintings. It feels dramatized, with Rey reaching out as she hugs a man tightly, who is Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke. Rockwell was known for his humorous and emphasized paintings revolving around America and the American dream, which the cover art plays into with Lana reaching out her hand. The 1950s romanticized sailing and going to the beach as an American lifestyle, especially in California. You had the Beach Boys creating these breezy tunes that still play on the radio. There were big films, like 1959’s Gidget, highlighting beach culture. There was the use of sailors in cinema with big stars, like the film adaptation of On The Town starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. So much media and content fed into the Americanized idea of beach-going. Not to mention, Rey mentions many popular California cities that have marinas full of boats, like Long Beach and Marina Del Rey. Now wrap all these ideas into sounds while you infuse themes of tenderness, frustration, and heart, and the album cover comes to life through the tracks of Norman Fucking Rockwell.
This beachy Americana theme translates even more through the music video for Rey's cover of Sublime’s "Doin’ Time." The video references the 1958 film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. She highlights the bustling city of Los Angeles and the Venice Beach beachside through the eyes of people in a 1950s drive-in, another romanticized location of the 1950s. The drive-in theater has always represented the hot spot for flourishing young love, a theme portrayed on tracks throughout the album.
The musical vibes of Norman Fucking Rockwell offer a wild ride as well. Its soft-rock production makes this such a calming and elevating experience. The track that highlights this sound the most is “Venice Bitch.” It is a nearly ten-minute tune that starts with a mid-tempo beat until it transforms into a psychedelic pop-rock track. Sonically, it is a beautiful-sounding song perfect for blasting on the speakers on a drive with the windows down. The lengthy runtime might seem daunting, as you might wonder if she can keep your attention for nearly ten minutes. The answer is yes, she can. Rey discusses the passion of young love through an American coast setting. It highlights Rey's soaring talents, taking her nuanced patriotic ideas and incorporating them into a stunning track that makes ten minutes feel like a breeze.
“Venice Bitch” is also one of the most critically acclaimed tracks on the album. Norman Fucking Rockwell as a whole is a beloved album praised by critics. It gained two nominations at the Grammys, including one for Album of the Year, which was her first nomination in the category as a lead artist. Unfortunately, she lost to Billie Eilish and her album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? It was a tough choice, and even to this day, I still can’t pick who deserved to win.
What Norman Fucking Rockwell did for Rey and her career is open the gates for more success and critical acclaim. It seemed more people were starting to accept her as a true artist and not acting like she was some wannabe singer with aesthetics for teens. I know it sounds like a silly idea for people to say when describing her, but it occurred frequently. Without Norman Fucking Rockwell, Rey would be on a vastly different career path, and we wouldn’t have gotten stunning albums like Blue Banisters and Ocean Blvd. I appreciate Norman Fucking Rockwell in my life as well. I still remember the first time I listened to it, and the album has stuck with me since. It is a breathtaking record from the second it starts to the last very second at its end. Its lyrics captivate the mind, and the aesthetic stays faithful to the sound cohesively created by some brilliant producers. Norman Fucking Rockwell is truly Lana Del Rey’s magnum opus.