The first thing you should know about this album is that it is indulgent. Coming in at just over an hour long, with several 5-minute songs and one that almost extends to 10, this album is awash in its own decadence. And the thing is, I can’t really resent it for that. Norman Fucking Rockwell is all about capturing that mythical idea of American and Hollywood decadence and indulgence that may never have really existed in the real world, but definitely does in our culture. It’s a reflection of the ideas we have about romantic car rides, sunsets on the horizon, sex for the hell of it, and the feeling that nothing could ever go wrong. It’s about carefree days, love, imperfection, and the American Dream.
If you’re not familiar with Lana Del Rey, she was one of the first “indie” “pop” artists to really make it into the eye of the mainstream in the early 2010s after the complete domination that bubblegum pop had on the charts. Along with Lorde, Sia, and later Halsey and Billie Eilish, she rode into popularity via a type of sound that was more stripped down, contemplative, and melancholy than Britney or any of the boy bands. However, unlike those I just mentioned, Lana has had both a long career and a consistent style, which has allowed her to gain fans as well as detractors. Spoilers, Norman Fucking Rockwell! isn’t a radical change for her sound. It’s still the nostalgic Hollywood-inspired sadcore music, with a muted sonic presence and full of piano ballads and soft rock leanings. In short: if you know who Lana Del Rey is, you already know if you’re going to have a certain bias towards this album. That doesn’t mean that this album isn’t a a step up from her past works though.
This album feels languid. That’s the best way I can describe it. It seems to slow time down. This might be because of the song lengths, the chilled-out atmosphere that seems to evoke a hazy smoke filled room(at least for me), or the lyrics describing a slow-burning passion, and later an equally slow-burning melancholy and sense of emptiness. It evokes a dreamlike state, and seems like the type of album to sip red wine to. This album will not give you a burst of dopamine every handful of seconds. In fact, it never really climaxes into a moment of power in any of the songs. Instead the songs generally meander up and down the energy level chart, and don’t give anything close to a bass drop. This leads to my major critique of the album, that though the length makes sense on a meta-level of indulgence, that the album still feels too long, with several songs and moments that feel awkwardly stretched out with instrumentals, and a couple songs that feel unnecessary.
With that in mind, let’s dive into the individual tracks. The album leads off with the title track, minus an exclamation mark. Norman Fucking Rockwell is a good start to the album, setting up the imperfect Norman Rockwell(we assume) as Lana’s imperfect love, a “goddamn(ed) manchild”. It’s a soaring chamber pop number, with a decent vocal performance for Lana. However, it’s best in terms of the album, and on its own suffers from being somewhat flat. The second track, Mariners Apartment Complex, continues on adding to the themes of the title track, about two imperfect people and the change that they can hope to achieve by being together in love and supporting one another. It’s a piano ballad soft rock song, with decent production and vocal performances. What really makes this track, however, is the lyrics. There is some genuinely clever wordplay and rhyming here, and there is a great deal of depth here.
And then we get to Venice Bitch. The first time I listened to it, I was constantly waiting for it to end, not because of any inherent flaw with the song, but because it just keeps going on and on and on. The song starts with some nice moody singing from Lana, with decent lyrics backed by a tasteful mix of strings, guitar, and other various instruments. By 2 minutes in it seems as if the song is going to build up and the wind down, with increasingly layered vocals and instrumentals. But by 3 1/2 minutes a warbling guitar or synth(I can’t tell) is introduced, and the song prepares to build up once again. And then it just keeps going on. After some more instrumentals, and by some I mean several minutes, the music gets increasingly distorted, before that all drops away for more vocal melodies. And then we get a bit more instrumentation before the song ends with a short outro. This song is 9 minutes and 37 seconds long. It’s incredible that this song is at all coherent. That being said, it did lose my focus after the 4th minute, and much of the guitar solos blend into the background. It’s almost styling itself after experimental rock. In a way, this song is a microcosm for the album as a whole. It’s long, it’s indulgent, and it builds this sense of dreamlike nostalgia in layers.
The 4th track, Fuck it I love you, is a capstone for the last 3 tracks. Just like how Venice Bitch evokes a dreamlike state, this track evokes the feeling of post-wakeup clarity. The production and lyrics are okay, but it’s Lana’s singing that really carries this track. The way that the vocals flow into the profession of love has a real tenderness of emotion to it. There is a real feeling of earnestness and sincerity, supported by the stripped down production. The 5th track, however, is a complete 180 from any of the other tracks on the album. Doin’ Time is a cover of a song by the band Sublime from 1996, and it is incredibly smooth. It’s got a groovy marimba part, and rocking drums. Lana’s voice also certainly fits into this trip hop, California essentialist song with vocals filled with sleaze. It’s a brilliant choice of a cover, and though it doesn’t really fit onto the album, it’s a song that few other than Lana herself could have brought back to life two decades after it was first released. It’s fitting that Lana is covering a Sublime song, given that a great deal of her music relies on the mythical version of SoCal, and that Sublime were one of the biggest influences on the stereotypical SoCal sound.
The next two tracks, Love song and Cinnamon Girl, along with the track after, are the weakest tracks in my opinion. They are both chamber pop songs that just don’t put Lana Del Rey’s full vocal potential on display, nor the beautiful production of Jack Antonoff, who produced this album, and who you may know as the producer of Lorde’s Melodrama and the last three Taylor Swift records. Love song is a muted ballad with limited vocal range and honestly somewhat generic lyrics about being in love, which is not Lana’s strong suit. Plus, the whole idea of a love song in a love song has become overused at this moment in time. Cinnamon Girl is slightly better, as it’s a piano ballad with slightly more clever lyrics, and by more clever I mean that cinnamon is a reference to ecstasy. Other than that, it’s another song about being in love with someone else. It goes on for too long in my opinion, and has the same problem as Venice Bitch does where the somewhat boring instrumentals go on to try and create mood, and though they succeed, it also leaves me somewhat wanting more.
How to disappear is the first song in the second half of the album, that is the half where Lana deals with losing her lover. How to disappear is at first about all the other men that Lana has lost at some point in the past, and this obviously implies that the lover behind all the rest of the songs has also disappeared. Sonically, the song is in 3/4, and evokes a feeling of lounge music. The lyrics are pretty good, but they are held back by plain vocals and production. California, on the other hand, is arguably one of the best tracks on the album. It’s a song of utter longing, and the pathetic feeling is only outweighed by the sadness. It’s a stripped down ballad, and that really gives the excellent lyrics and vocals a chance to bloom. Lana is bargaining with this lover, saying that she’ll do anything he wants and that he can be whoever he wants, as long as he returns to her and to California. The vocal performance that Lana gives here is raw, and very emotionally powerful. The lyrics also paint a great picture of someone who is bargaining for a return to a past way of life.
The Next Best American Record feels like a continuation of California, and it is to a degree. It’s a guitar ballad about Lana reminiscing over a lover with which she had a connection strong enough that they though they could write “The Next Best American Record”. The lyrics evoke a feeling of quiet contemplation, as does the production. Lana’s vocal performance here, once again, is what sells the track. Her voice soars the chorus and creates a poignant bittersweet feeling. The feeling only builds as the song keeps going, and it’s the longest song on the record that I would say doesn’t need shortening.
The greatest and Bartender seem to take place in the present day, and time-wise, feel far divorced from the days described in the first half of the record. The greatest is about missing things. She misses California, she misses her lover, she misses the past, and she misses doing nothing most of all. Her singing is subdued on this track, and it works great with the mood that the track aims for. The production works really well with the lyrics and the vocals, and this song shows a different side of nostalgia than the rest of the album. That feeling of faded glory and being past your prime will continue for the rest of the album. Bartender is a piano ballad with some more out-there lyrics and solid vocals. This one is a bit different from the other songs, as though it’s still about finding solace in others and feeling left behind by the times, it’s also about wanting anonymity. She wants to be left in peace, and to just be with someone understanding like a “bartender”. In order to do this she’ll pull up her roots just to hide.
Happiness is a butterfly is another piano ballad about wanting companionship and peace, but that happiness being unobtainable, like a butterfly. Once again, the vocals are good, and the lyrics, though simple, are evocative and suited to the themes of the track. Lana just wants to return to the world in which happiness was catchable, and now just wants to dance. “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have — but i have it” is not nearly as indulgent as that title length suggests. Given the production of the last several songs, this one of course is also a piano ballad to fit the lonely mood. The lyrics are incredibly interesting and complex, and this song may be the most intriguing song that Lana has ever written from a songwriter’s perspective. The production and vocals are also solidly done. The song’s lyrics mainly focus on how Lana cannot live up to being a perfect woman, but that she does have hope despite all the pain she’s suffered through. She may not be happy, but neither is she sad.
Lana Del Rey has managed to do something that is difficult for even the best artists: she has made a record that both sticks to a theme sonically and lyrically, that also doesn’t bore the listener to death. It’s not perfect. There are songs that are too long, too indulgent, and some songs that might have been better off on a B-side. But even these faults can seem charming when viewed from a distance and the whole of the album is seen. As a concept album about the myth of SoCal love, it’s almost allowed to be overly indulgent and self-absorbed. The atmosphere of an album is in my opinion, something we don’t care nearly enough about but which gives us so much more to view the track with. And this record lives on the atmosphere that it creates. It’s hazy, dreamlike, contemplative, and imperfect. But it’s allowed to be. It’s an hour-long trip down someone else’s memory lane, clouded by nostalgia. Any faster and it would feel rushed. A lot of the tracks here would not work by themselves, but do when presented together. That being said, there are some stand out songs here. Doin’ Time is obviously a stand-out, both in terms of the record’s quality and the style. Fuck it I love you and California have soaring vocal performances, and hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have-but I have it has great lyrical depth. Of course, there are several songs that would crater in appeal outside of the album. Love song, Cinnamon Girl, How to disappear, and The greatest all simply fit into the atmosphere, but do not elevate themselves past it. She may not have created The Next Best American Record, but she has crafted an album that comes closer than any of her other works, and probably most of her contemporaries as well. Your mileage will vary based on how much you like this type of sad, contemplative, and nostalgic music, but personally I feel like this album deserves a 9/10.
