Read: How Jack Antonoff helped define pop in 2019 The songs tend to drift, then thrash, then drift again, as if driven by the thoughts in her head rather than by traditional songwriting rules. Blue Banisters is stranger and, somehow, slower-perhaps reflecting the absence of her recent go-to producer, Jack Antonoff, and his brand of anthemic pop. Her March 2021 album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, had country flourishes and surprising vocal inflections.
But musically, she slyly continues to innovate.
Since her 2012 major-label debut album, she’s cooed and pouted in imitations of classic torch singers and folkies, and pastiched tropes about America, femininity, and dysfunctional romance. Even when the globe seems to be spinning off its axis, her art suggests that we’re not really living through extraordinary times-or, at least, that some things remain ordinary even when we are.ĭel Rey’s disconnect from the current moment is, in a sense, her shtick. A decade into fame, she continues to generate both acclaim and controversy, and her latest work clarifies how she does it: by luxuriating in the notion that private desires are, more or less, indifferent to social change. But 2021 signifiers just dress up Del Rey’s most personal lyrics to date. The opener references Black Lives Matter the closer disses a crypto bro. Maybe you even had a thought like the one Lana Del Rey shares in her new song “Black Bathing Suit”: “If this is the end / I want a boyfriend.”īlue Banisters, the eighth studio album by America’s most baffling pop star, swirls with visions of the era we live in. You might have experienced some less dire pangs too: an urge to stock up on chocolate bars, some relief at not having to commute. When the coronavirus pandemic first interrupted life around the world, you likely felt fear for your loved ones and confusion about the future.