Lana Del Rey Releases Her New Album ‘Norman F__cking Rockwell!’

Lana Del Rey has released her new album Norman F__cking Rockwell!, the follow-up to 2017’s Lust For Life. The record features the previously shared ‘Mariners Apartment Complex’, ‘Norman F__king Rockwell’, ‘Venice Bitch’ and ‘Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have – but I Have It’.

The album also includes her cover of ‘Doin Time’ for the Sublime documentary as well as ‘F__k It, I Love You’ and ‘The Greatest’. At 14 tracks, her fifth studio album is a tribute to Laurel Canyon folk-rock, or she told Billboard in her cover story, “a folk record with a little surf twist”.

Del Rey has always occupied her own lane when it comes to the pop music landscape and her sixth studio album continues this course. There are no disposable pop numbers here, with 10-minute-long psychedelic tunes like ‘Venice B__ch’ and slow-burn guitar solos as Del Rey welcomes the apocalypse on ‘the greatest’.

It’s a “mood record”, the 34-year-old singer-songwriter tells Billboard. When it came to making the record, Del Rey tapped one pop music’s go-to collaborator Jack Antonoff, who’s worked with everyone from Lorde to St Vincent and most recently, Taylor Swift’s Lover.

When asked why she chose such a ubiquitous producer, Del Rey told the New York Times, “I think it’s his musicianship. I know a lot of producers who can’t play. He plays the sitar on one of the last things we did! I feel like what I can do in terms of grabbing a melody out of the air, he can do with a very minor chord progression.”

Along with the new record, the latter-day torch singer also released the powerful single ‘Looking For America’, following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio earlier in August.

She also shared the official music video for her cover ‘Doin Time’, helmed by veteran music video director Rich Lee, who also directed the joint music video for ‘F__k It I Love You’ / ‘The Greatest’, as well as several other Del Rey videos.

Del Rey will be heading out on tour in support of the album starting on 21 September at the Jones Beach Theater in New York, before heading to the West Coast with stops in Vancouver, Seattle and Portland and then down to Southern California, including a 10 October date at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

The singer made a surprise stop in Santa Monica, California earlier on Thursday, in a Norman F__king Rockwell-themed ice cream truck handing out sweets to fans. She also hinted that the Lana treat truck will be rolling “up and down the coast” over the long Labor Day weekend.

Norman F__cking Rockwell! is out now and can be bought here.

Format: UK English