“Oh God, I miss you on my lips. It’s me, your little Venice bitch…”
Lana Del Rey isn’t releasing her next studio album until 2019. Luckily for us, her latest song runs long enough to bring us right into the New Year.
The Queen of Coney Island-turned-Venice Bitch is back with a second serving of what’s to come as of Tuesday (September 18), following last week’s “Mariners Apartment Complex.”
Like “Mariners,” “Venice Bitch” is also produced by Jack Antonoff.
Unlike “Mariners,” it’s 9:36 long. Settle in.
“Fear fun / Fear love / Fresh out of fucks forever,” the track begins. And just like that, we have an instant favorite new Lana Del Lyric.
Of course, all the signature Lana lyrical topics are touched upon throughout the 10-minute epic: summer, America, insanity.
“As the summer fades away, nothing gold can stay / You write, I tour, we make it work / You’re beautiful and I’m insane / We’re American-made.”
The track plays like a bittersweet (or sweet, I guess, if you prefer the cold) ride along the coast with the windows down for the last time before the season starts to change, with just the slightest chill in the air. As we all know, this is the greatest genre of song, second only to Tears On The Dance Floor.
As the sizable production goes on, it stretches into strange and hypnotic instrumental territory for an extended period of time, with Lana occasionally popping in to provide a haunting coo in the background. “Crimson and clover, honey,” she repeats, “Over and over, honey.”
The song is one of Lana’s loosest (and longest!) productions, as she genuinely misplaces all of her fucks and lets the song simply breathe. It’s refreshingly free in that way, and easy to get lost.
However, not everyone was necessarily pleased to hear it.
Lana called into Zane Lowe’s show on Beats 1 to talk about the track. (She also went for a run at 9 in the morning so she’d have some energy to chat, she said.)
“I played it for my managers, and I was like ‘I think this is the single I want to put out.’ And they were like ‘Are you kidding me? Why do you do this to us? Can’t you make a 3 minute normal pop song?’ And I was like, well, end of the summer, some people want to drive around for 10 minutes and get lost in electric guitar, so…” she laughed.
She also opened up about her process, past and present: “I think I stuck with the same producers for six or seven years. I expected to get in there with Jack and expected him to have four-and-the-floor beats already produced for me, but he just sat down at his piano. I don’t know if he was thinking of The Beatles at the time, but he had this really…Sgt. Pepper-y sounds…I asked him, ‘Are you sure I’m allowed to have this? Do you not want to save that production for yourself?’ And he thought that was hilarious…he’s like intimidatingly good.”
LDR also unveiled the title of the album, which consists of 11 song “right now,” and it’s…fucking insane.
“The album’s called Norman Fucking Rockwell. Working with Jack, I was in a little bit of a lighter mood, so the title track is called ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’ and it’s kind of about this guy who is such a genius artist but he thinks he’s the shit and he knows it and he like won’t shut up talking about it…creative types, they just go on and on about themselves, but there’s merit about it also!” she explained.
“I Just liked the title track so much, I was like ‘I definitely want the record to be called that.’ In the song, there’s another reference to Norman Rockwell. I don’t remember if I did it to pop that message in a little further…it’s just sort about ‘I tour, you write, we make it work…’ I also like having painter references in there…I’m very visual, too. I know it’s a crazy title, but that’s the title of the record.”
She’s also getting her pilot license and writing short stories, but that’s a whole other thing. She also wants to put out a “standalone” song in October, but she’s not sure yet.
Oh, Lana. The summer’s truly not hot (or sad) without you.
“Venice Bitch” was released on September 18. (iTunes)
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