Lana del Rey is Heterodox: a lyric analysis
“Poetry is the way into a spiritual vision of society and the universe.” ―Camille Paglia
From stating that feminism has no place for a woman like her, to appropriating iconography from the American historical and cultural landscape, to dating a cop, she has been canceled for a number of missteps in the eyes of today’s Critical Social Justice doctrines. She has also called out the narcissistic behaviors of Donald Trump and has had some cringe-worthy attempts to prove her “diversity” and “inclusivity”. Many will dissect and take her clumsily articulated political statements and eloquently written lyrics out of context. Many have wondered – is Lana del Rey a secret republican? For me, and as the Dutch would say: Nee! Lana del Rey is heterodox! She is the Intellectual Dark Web of yesterday and today’s Hollywood glamour. She is a conceptual masterpiece that could easily live inside a David Lynch film. She is a musical expression aligned to the views of Camille Paglia. She is the Sylvia Plath for the millennial woman. Let us begin our lyrical investigation.
I. Buddy’s Rendezvous
“Whatever happened to the girl I knew?
In the wasteland, come up short and end up on the news
Everythin' you want
What's the fun in gettin' everythin' you want? '
I wouldn't know, but look, baby, you should try
Forget that lefty shit your mom drilled in your mind.”
In this most recent release of hers, in collaboration with Father John Misty, she very directly expresses trying to “unlearn” leftist dogmas, while reminiscing about her former, likely more naive self. Sometimes fathers are absent, but sometimes mothers guide us poorly. Not only that, but she takes a page from Jordan Peterson on personal responsibility: life would be less fulfilling if we didn’t have at least some obstacles on our journey towards our goals. Sometimes you need to clean your room before you can go to the Met Gala.
“We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. ‘I'm this way because my father made me this way. I'm this way because my husband made me this way.’ Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.” —Camille Paglia
II. Violets for Roses
“There's something in the air
The girls are running 'round in summer dresses
With their masks off, and it makes me so happy”
This song was written during the Covid-19 pandemic. While this was from the second album she released during the pandemic, Blue Banisters, she also released a poetry book, that I highly recommend. At an event for this book release, she was canceled for adorning this problematic, yet swanky mask:
She responded to criticisms that she was tested for covid and that the mask apparently had a clear interior lining. Shortly after this event, she released a music video from her first album that was released during the pandemic, Chemtrails Over The Country Club, where she can be seen wearing the same mask that warranted her criticisms and accusations of upper class white woman privilege (and let’s not forget— cultural appropriation). Was she trolling the mob for tweets? Was she trying to prove a point that she is based? Clearly, she is anti-mask and anti-lockdown. No further argument.
“It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation. ” ―Camille Paglia
III. Blue Banisters
“Said he'd fix my weathervane
Give me children, take away my pain”
In her music, there is often a fine line between balancing a deep yearning for romantic love, but also being let down by romantic love. Or at least a failed attempt to achieve it. In this song in particular, she steps away from her usual glamorous facade and steps into cottagecore, where she expresses almost tradwife desires. On a first listen, one might interpret the lyrics as raising a glass (or baking a cake) to sisterhood in moments of heartbreak, but as a dear internet acquaintance said to me,
“Her sisters paint her banisters green and grey. Sadder colors. And there's so many references about women ‘convincing her’ that her heart is healing. It reads to me more like yearning for a traditional life and the emptiness or incompleteness of life if we as women only embrace feminine energy in our life.”
My acquaintance also suggested that Bari Weiss interview her, which I fully agree with. The lyrics continue,
“She said, ‘Most men don't want a woman with a legacy, it's of age’
She said, "You can't be a muse and be happy, too
You can't blacken the pages with Russian poetry and be happy’
And that scared me
'Cause I met a man who
Said he'd come back every May”
Her friends are telling her that men don’t want a successful woman. Her friends are telling her that she can’t have both her artistry and a happy relationship. And this worries her because she met someone that has made promises to her. Sisterhood is a beautiful thing, but sometimes friends give you bad, confusing, and potentially self-sabotaging advice.
“Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.” ―Camille Paglia
IV. How to Disappear
“Now it's been years since I left New York
I've got a kid and two cats in the yard
The California sun and the movie stars
I watch the skies getting light as I write, as I
Think about those years
As I whisper in your ear
I'm always going to be right here
No one's going anywhere”
This song is especially dear to me, as it has also been years since I left New York. I left for Europe in 2015, right as all the madness was beginning, was disconnected for a few years, and then was officially red-pilled when I ended up spending a large part of the pandemic in Montreal while I completed a graduate degree at an elite institution, where I encountered Canadian hypocrisy at its finest. I will describe this time in my life as a Lynchian vortex of frozen despair.
“But I love that man like nobody can
He moves mountains and pounds them to ground again”
It was a time full of torment, frustration, anger, being gaslit by society and being manically focused on a massive amount of work — but it was also a quiet, somewhat romantic time for me, as I met someone that would change me, take care of me, and make me a better person. It was a difficult time in life, it was a complicated time, but there was also warmth and laughter in the cold darkness, with someone that was there for me, and who would even listen to Lana with me while working on a puzzle. In general, I feel a similar nostalgia for the past decade of my life as Lana expresses in her storytelling. She describes a reality where she has a domestic life, looking back on her years of being involved with dysfunctional and dishonest men, substance abuse, and violence. Escapist behaviors that allowed her and others to cope, but essentially self-destructive. She looks back on those years lovingly, with forgiveness and maybe even rose-tinted glasses, as it made her the woman she is today, and even though her life has changed, she hasn’t.
“Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ''evil'' look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it” ―Camille Paglia
V. Textbook
“There we were, screamin', ‘Black Lives Matter’
In a crowd, by the Old Man River
And I saw you saw who I am
God, I wish I was with my father
He could see us in all our splendor
All the things I couldn't want for him”
This song is mostly describing a romantic dynamic she has, her emotions and desires around it, and reflecting on how her relationship with her father may have influenced this and what she seeks out in romance. It’s strange that she tells this story, in parallel to attending a #BlackLivesMatter protest (likely the ones triggered by the death of George Floyd during the summer of 2020), while simultaneously painting a landscape of a personal love story and/or family history, as always, full of dysfunction. She describes a tension between the past and the present, the personal paralleling the political. It reminds me a bit of when Sylvia Plath compared the abuse she experienced from her father to being a jew during the holocaust. She quotes Old Man River (I also quite like the version done by Judy Garland)— which is an old song about the hardships of African Americans. It was also my maternal grandfather’s favorite song, and was sung by my cousin at his funeral. It is difficult for me to decipher if her support for BLM is sincere, if she’s making a cultural commentary and just offering context on the current climate around race, if she is just building on the poetic traditions of previous American writers, or if she’s just another white savior centering her allyship on her own psychology with the only intention to brand herself as Moral and Righteous, rather than actually trying to alleviate or understand the sufferings of particular demographics in America (and I am sure she was accused of this as well, but I do not care enough to look more into the details because most people on the internet, are stupid and should go touch some grass). Regardless, it is another example where you cannot quite tell exactly where she falls on these matters, while still bringing the subject to our attention. She might even just be playing a character. Who knows. But like America, she is complex, and full of contradictions.
“A serious problem in America is the gap between academia and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy. ” ―Camille Paglia
VI. Looking for America
“I'm still looking for my own version of America
One without the gun, where the flag can freely fly
No bombs in the sky, only fireworks when you and I collide
It's just a dream I had in mind”
Alright, this is proof that she probably isn’t a secret republican because she clearly does not support the Second Amendment and instead wants to take everyone’s guns away. Why hasn’t she been canceled by Fox News yet? Though, who knows, the democrats are failing us and everyone is slowly realizing they are libertarian, so maybe she will vote republican in the next election like many others. Personally, I probably will end up not voting at all. In a time where it is trendy to hate your own country, Lana has a number of songs expressing her patriotism, as well as an American exceptionalism. She often reminisces of older times. She believes in the country America used to be. Written mostly prior to the election of Donald Trump, after which she toned things down a bit because one cannot deny that he kind of made things awkward with his “Make America Great Again” platform (though she brought the aesthetic back for Norman Fucking Rockwell! with a more mature energy, and complicated emotional landscape). Some songs are more obviously performative caricatures of older imaginations of the American Dream and old Hollywood. This song, however, is sincere, as it was written after the 2012 school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, where 26 people tragically died, 20 of which were children. My favorite lines,
“I flew back to New York City
Missed that Hudson River line
Took a train up to Lake Placid
That's another place and time”
As I also, remember a more innocent time when I would spend my summers in upstate New York at my uncle’s cabin on Saranac Lake, attending university in Westchester not very far from the Hudson River, going to drive-ins with my cousins in Lake George, and visiting Courtney in Rochester.
“The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.”
―Camille Paglia
VII. Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman like Me to Have—but I Have It
“There's a new revolution, a loud evolution that I saw
Born of confusion and quiet collusion, of which mostly I've known”
She could be describing something intimate within herself, a personal experience of violent change and dramatic growth. Or she could be expressing something we are all currently witnessing in society (mass formation psychosis?), that’s making her tear up town in her fucking white gown, like a goddamn near sociopath. A song of intense loneliness and isolation, is the white gown a possible reference to a wedding, that she hasn’t attained yet because she is too busy prioritizing her home on the stage? And while things don’t look so good right now, and it’s often difficult to still have hope—she has it.
“We must accept our pain, change what we can, and laugh at the rest.” ―Camille Paglia
Lana del Rey is Heterodox: a lyric analysis
"I will describe this time in my life as a Lynchian vortex of frozen despair."
LOL! Your section summarizing this time in your life provides a lovely, pensive, bittersweet and hopeful snapshot but if you ever feel like writing a more expansive piece about it I'm definitely here for it - especially if you keep up the colorful prose :)
It's amazing how certain songs and artists can nestle into corners of our hearts depending on where we're at in life at the time. Lana's music has a special little place in my heart as well. Thank you for sharing, Elisa!