"I will do anything for you, babe. Blessed is this union. Crying tears of gold like lemonade."
You know what they say, when life gives you lemon… Sorry, I can't get the image of her urinating from her eyeballs out of my head.
You know that icky feeling when you thought Don Draper might sleep with Anna's niece, Stephanie? Sustain that into a lifestyle and you're close to nailing Lana Del Rey. Well, perhaps "nailing Lana Del Rey" is a poor choice of words, as that is essentially the dark male fantasy projected by the pop singer. She is marketed as a dead-behind-the-eyes plaything, and it carries through in the 27-year-old's lethargic crooning and numb expressions.
When Del Rey burst on the scene, I wrote that she ushered in a new era of porno pop. Frankly, my opinion of her has been a rollercoaster, as I struggle to gauge her sincerity and sense of satire, or as I learned to stifle my critical impulses and admire her knack for postmodern songcraft.
But just as I had come to accept her, even enjoy her, after witnessing impressive live performances that buried that SNL disaster, Lana Del Rey had to go and drop Ultraviolence. It is an album that lyrically looks to set gender roles back to the Eisenhower era. Which is a shame, as musically, it's as gorgeous as it is bold for the mainstream. Its patient pace, Bond-theme cool and echoing Death Valley guitars are lightyears away from the club thump that fills the charts.
Then you focus on the lyrics and your soul trickles out of your ears. Del Rey has Wolverine-warped Alexis Neiers's brain backwards in time into Lana Turner's body. See for yourself below.
