Preconception: Lana Del Rey - “For Free”
From left: Lana Del Rey, Zella Day, and Weyes Blood, who all collaborate on the Joni Mitchell cover that ends Chemtrails Over The Country Club
What was your first impression of Lana Del Rey? How did you see her then: is she on a motorcycle? Maybe performing in front of a giant American flag? I think it’s safe to say that Lana is a bit different in 2021. Some of the core tenets of her early work still remain: pessimistic commentary on life in America, beat poetry lyricism, callbacks to growing up on hip-hop, but the landscape is totally foreign to the ones that appeared on her first albums. Lana is on track to achieve true greatness, and if the cover of Joni Mitchell’s “For Free” on her most recent release is any indicator, she’s seen fame and fortune, and has made a conscious decision to turn towards tradition. It’s a bold choice, one that may end up alienating some of her fans, but it’s a meaningful one: pushing for folk influence in an “I like everything but country” world.
Countless artists have come out with flaming hot debuts and spend entire careers trying to live up to their initial force, but what of those who completely reroute mid-career, or on an even more granular scale, what of those who saw success initially but wanted to reinvent themselves? This particular set of circumstances calls to mind Damon Albarn’s transition from Blur to Gorillaz, or Ben Gibbard’s detour from Death Cab For Cutie to The Postal Service. Similarly, great artists can go through temporary movements, like Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy or Neil Young’s Ditch Trilogy. Of these two types of artistic endeavors, the trilogies are established retroactively, usually when taking the Artist’s entire career into account, pinpointing shifts in their life and influences. The former, though, creates clear borders between the artist’s former work and work that falls under the new moniker.
All this to ask: what if Lana Del Rey’s work with Jack Antonoff, on Norman Fucking Rockwell and Chemtrails Over The Country Club, had a name separate from her earlier work? Would we spend less time comparing her newest releases to Born to Die and more time admiring the partnership as something new and refreshing? Not to say that the project isn’t gaining acclaim for being new or refreshing, I just happen to believe that these last two Lana Del Rey albums are going to be a much bigger deal when we talk about them in the future. I’m not suggesting that Lana would be better off using a pseudonym, just that if she did, it might speed up the process of the general public recognizing the musical shift. Nevertheless, give it fifteen years or so, we’ll have a name for this era, and a much greater appreciation for what Lana Del Rey is doing.