Here’s why Lana Del Rey stays irresistibly mellow with a hint of grace: she doesn’t blame the world for her mistakes. She doesn’t even blame herself. She’s cold and she likes it.
When I clicked on Lana Del Rey’s newest album, Honeymoon, on iTunes to take a listen, that same old alluring, dejected-but-removed, sophisticated voice sounded from the speakers, and it was then that I finally knew what it was like to fall in love.
I wondered what it would be like to see Del Rey content at best. Honeymoon, like her other three albums, reminds me by her alluring persona that I probably wouldn’t want to see her that way. She’s sad but she’s proud of it; it’s her way of shouting to the world that she embraces her regrets.
With Del Rey, it’s glamorous to be sad. In “High by the Beach”, she delivers the ever-so-despairing lyric, “Loving you is hard / being here is harder.” Being attached to something is difficult enough to live with, but once that something is gone, the grief doesn’t compare to the love-at-first-sight feeling she thought she once had.
In “Music to Watch Boys To”, a track I admit has a promising title, her voice takes over the speakers. The echoing, melodramatic tone that escapes her resonates very deeply with me. It makes me think that, if Del Rey and I were friends, she’d either do exactly what I wanted her to do, or the complete opposite—she’s unpredictable, but she’s not.
Although the title track, “Honeymoon”, resembles so many songs on her other albums, there’s a certain element of sadness that quickly escalates in this version of her redefined heartbreak. She doesn’t sing most songs on the album, she sighs them. That airy, heart-wrenching tone is very much alive in the album.
Lana Del Rey is too cool for us. She’s too cool for anyone. “There’s no one for you but me,” she sings in “Honeymoon”. She’s not angry about anything, but whomever she’s addressing has to know that he’s the one stuck with the regrets, not her.
